Let's play I Remember When.....

RNSue · Dec 13, 2000

JillR, I sugar in the wound was for"nourishment" to the tissues and the oxygen mask was to deliver concentrated O2 to the tissues, which is basically why they use hyperbaric oxygen(HBO)chambers today for wounds. The responses to my post have been great! Today I remembered some other good ones. I remember when...after giving an injection we had to cut the needle, then the hub, and then dispose the ruined syringe in a cardboard box. We had a little tool for sitting on the med room counter, similar to what the labs used not too long ago to remove the needle from the needle holder. Well, we only had the one tool, so when it was full, we had to clean it out. Inside the the tool was a plastic stool speciman cup. The cut needles would be stuck to the bottom in dried medication and blood. We picked out each little piece of broken needle with our fingers, NO GLOVES! and then rinsed it out. I can't believe we did this and it never occurred to us to just get another stool speciman cup and replace it!! ...when patients had sterling silver trachs,(I have one in my curio cabinet), I also remember glass IV bottles....when there was too many staff and we had the option of staying or going home, most of us stayed because we knew it was going to be an easy shift!!...when it was an absolute no-no to walk by a wet spot on the hall floor!...when I thought that I was making big bucks at my first LPN job when I started out at $4.29/ hour and that included my $.50/hour night shift differential! I can't wait to read more!!!

oramar · Dec 13, 2000

In 1967 when I passed my LPN state boards I went from $1:95 to $2:25 an hour. Do not laugh, that is a twelve percent increase. When is the last time you got a twelve percent increase?

oramar · Dec 13, 2000

In 1966 the best physicans made about $20,000 a year and that was considered good money. My starting salary as a GPN in 1967 was $1.95 an hour. We paid for our own health insurance, standard Blue Cross and Blue Sheild was $14.00 a month for family coverage. A MD put you in the hospital when he thought you needed it,he ordered what ever he wanted and kept you as long as he wanted. I say he cause I met my first female physician in 1980.

sunnybrook83 · Dec 13, 2000

When pts were admitted the night before surgery for Betadine baths---When mothers delivering lady partslly had a week long stay-mixing maalox,sugar and betadine for decubiti--when nurses actually had time to sit and talk to their patients about their problems!!!!

pickledpepperRN · Dec 14, 2000

Warming metal bedpans with hot water. Cleaning them in a 'bed pan washer' recessed into the wall. I attended a meeting once to ask for a brush to keep our hands clean especially with 'fracture pans'

Many will remember not having gloves except for isolation patients. We recapped needles.

We taught diabetics to sterilize syringes as well as sharpen needles. Oh, remember double voided urine specimens?

Taping glass chest tube bottles to the floor so no one kicked them over. Yes three glass bottles connected by glass tubing in black rubber stoppers. We used cutdowns much like central lines now.

Brushing the teeth of an MI patient whose treatment was rest, Isordil, and Inderal.

I once worked in a place where most call lights were requests to crank the head of the bed up or down (no electric controls).

This is fun! some of the nurses I worked with then are still friends.

lita1857 · Dec 14, 2000

ABSOLUTELY THE BEST! I graduated in 1977...some how managed to only wear a cap at "capping" ceremony w/ my big sister...and then at graduation.I remember alot of what's been written, I MISS alot of what's been written. Doing a back rub or bath really wasn't about that as much as the wealth of info/assessment you got from your patient. It sure was nice to be there in the important times(birth/death)and be able to give your all, do a great job, go home after a code and feel good...everyone had done their best! I hope nurses continue to share and remember all the good and the not so good. It's our history, it's our legacy.

tshores · Dec 26, 2000

I, too, remember the Emerson bottles and stainless steel bedpans and urinals. I also remember ducking a few thrown by patients in DT's. I went to school in California and moved to Arkansas in the 70's. I was supposed to wear a cap and white nylons and got into trouble all the time because I wouldn't. The pins we used to hold those caps in place hurt! We had to call each other by our last names and I wasn't too good at answering because I was used to being called by my first name. I'm so thankful I didn't work in a hospital where I would've had to stand up for doctors because I'm sure I would've been fired. I remember the two huge medication trays and cards the medicine nurse carried at 0900 every morning. The only IV pumps we used were on pediatric patients or drips. So we ran up and down the hall with those glass bottles, and I bet we all broke our share of them. The glass toomey syringes, the smell of IM paraldehyde (yummy), and I wonder where that little old lady is that used to be admitted every Christmas Eve because her family left town and she liked our fried chicken.

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Trella

Jenny P · Dec 26, 2000

Those lovely caps! I swear I'm still bald on top from having to pin them on so tight- bobby pins wouldn't stay in my fine straight hair unless I twisted the hair really tight into pincurls; then when the cap would get tangled up in the curtains around the beds I'd lose a chunk of hair!

justrisabovit · Dec 27, 2000

I went to nursing school at the age of 40, and have been in nursing just 5 years now. I have spent 4 years on an acute floor in a hospital, and one year as a case manager for a Hospice and Palliative Care org. Both were very disappointing, since my hopes for nursing were so far from the reality in both.

The only way to reconcile my standards with what was expected was to stay on my own time for both jobs and do what needed to be done, and I found that most any decent nurse found herself doing that. To those of you who have seen it all, I ask, do you think the pendulum will never swing back again? God Bless.

babs_rn · Dec 27, 2000

I remember cutdowns and caps, and backrubs for management of the back pain that inevitably accompanied having to lie in those uncomfortable hospital beds! I remember MOM and merthiolate mixed and placed on bedsores used in conjunction with heatlamps qd (hey, it worked!!) LPNs had to give up their chairs to RNs, and RNs had to give up their chairs to the docs. I remember opening and closing charts and q2h rounds and notes in between. I remember RNs as bedside nurses with LPNs as medication nurses (boy, was THAT nice!) and I remember having the time to take GOOD care of my patients. I remember comforting families without having to also deal with the reality of having fifteen other things that I needed to have done within 5 minutes of leaving the room. I remember nurses being treated with some respect by the community, when "making a nurse" meant something, as in, "She made a nurse" (old country speak for "she became a nurse") - when it was something you could be proud of and you weren't regarded so much as a servant but as a caregiver.

The good old days.

Babs

[This message has been edited by babs_rn (edited December 27, 2000).]

mrb1027 · Dec 27, 2000

This is great! I graduated in 1971. Worked in a Catholic hospital, you wore a skirt and white nylons. Could not wear pants until 1974. I worked in Peds and did use clysis many times for dehydtration. what about those ice mattresses? Glass thermometers?

Christmas only the very sickest were in the hospital. Then for New Years all the chronic kids, with disabilities were admitted to give parents a rest.

bestblondRN · Dec 28, 2000

I remember using fetoscopes (those strange looking devices that look vaguely like a stethescope with a metal band that went from the forehead to the back of your head to conduct the sound) to check fetal heart tones, giving pre-delivery shave preps and enemas, and watching physicians using forceps MUCH more often. When I first graduated, I worked in high risk antenatal and L&D, and I remember spending a tremendous amount of time with patients--getting to know them, their families, and being able to sit down and teach them about pregnancy. I have a shoebox full of letters and cards that I have received from patients over the years, which, when I feel down about being a nurse in this era, I pull out and read to help remind me why I do what I do every day. Many of the cards are over 15-20 years old, but it keeps me in touch with the primary reasons I became a nurse, and why I am so proud to be a member of this profession.

".....to know one life has breathed easier because you have lived....this is to have succeeded."--Ralph Waldo Emerson