Okay, so I'm a pre-nursing student who wants to work in the NICU someday. Well, a couple days ago a group of pre-Nursing students-myself included-talked about looking forward to Nursing school. I said that I couldn't wait to be a NICU nurse. One pre-nursing student replied, "But you'll have to watch babies die!" And I answered, "Yeah, but I'll be able to save babies' lives as well."
Another pre-Nursing student, who I find to be smug and abrasive, stated, "Nurses rarely save lives." ***** I wanted to slap him for making an ignorant statement.
So, is his statement true? Do Nurses "rarely" save lives? How many lives have YOU saved?
Yeah they do save lives if your waiting on the doc to save your going to die the nurses are the one who are around to notice the change in the pt. and to make the call if they don't how will the doc no something is wrong
Specializes in Peds/outpatient FP,derm,allergy/private duty.
Noted.
As it happens while you were writing that I had already decided to go back and re-write it to remove the first two so I asked the mods to take your quote of it as well. If it has been there over 5 or 10 minutes you're out of the edit window for non-paying customers. I know I get that way sometimes so I got the premium membership.
As it happens while you were writing that I had already decided to go back and re-write it to remove the first two so I asked the mods to take your quote of it as well. If it has been there over 5 or 10 minutes you're out of the edit window for non-paying customers. I know I get that way sometimes so I got the premium membership.
Catching a medication error can save a life. Think about all those babies that died from heparin overdoses. Some nurses probably did realize the drug was more concentrated and dilute it properly, but we didn't hear about them because they followed the 5 rights of medication admin. They saved a baby that day, they'll never think of it that way, but if it was your baby you would.
Nurses lose lawsuits all the time for "failure to rescue". What is rescuing if not saving a life? But, you'll not hear anything about the nurses who do the rescuing, because guess what, it's part of the job.
So, those nurses who call the code, start CPR, notify the doc of the patient's worsening status, the ones who manage the heavy post partum bleeding BEFORE it becomes a major hemorrhage, those who follow the steps of NRP at delivery, anticipate the next steps, those who call for help when they need it and follow policy. Those nurses save lives. Why? How? Because we do our jobs.
Patients are in the hospital for NURSING care, not to see doctors. What we do is important and necessary. There are soooo many studies that show nursing care affects mortality rates. If we didn't save lives that wouldn't be true.
Effects of nurse/patient ratio and mortality show an increased mortality rate with increased ratio, which means that the more time an RN can spend with the patient, the more likely that patient is to live. http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/288/16/1987.abstract
I think the point is that sometimes our actions can be actual physical actions that save lives:
*initiating CPR
*keeping an anti-coagulated patient from falling out of bed and bleeding to death
*upping the pressors in order to get a blood pressure that actually perfuses the brain and kidneys
But mostly, our actions are behind the scenes and more subtle (actually stopping an event that would require physical action):
*calling a rapid response because the patient just doesn't look "right"
*preventing the pt from getting the 0900 dose of PCN that the doc still ordered it AND pharmacy put it on the MAR even though the pt reported and it was documented on admission that his throat closed up the last time he got it
*checking the labs on your pt that is now having frequent multifocal PVCs and calling the doc for the Mag of 1.2
I've seen this guy when I was at Nursing school. Or one just like him. "He" was a girl, very very bright and very arguementative. Although her grades were at the top of the class she needed to look for nearly a year for a job, and was flat out told by one of the two major hospitals in my area that she would never ever work for them. Now at graduation and not ten years down the road.
Arrogance is a self-fulfilling prophecy and as a nurse you just can't take that road. Being a know-it-all means you're refusing to learn and that is nearly impossible as a Nurse. Look through this forum, your nursing books, your nursing instructors and you will hear it said again and again that you're constantly learning, constantly evolving, constantly doing new things as a nurse.
Keep that in mind.
I know the know-it-alls in this world are sometimes hard to stomach especially in the stressful area of a nursing school where tiny problems are magnified into soap operas but try to resist the urge to let this man irratate you. Smile gently at him, say "I don't think you are correct" and let it go. It's hard but you can't change someone else's personality and you are there to learn.
I don't code people on a daily basis. But the time I found a baby purple and unresponsive in her crib in the newborn nursery and started bagging her, and she went home with her parents a couple days later pink and okay....I do believe that one counts. Don't know that she'd have started breathing again on her own spontaneously.
I don't think of myself as a hero; hopefully any good nurse in my shoes would have done the same thing I did. But do we save lives? Yeah, I think so.
I've helped snatch hundreds of people from the jaws of death.
Arrogant statement? No, I've got 32 years of good solid critical care experience to back me up on that. If your SBP is 60 and you're bleeding out would you want me to act quickly or wring my hands till the MD comes over from his office? Bedside nurses are the first to notice even subtle changes in a patient's condition which the doctor may not be aware of. The nurse's critical thinking skills can often prevent code situations.
I know I have personally saved lives. I have called at least two codes on awake alert pateints that totally crumped just as the team arrived. How did I know what was happening? Years of experience and a smidge of intuition.
One was a pt going into overload after his 2nd unit of blood. Not my patient, the other nurse asked me to look at him. He was just starting to struggle for breath, and I just 'knew' we were looking at a bad outcome. So I called the code, the first person to arrive noted that the pt was still responsive. And then he quit breathing, as the cart was being rolled down the hall. He survived.
I was a dialysis nurse for many years, and learned to spot signs of allergy to the various products. A patient started to cough with 3-5 seconds of starting his first treament, and I stopped the treatment. The director was there, she felt he would be okay, and got ****** of at me when I called the code. Really ****** off. Pt ended up in major anaphylaxis, intubated, and off to ICU. I was fired not long after that for 'insubordination'. Go figure.
But that was a true save, and if anyone ever asks me - - yes, I have saved lives.
Mr abrasive probably wont learn anything in nursing school since he apparently already knows everything. As for us mere mortals, saved too many to count! Went into a room to defib a patient. His doc was at the bedside too wrapped up in filling out a H&P form to notice the patient was unconscious and in V fib! A few cardiac saves pre hospital, saved lots, if nothing more than recognising that we could intervene stat, or wait a few minutes and do a full code.
lsk40
149 Posts
Yeah they do save lives if your waiting on the doc to save your going to die the nurses are the one who are around to notice the change in the pt. and to make the call if they don't how will the doc no something is wrong