How has nursing changed since you started working as a nurse?

[insightful]

I have been in nursing for over 35 years. Nursing has certainly had some changes since I first started. I think is would be fun for us to compare stories of what nursing "use to be like".

I graduated in 1973. Then a nurse:

-had to stand up and offer her chair to a doctor.

-we actually were allowed to smoke at the nurses station!

-Nurse uniforms included a white dress, white support pantyhose (thatvrefused to stay up), white nursing shoes and oh yes that nursing cap. Since the mini skirt was in style, the dresses were as short as we could get by with (maybe a couple of inches above the knee). Believe me, many a patient saw more than enough nursing underwear when we leaned over.

-I worked for a hospital in North Carolina that still had segregated floors. I helped to desegregate the floors of that hospital. Even then a white person would never share a room with a person of color. And believe it or not even the units of blood were segregated. The first time I went to the blood bank I had to ask what the "W" and "C" meant on the blood bags. I was floored to find out that it meant "white" and "colored". A neuro-surgeon and I nearly started a riot in the hospital management when we had a white male admitted from a MVA with massive bleeding. We went through all the "W" blood in the patient's type. In desparation the doctor and I had to go to the bloodbank and steal units of blood marked "C". The patient survived because of this. However, I don't think anyone had the nerve back then to let him know that he had some "C" blood in him.

-That same hospital did not have air conditioning and so in the very hot summer nurses opened windows to get air moving through the unit. I believe many a patient died just from the extreme heat. Nurses even had fly swatters on their med carts to kill the flies..........:

[snowfreeze, BSN, RN]

15 years ago CABG patients came from the OR still intubated, we treated them for tremors coming out of anesthesia. Chest tubes were removed two days later when the flow slowed down and extubation was rarely in less than 24 hours. At that same facility we started fast track CABG, patient came from OR extubated with a swan and 3 chest tubes. The swan came out 12 hours after the chest tubes. We had to figure cardiac output and index using a complicated calculation and had to call the weather service every morning to get the barimetic pressure for that calculation.

Glass dome transducers for arterial lines. Mixing all our own IVs, I still have the laminated sheet for all the drugs we mixed in one ICU. That sheet was issued to each nurse and included how drug was supplied, what to mix it in, the concentration and if you had to take volume out of the bag first, if it was run mg/kg, mg/hr, mcg/min, mcg/kg/min etc and dosage ranges.

[Quickbeam, BSN, RN]

For me over 30 years the biggest change has been in acuity, everywhere. When I was a CNA at nursing homes in the early 70's, half our population were retirees without anything really wrong with them. There would be a mix of people who were simply old with those who had dementia or were dying. It seems so odd now but it was totally normal then.

The RN I worked with digitally removed feces virtually every day from someone. It was one of the biggest parts of her job.

I remember a nurse being forced to start a clysis bottle on a dying woman at the insistence of the family. As she walked past me in the hall she muttered, "what idiots!".

[Dorito, ASN, RN]

Remember the old gomco suction machines with the glass bottles? No IV pumps (no wonder things were so quiet on nights) Many of our patients were waiting for nursing home beds to become available and didn't even have an IV. If a patient coded there were no DNR orders, we just decided at their bedside if we were going to code them or not. I love hearing these stories....it takes me back to graduation in 1979!

[Ann RN]

1. Team nursing with a separate med nurse - sometimes I think this still would be better for med-surg floors.

2. Charge nurses who did not have an assignment

3. Glass syringes for ABG's - we had to heparinize them ourselves!

4. Admitting patients the day before surgery for all pre-OR testing. I wish we could still do this - it allowed for better patient teaching before surgery.

5. Sterilizing metal bedpans for re-use!

6. Being young enough to party the night before work, go out for breakfast, go home for a nap & then go to work and still feel good!

7. Enemas for everyone (well, almost) the night before surgery.

8. New moms staying in the hospital for at least 5 days

9. Only 8 hour shifts

10. Not feeling tired after work

11. Very, very large balloon pumps with huge knobs

12. No trauma centers

13. No shootings involving a 10 year old as the shooter

14. Mercury themometers soaking in alcohol at the bedside

15. Going to lunch off the unit every day

16. 3 glass bottle system for chest tubes

[Laurel RN]

Post op heart patients putting on their call light to ask for another beer, "and bring one for my roommate."

Bringing in the beer to find 2 middle aged men smoking and watching football.

It seemed more like a family room than a hospital room. Actual doctor's orders that said "May have beer and smoke". On post op hearts. Crazy.

[lsyorke, RN]

Turnball bowel preps

Sandbagging the head post cataract surgery

Smoking at the nurses station

Mixing EVERY IV antibiotic and KCL IV's

Demerol/Vistaril IM q4h prn

Chest tubes to glass bottles with Emerson suction

[rita359]

There have been so many changes it isn't even the same job.

Butterfly IV needles of metal so that an IV site lasted only as long as it was in a good spot or was put on an armboard so the patient would not bend the arm. Even started IVs in feet.

Setting up meds for the entire day on med trays. Hitting the med tray on something and there goes the entire days meds on the floor.

Very few antibiotics. Most often given antibiotic was IM penicillin.

Only way we gave pain meds was po or IM.

Working on surgical floor Sunday evenings. All Monday pre op patients were admitted Sunday evening. Sometime got as many as 11 patients on 3-11 shift. Pre op enemas and aides or orderlies shaving operative sites. Usual length of stay for a post op patient was 5-7 days.

Post op patients with incisions of 6-10in in length.

Circle electric beds and stryker frames and complicated traction setups for patients with fractures. Seems like I could go on and on.

[insightful]

Remember the reusable needles? We had to check the needle for burrs (splinters from the needle) before using. The medication room had a basin of some type of disinfectant that you dropped the needle in after using....

Patients were Up Ad Lib

Taping the side of the IV bottle and marking the hours to check if the drip was correct.

Male orderlies anchored all foleys on male patients. They also did any prep or any care of the male pt that required a nurse getting up close to the genital area. These male orderlies floated throughout the hospital.