Not "real nurses"

[reussir1]

I was told by another nurse that nurses in LTC are not "real nurses" and that if I wanted to actually use any of my skills, I should work at a hospital. I haven't started working yet, but how could this even be close to true? At my local hospital, the Med/Surg nurses have a max of 4 patients, while the nursing home I used to work at had 2 nurses for 90 patients. I know they don't always need the level of care med surg patients do, but does that mean LTC nurses are less worthy?

[bravesfanRN]

Thanks for all the input, i'm an RN working on a skilled nursing unit at a LTC facility, and i've felt like there is a stigma attached to being an RN in LTC, when i first started working it seemed like every week someone would come to me and say "you're an RN? why are you working here" i'll admit LTC is not what i had in mind when i went to nursing school but i don't want to feel like i'm less of a nurse for doing it!

[nursemike, ASN, RN]

I've worked with some nurses who were new to acute care, coming from a background in LTC, and one from a doctor's office. None of them found the transition easy, but compared to my transition from nursing student to acute care staff nurse, it looked like a breeze. There are different skills, to be sure, but to a very large extent, nursing is nursing. I think good nurses, given time to adapt, will do well in any setting. Not-so-good nurses will have time on their hands to sit around thinking about who are "real nurses."

[payang0722]

I know I'm a very new nurse working in a LTC. I remember my professor in school saying that it is at the LTC facility that you will really see the whole Nursing Process over & over.

Most of them are on their 70's up to 90's, they don't often tell you on how they are feeling at that moment. No monitors they are hooked on. It's the nurse's 5 senses that you use to look if something is going on. Then, a Nursing Diagnosis is in our head, we'll call the MD, got them treated or sometimes send back to the hospital, few days later, they'll come back to us, will continue to monitor them, they're ok...then few weeks later, something is wrong again...back to step 1 of Assessment and so on... the whole process is there!

I think that is Nursing. Plus remember what Florence Nightingale's used to do: She tended to those soldiers during the Crimean War. She cared for them. Physicians cure, Nurses care and that's what we are all doing. We CARE for them.

[Orange Tree]

Where is this hospital where med/surg nurses have a max of four patients. Pleeeease take me there! I can pack and be ready in an hour.

[pockunit, ADN, RN]

There is no such thing as "not real nursing".

I hope we can exclude the h'ween sexy nurse? I just can't hobble around in those shoes for an entire shift.

[JulieCVICURN, BSN, RN]

Oh, the sexy Halloween nurse provides a mental health service for men. I think that should count as real nursing. Plus, I give a lot of credit to women who can actually walk in those damn shoes!

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

a hunnert years or so ago when i was younger'n'prettier i was a clinical specialist in critical care, having left big academic med centers for a small community hospital. i was a horse of a different color there and i found people seemed suspicious about my clinical competence, so every month or so i left the street clothes and lab coat home and booked myself in for a shift in the icu doing pt care. invariably when i went down to the cafeteria for a meal someone would say, "oh, you look like a nurse today!" and i would say, "i look like a nurse every day!"

now, 25 yrs later, i mostly sit at my desk, reviewing medical records on complex cases and giving my opinion on their contents to attorneys and insurance claims people, though i do go on home visits and do nursing assessments for life care planning and trust cases. i don't use my stethoscope (that i paid damn good money for, too!) or take vs, but i use my nursing education and expertise every single day. i still look like a nurse (only greyer and fatter).

i used to tell students to ask every nurse they came in contact with why s/he did what s/he did, but also why s/he didn't do what s/he didn't do. you can learn a lot from both. i, for one, wouldn't be caught dead in respiratory icu-- god, i hate sputum and working with end-stage shortness of breath makes me weep. and burn units are too much suffering for me, and nicu scared me to death, those little farts so delicate and conditions so precarious. but i knew nicu nurses who were terrified of adult icu, and burn nurses, god bless them, who loathed ob. it's all in what you are good at.

we are all nurses.