I am wondering if anyone ever threw back? I would have been tempted.
No, but I was known to stop and move my Mayo stand back away from the OR bed, effectively stopping the case, until his (it seems it was never a female surgeon) very unsafe behavior was dealt with. At no time was any patient ever jeopardized, but the patient's safety as well as my own and the rest of the staff's required protecting, and I refused to be jeopardized by a tantrum-throwing child.
I would simply stand there quietly and look at him, waiting for things to get back under control. I had already raised my children, and wasn't above taking on one more, very professionally of course. I did not reply to him in any other way - I just removed any more potential weapons. Usually the circulator would pull up an incident report and start documenting on him, and my response was never called into question. Once the surgeon decided to behave like a professional adult, we'd get things going again.
Charting in different color ink for first, second, or third shift.
Clipboards at the foot of the bed for rounds.
Giving up your seat to the doctor. My first preceptor post RN obtainment insisted on it and some docs at that hospital expected it. The surgeons called the surgical floor "God's country." (verbatim).
Going by your title and last name "Nurse Shadow." (I kind of liked and miss that.)
Kardexes when done correctly were the bible of the patient's plan of care (both medical and nursing).
Scrub dresses that snapped at the neck and tied at the waist. Once an anesthesist left the patient to wander around the room, stopped by me to "check the chart" and stuck his hand in the back of my dress between the snap and the tie. "Walter, get your hand out of my dress!" Silence fell as the entire surgical and pediatric team turned to look at us. He never bothered me again, but nothing more was said to him as sexual harassment wasn't recognized as a problem. The only females allowed to wear pants were the few female doctors.
IV alcohol for preterm labor. Dose calculated by weight,but it worked out to about 1L the first hour, then a maintenance rate of about 150ml/hr for at least 24 hours. The patients started to giggle, then cry, then vomit, then pass out and be incontinent for he rest of the treatment.
Physohex baths for all newborns. Breast fed babies were allowed to nurse 3 min per side the first time, add one min per side with each feed to prevent sore nipples. It didn't work. Bag Balm for nipple care. Deladumone to dry up the milk for bottle feeding moms. It didn't work.
Auscultating FHR q15min during labor because there were no fetal monitors yet. Taking Mom to X ray for pelvimetry to check for CPD if labor was not progressing. Yes, I delivered a few babies between X ray and L&D. Start the Pit at 5ggt/min and increase by 5gtt/min q15min, using the roller clamp to adjust he rate. More than once, it was time to increase the rate by the time I finally got it adjusted. A full pubic and perineal shave on admission and a soap suds enema. It was a big deal when we mov d to mini preps where we left hair on the mons. Now, most women come in preshaved.
Demerol 50 mg Largon 20 mg q3h for pain in labor. We used a fair amount of Narcan on the he babies. Sometimes we added Scopalomine to the he Demerol and Largon for "twilight sleep". Those who got that often really acted out, but they had retrograde amnesia so didn't remember much. Paracervical block for labor pain, watching FHR fall and waiting for it to, hopefully, come back up as baby metabolized the giant dose of lidocaine it picked up from the mother's bloodstream. Handheld Penthrane masks. Some places are now starting to use N2O2 masks for labor pain, it hear good reports about it. Labor room to delivery room to recovery room. Leather wrist restraints on the delivery table so mom wouldn't reach for the baby and contaminate the doctor. General anesthesia or spinal blocks (rarely saw a true saddle block) for delivery. Mom flat for 8 hours after delivery if she had a spinal to avoid a spinal headache.
Did any other COBs use KY jelly to "glue" the stripe to their cap? It held the stripe in place very well but if you needed to remove the stripe to wash the cap, it came off easily. One of our nursing instructors taught us that trick.
I only wore my cap twice after graduating. I went right into Peds and the first time I worked with a child in a cage crib I decided the cap had to stay home.
Yes! We earned our caps in LPN school too, and each advance quarter (this school - the largest two year state college network in the country) was on quarters then, not semesters) got us a short light blue velvet stripe across the left cuff corner. We used KY jelly to hold them on just for that reason. Would have used it to hold on the full length red stripe after getting my LPN if I hadn't had to stop training after 2½ of the four quarters to become an "M-O-M" instead!
Anybody remember the LPNs in your state wearing a specific color stripe on their caps to indicate they were not RNs? I do. Indiana required red stripe, Virginia LPNs wore a Navy blue stripe, Florida LPNs I think had a bright green stripe. I worked as a CNA in Indiana, with an LPN in a 40 bed nursing home in the early 80's who still wore her all whites and her cap and white Clinics, ever spotless, and her stripe was that color, and she trained in Florida.
--Being so intimidated fresh out of school that I was making rounds with any man wearing a suit and thinking how very religious some of the doctors were-they even prayed over their patients. Finally someone told me I was making rounds with the local ministers!
