Do you day shift nurses ever feel an exasperated yet defensive/angry response to the next shift when you failed to do something you should have done during your shift and it is passed on to them?
I feel a mix of exasperation, apology, and defensive anger. Yes I failed as a nurse because I did not cover this thing during my shift. I covered 5 other things instead and so maybe I was prioritizing wrong.
It creates a general passive aggressive vibe between day shift and night shift where I feel I'm walking on eggshells and can't ever get anything right for them. Yes night shift sucks. I'm not in their shoes. But do they realize all the things we balance during the day?
In the end it makes me look like I missed this major thing during my shift and am a bad nurse, when, well I was balancing 5 other things and discharges (night shift does not do discharges) and 100 things going crazy between 5 pm and 7 pm.
How do you dayshift nurses improve in this area?
I feel exasperated because something had to give, yet I am a repeat offender in this area. Advice please. I know I could use some humility. But I'm mainly just angry and exhausted and struggle to face the night shift nurses the next day/shift.
The only time I would stay over that late is if a patient was deteriorating or something along those lines out of courtesy because I've been with the patient all night, just to help out to get them situated. I will stay 15-30 minutes to finish a change of shift admission just because I realize how it can suck to come in to a fresh admission needing to be done. As far as late orders, it kind of depends, if I'm not running ragged I will attempt to go ahead and get it done out of courtesy.
With that said, I don't expect that in return, but MOST of the time my co-workers have been pretty good about returning the favor, which is very nice especially after a hard shift. We need to show a little more humility and give each other a break more often.
Nights are hard. Because the on call resident is covering for so many patients, it can be darn near impossible to get a doctor to do anything until you call a rapid.
Day shift has more tasks, more procedures, and more new orders, but we also have more resources.
So much this. When dayshift says they're sorry about not getting to a task, it's fine, just tell me what it is and I'll do it. I get it. They talk to many individuals, get stat orders all day, and the patients are awake who call for whatever reason. It doesn't bother me. What does bother me is when I tell the nurse if the doctor can do the medication reconciliation or if they can order x med for y reason. Then I return and neither has been done.
On 1/19/2021 at 9:55 PM, coffeeandvendingmachines said:
Do you day shift nurses ever feel an exasperated yet defensive/angry response to the next shift when, you failed to do something you should have done during your shift and it is passed on to them? I feel a mix of exasperation, apology, and defensive anger. Yes I failed as a nurse because I did not cover this thing during my shift. I covered 5 other things instead and so maybe I was prioritizing wrong. It creates a general passive aggressive vibe between day shift and night shift where I feel I'm walking on eggshells and can't ever get anything right for them. Yes night shift sucks. I'm not in their shoes. But do they realize all the things we balance during the day? So in the end it makes me look like I missed this major thing during my shift and am a bad nurse, when, well I was balancing 5 other things and discharges (night shift does not do discharges) and 100 things going crazy between 5 pm and 7 pm. How do you dayshift nurses improve in this area? I feel exasperated because something had to give, yet I am a repeat offender in this area. Advice please. I know I could use some humility. But I'm mainly just angry and exhausted and struggle to face the night shift nurses the next day/shift.
Ahh, the ever-going war between days and nights. I agree with another poster, it really is most noticeable when you are short-staffed, to begin with. Add in last-minute admissions, especially with more arriving right at change of shift, and things can get really hostile in the report room. It also always hurt on the night shift is that we had less staff, including ancillary staff, to help. Or medical issues were left for us when we had no medical coverage in our inpatient psychiatric facility overnight, just the on-call psychiatrists who did not want to touch medical issues.
I'll never forget reporting for work one night, though, tired from either one or two twelves already in my routine of three. The off-going charge was giving report to us (we did group report, fun), and was reporting left-over admissions/stuff that needed to be done and apparently the on-coming charge gave her a "look," and I happened to, unfortunately, "sigh" in the off-going charge's perception and she lit into both of us. I had actually been trying to stifle a yawn while taking notes, but wow, that was quite the outburst. I was actually one of the few that would stay late to help complete admissions/issues from my shift or respond to codes if I hadn't clocked out yet. It really highlighted the tension.
