Nursing trivia or how nursing used to be...

Nurses General Nursing

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Specializes in Skilled Nursing and Home Health.

Hello,

I'm working on a project for Nurse's Week coming up. Do any nurses remember "the good old days"? Have any interesting "duties"you used to do that aren't done anymore? I'm looking for facts, trivia questions, or just interesting stories you may have. Thank you!!!! :)

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Peritoneal taps to check for abdominal bleeding after traumas. Now CT's are done.

Inserting pins in the tibia to place a femur fx in traction for a week before surgery. Now they go straight to surgery. (Talk about weird feelings.....you hold the leg still for the doc while he's drilling and you can feel the drill going through bone!)

Placing c-spine fxs in halo traction for a few days before surgical repair.

Treating MIs with nitro and heparin and a lot of prayers in the ICU. Then it was tPA. Now it's the cath lab.

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Specializes in ICU, ER.

--EKG machines with suction cups and 'glop' instead of nice stick-on electrodes. It was very difficult to get all the cups to stay on at the same times. It took forever to do an ECG.

--Counting each narcotic with another nurse at shift change and having to sign out each dose on a piece of paper.

--Head CTs that took 45 minutes.

--MA1 ventilators with the bellows that constantly got stuck.

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Carrying narc keys

D5W was the standard IV for cardiac pts

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Specializes in Gerontology.
----Counting each narcotic with another nurse at shift change and having to sign out each dose on a piece of paper.

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Ack! We still do this!!

I remember when cholecystectomies were major surgery - NG tubes, huge incisions, NPO for days. Tonsillectomies stayed in for a week. Croup tents!

No IV pumps! Isolation meant double bagging everything and disposable meal trays.

I have a copy of "Cherry Ames - First Aid" which came out around WW 2 -

it talks about calling your doctor in an emergency - no 911!

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Specializes in Skilled Nursing and Home Health.

Thank you both for your input. It's fun to see how things used to be compared to today. My mom recalls when patients smoked in their rooms in hospitals and nurses/Dr.'s smoked in the nursing stations. Keep em coming! :)

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you no longer carry narc keys?

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Vaccuum bottles used for chest tube drainage

Babies staying in the nursery after birth except for feedings and supervised bonding times.

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Specializes in Med/Surg.
you no longer carry narc keys?

Don't even HAVE narc keys any more. No more big red books to sign out each dose and NO MORE COUNTING with each shift. It's wonderful! Put password in the accudose, get out med,put in the number of doses left. Accudose tells you if count is right or not and give the med. Now if count is wrong,have to track down the error and that takes time. Have only had acouple errors since we got the accudose about 5 years ago

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These are things my mother, who graduated from nursing school in 1948 talked about.

Her first job after nursing school was 6 days a week and she made $90.00 a month.

Nurses had to stand up and give the docs their chair if a doc came into the nurses station.

Female nurses had to wear girdles lest a male pt became excited by the sight of jiggling female flesh and experience "deleterious effects to their health and well being."

She had a mimeographed piece of paper that enumerated what a "good nurse" never did. One of them was that a good nurse never dropped her bandages. Another was that a good nurse never sat on the pts bed.

If a nurse broke a glass thermometer, the cost was deducted from their pay checks. Interns and residents didn't get charged, so if a nurse broke a thermometer, an intern or resident would take the blame so the nurses didn't lose money.

Maggots were used to debrid burns.

Mustard plasters for respiratory ailments.

Penicillin was new.

Really restricted visiting hours.

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Leeches are being used for wound care again.

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