--Stopping at doors that said "no Admittance, employees only"
--Innocently asking the proctologist "how did she get those there??" when he was seeing a woman with genital warts he'd removed from her anal area
--being asked repeatedly by that same proctologist to be in his "wet T-shirt contest" at the local Chili Cook-off; he'd even let my husband be a judge if I would agree. I never dreamed that was harassment.
--getting memos insisting we wear only "full size" WHITE undergarments beneath our white polyester uniforms (no colors or prints or bikini panties!)
--having a OB/GYN tell my head nurse to remind me that "just because there's snow on the roof, it doesn't mean there's not a fire in the hearth" (she had to explain to me that I must never bend over again like I had in his presence to pick up a chart off the floor .... (and no, I don't recall if that was before or after the memo about no bikini panties)
--calling male orderlies to do all the male cath insertions, enemas or surgery shave preps
--measuring foul pancreatic diarrhea in a tiny hopper room on the "old part of the hospital" where they still had multi-patient wards with one bathroom down the hall, and no air conditioning
--my nursing cap falling off my head into a patient's abdominal wound during dressing change because I couldn't find enough WHITE bobby pins that morning
--advancing penrose drains every day or so on the nasty open choles that were usually a 2 week stay
--the opthomology surgeon always trying to get the new nurses to instill the meds in his cataract patients via needle/syringe in the tear ducts the night before their surgeries
--changing out those giant glass irrigation bottles on the 3 ways with TURPs.
--sloshing down the CARPETED hall with a metal sitz bath full of hot water for the post-hemorrhoidectomies
--surgery patients ALWAYS coming back to floor with their IVs in their ACs covered SECURELY (as in pull the skin off) heavy white adhesive tape that came on a metal roll dispenser
--as a first time mother, taking a shower in the post-partum unit sitting on the same old wooden chair that 30 other bloody mommies had sat on that morning
--gloves, we didn't use no stinkin' gloves!
--cold meals on evenings and night shifts - what's a microwave!!
--having a doctor refuse to come pronounce his patient dead - telling me he's not driving 20 miles just for that - I should "put him on a gurney and run him up to L&D or down to the ER and let one of those docs do it!" By the end of the shift when the Medical Chief of Staff came in to do it, rigor mortis was setting in!
--at the end of a "double shift" they'd talked you into, having the night supervisor call and try to talk you into another 8 hour shift
--finding out you were making less per hour than the grocery checkers at Albertson's
--NCLEX? we hauled all our notebooks & texts down to the 2 day "State Boards" and to find out your lowest score was on the section you had studied hardest for!
After 40 years now, would I do it again?? Still am and no immediate end in sight, lol.
I wish I saw this sooner... Can relate to all posted so far....adding
The only gloves we wore were sterile ones for procedures, or maybe those loose latex ones when emptying a bedpan...IF you bothered, and that was only if you didn't want to get "it" on your hands, otherwise you just washed them afterwards. Same with bleeding wounds...We just plopped a pile of 4X4's and held pressure. Then scrubbed all the dried blood out of our cuticles and under our nails afterwards.
Deffinately remember smoking at the nurses station, shoe inspections, and crank beds, etc...Also, only professional nurses shoes, wearing all white, and a navy blue sweater only at the nurses station, except on Pedi where you could wear a colored uniform top. No hair touching your collar.
One more thing...Charting whatever you wanted to say on a blank progress note paper.
Running to the basement pharmacy to deliver orders and pick up meds; running to supply to get needed items.
Taking the B/P of someone on a pressor, manually, every 5 minutes.
Having 3 or 4 patients per nurse in the ICU as standard: having 6-8 patients per room on a floor, in a building built anywhere from 1898 to 1948, with no air conditioning.
Having 12-15 patients per nurse on the med/surg floors, including on the "step down" unit.
Double bagging trash and linens from isolation rooms.
Scrubbing steel bath basins with powdered cleanser after each use.
Mixing dilutions of Neosynephrine and giving it IVP to try to break someone out of SVT.
Making tube feedings on the floor fresh from a recipe, in a blender
Treating stomach ulcers with alternating Maalox and cream, q2h
*** NOT coding patients who were terminally ill, families were not consulted about this***
Seeing the same item appear day after day in the staff cafeteria until it had all been eaten.
Signing off charts at 6am "quiet night" -- no other notes unless something had happened.
Having a patient admitted for a 3 day hospital stay in order to be started on the only B/P med available at the time -- to get their B/P checked once per day.
My aunt remembered a time when a bunch of surgical nurses would get together at work and get washed surgical sponges for, attach safety pins in them (so they could be radiopaque), then autoclave them. She said it was a lot of fun to talk and gossip with the other nurses. This is going WAY back, around WWII.
bmck97004, RN
12 Posts
How about glass blood transfusion bottles?!? I dropped one once - glass and blood EVERYWHERE!!!