It is all about my attitude (day shift) and the oncoming nurse's attitude. Some people are burned out or plain lazy, and a negative response is coming my way. Some people are anxious in their role a nurse, and do not pick up things running. Usually, I do not mind a task passed over to me, that's nursing. I do have this one nurse though who does not pay attention to her IVs and PICC line changes (ever), so I flush the IVs in her presence and ask her to change the PICC dressing before she leaves. After multiple issues, I've brought it up to the manager, and that's what she advised me to do.
Once, I have given a report to a new nurse, and patient's HR went into 140s, so I helped her to give lopressor and contact cardiologist. We help one another and if needed, hold others accountable.
LOL do you really think a nurse who gave a unit of blood that finished at 10 would actually put off giving a second needed unit all the way until 1900 just because they were busy?
yup! Had to give the second unit at 2100 a couple weeks ago. Order was put in at 0710 and day nurse said she was swamped.
yup! Had to give the second unit at 2100 a couple weeks ago. Order was put in at 0710 and day nurse said she was swamped.
Hmm I’d venture to guess that’s the exception, not the rule. A patient who needs units of blood is often unstable in some fashion. I can’t imagine there are a lot of nurses out there who let their patients stay in that state for a while shift who are keeping their jobs. But I guess I could be wrong. Sorry that happened to your patient. Did she have a code or another patient who was so unstable she couldn’t leave the bedside or something?
Hmm I’d venture to guess that’s the exception, not the rule. A patient who needs units of blood is often unstable in some fashion. I can’t imagine there are a lot of nurses out there who let their patients stay in that state for a while shift who are keeping their jobs. But I guess I could be wrong. Sorry that happened to your patient. Did she have a code or another patient who was so unstable she couldn’t leave the bedside or something?
You'd be surprised. It has happened to me more than one time that a nurse had orders in the AM to transfuse blood and "never got around to it". I also had a patient with an SBO with an NG tube to suction that was having on average about 800-900mL of drainage per shift, well during the day around 8am the tube became occluded and was no longer patent. The nurse that day "couldn't get around to it". By the time I got there at 7pm the patient was in pretty bad shape as you can imagine, and I didn't have that hard of a time resolving the occlusion, that sucker was draining big time afterwards! I felt really bad for the patient they were really sick. This nurse was famous for incidents like that, they got reported but she was always making veiled threats about suing the hospital if they ever got rid of her.
Hmm I’d venture to guess that’s the exception, not the rule. A patient who needs units of blood is often unstable in some fashion. I can’t imagine there are a lot of nurses out there who let their patients stay in that state for a while shift who are keeping their jobs. But I guess I could be wrong. Sorry that happened to your patient. Did she have a code or another patient who was so unstable she couldn’t leave the bedside or something?
Maybe there was some difficulty with the 'matching' and the unit of blood's availability was delayed?
You'd be surprised. It has happened to me more than one time that a nurse had orders in the AM to transfuse blood and "never got around to it". I also had a patient with an SBO with an NG tube to suction that was having on average about 800-900mL of drainage per shift, well during the day around 8am the tube became occluded and was no longer patent. The nurse that day "couldn't get around to it". By the time I got there at 7pm the patient was in pretty bad shape as you can imagine, and I didn't have that hard of a time resolving the occlusion, that sucker was draining big time afterwards! I felt really bad for the patient they were really sick. This nurse was famous for incidents like that, they got reported but she was always making veiled threats about suing the hospital if they ever got rid of her.
Wow, I just haven’t been around long enough to see these egregious things I suppose. I’d like to think I have a list of priorities for my patients that absolutely can’t be ignored: assessing chest tubes, transfusing blood, giving antibiotics, keeping critical drips full...etc based on the patients’ most critical problems. Those things being taken care of are the bare minimum for me on a busy shift. I’d be embarrassed if I let an NG to suction stop working on an SBO. If you’re drowning that badly, ask for help.
JKL33
7,043 Posts
Whenever appropriate, I prefer the verbiage of "s/he still needs [x, y, z] rather than "I didn't get to [x, y, z] because...."
There is no need for us to sound like these scenarios exist because of personal deficits.