Oh yes, having an absolute heart attack when the chart went splat all over the floor, usually when the chart was long overdue to be thinned. Counting narcs was never fun. Once the nurse counting with me caught the Demerol box on the edge of the shelf and 25 Demerols came raining down on our heads. We found all but one and had to do an incident report with the supervisor. I found it in my pocket when I got home! I used to make a postop bed in layers so all you had to do was peel off a layer every day and you never had to change the bed for days. Lots more but I'm tired right now.
You mean YOU don't count narcs? I have not seen that go away any place I have worked yet.
Again notice the division between grades indicated by uniforms. The senior students wear caps and have a striped dress topped off by a full pinafore. Meanwhile the probationers were a plain dress, no cap and a half apron.
The idea behind "probation" students was clear; unlike most programs today the old hospital programs had no "pre-nursing" sequence. You were accepted and once in your first year would be a mix of various classes (sciences, beginning nursing arts, etc...) that would be seen as a pre-clinical sequence today. At the end of term there would be exams. If one passed one got one's first cap, a different uniform and continued with nursing education. So when you hear COBs say they "earned" their cap, well under this method they certainly did.
Schick and Dick test. That is a new one on me, but guess since was born well after Diphtheria immunizations became routine.
In the last photograph take a close look at who is administering the anesthetic; if am not mistaken that is a RN!
Oh, getting back to Miss. Susan Petty, have heard so much about her and the Babies Hospital, decided to see where the building was in Manhattan, NY and if it was still around. Since one lives in NYC and on the UES....
Long story short, yes the building is still there and have passed it probably hundreds of times!
Specializes in Home Health, Mental/Behavioral Health.
Years ago in the MICU, I had a patient on a balloon pump, which was brand new. She was in multi-system organ failure and had finally been made a DNAR the day before the interns rotated. The new intern was, of course, fascinated with a patient that had this new piece of machinery. He ordered blood gases drawn every hour. Then the radial arterial line fell out, and we were going to have to do an arterial stick hourly to get gases because we weren't allowed to draw anything from the aortic line (and wouldn't have known how to anyway. Brand new technology.) I called him and explained this, but he wanted me to go ahead and stick this poor little old lady anyway. I asked him if he was going to treat the blood gas results, and he screamed at me that "I ordered what I wanted, and you just damned well better do what I say!"
So I stuck the lady for ABGs and called him the results.
An hour later, I stuck her again. This time, when I called him he screamed at me not to bother him with the freaking results, he'd look at them when he was good and ready. So I asked if we could stop drawing them, given as how we weren't treating them, he wasn't looking at them and sticking the poor lady caused her to squirm and grimace indicating pain.
"Just give her more morphine and draw the gases."
Then, for good measure, he came by the unit and wrote in ginormous letters covering an entire page of doctor's orders "Draw ABGs q 1 h JUST LIKE I ORDERED."
At about 2 in the morning, we we weren't able to get ABGs from radials, and weren't allowed to draw from any other artery per policy. I asked my best friend, who was an excellent stick to try, and even she couldn't get gases. Then the heart rate on the monitor slowed . . . and stopped . . . and we needed to call an MD to pronounce death.
I called our friendly intern and and began with "We're not able to get blood gases on Mrs. DNAR -- we've used both of her radials so often that there's no place to poke her. Would you like us to D/C the q1h blood gases."
"No, &*(^*)! Continue the q1h ABGs. How many times to I have to tell you morons this?"
"OK, then since we aren't allowed to draw from any other site, you're going to have to come up here and draw from a femoral artery." (Lucky he didn't understand the balloon pump enough to know that there was a monitoring line in her aorta!)
I heard the unmistakable sound of a phone being smashed against a wall or floor or something, and about 10 minutes later the intern stomped onto the floor, snatched the ABG kit (I'd made one up as we didn't have remade kits then) and disappeared into the room with the now deceased patient. He was in there for half an hour or so when he came storming out, threw the glass ABG syringe against the wall and said "You've won. You can D/C the q1h blood gases now."
"Thank you, doctor," I said sweetly. "Now could you do us a favor and pronounce her?"
I don't think he ever lived down spending half an hour trying to draw blood gases from a corpse, and I still haven't lived down waking a physician to come to the unit to TRY to draw blood gases from a corpse.
We use paper charts, addressographs, and kardexes until they pried them away from us a few years ago. Pyxis came in after I finished school a few years ago, and licensure exams were three times a year. The unit I just started on even has the shifts charting in different colors.
I'll be honest, I read this forum and I see where our health care system is going to be in 20 years. And I'm glad I can retire in just 17.
ACLS: When you were lost for a intervention you could always "Give an amp of bicarb"
Sublingual Procardia-cut or pierce the capsule and squeeze it under pt. tongue
OH BTW: you had patients instead of customers/clients
The Bedpan versus Bedside commode for acute MI pts
This may have been local, but a bottle of Jolt Cola for nightshift.
IBVP resp treatments ? the units look like ET on wheels
Them little green "Bird" Ventilators?
The first time we converted to "Baylor Shifts" or what they call working 12hrs
Treating PVC'S with lidocaine drip for > 20/min
I worked a small community hospital and we had no ER doctors at nights, the ER was covered by the local MD regardless if they were the General surgeon or the orthopedic, and they were on call. So if you worked the first floor you worked the medical unit and ER, if you worked 2nd floor you worked surg and Ob-Gyn. Being a male RN I only worked the first floor. I will have to say that many of my assessment skills from them old no MD days followed me through my entire career. OH BTW lawyers were more busy with Divorces than mal-practice in them days..
Old ICU memories...MA 1's, Buretrols, IVACs with toggle settings, manually calculating drips and having to put in the dose, IPPB respirators, WHWW (working hard without whining)!
FranEMTnurse, CNA, LPN, EMT-I
3,619 Posts
This is me in my uniform when I was a nurses aide.