Specializes in Psych (25 years), Medical (15 years).
While on clinical rotation for my LPN, the head nurse on OB told me that when she was in nursing school, she remembered listening to the radio about Pearl Harbor being bombed.
I worked with an RN in Chemical Dependency treatment, circa 1990, who had graduated in 1949. She said state boards were 11 essay questions.
My first job as an LPN was in LTC. One resident had graduated with her RN in 1940. We discussed the miracle drug, penicillin.
When I went through my LPN program the new miracle drug was Tagamet. Zantac had just come out and was packaged in gold foil wrapping. Our instructor said it came that way because many doctors owned stock in it.
Specializes in Psych (25 years), Medical (15 years).
Librium being widely used for alcohol withdrawal/DT's
Actually, Susie, Librium continues to be widely used for withdrawal- we had an alcohol abusing patient with a seizure disorder on a Librium comedown dose just last week.
Serax is better because there's less hepatic function involved, but Librium works well unless there is liver damage.
Specializes in Tele, Interventional Pain Management, OR.
It really is a shame calculating drip rates and or "manual" IVs are going by the way side at so many schools. Suppose the argument could be made that "everyone" has electronic pumps now, but is that universally true?
Leaving aside pumps are only as good as they are programmed, what happens when you cannot lay hands upon one or there is a massive power outage?
Sure
I graduated in 2015. Not only did we learn how to calculate drip rates and set up IVs to gravity--we were checked off on these things too. This is despite the fact that all of our clinical sites were hospitals that used IV pumps. The instructors told us we would have plenty of practice with IV pumps at clinical (they were right!).
I will never forget my second semester instructor informing us that the roller clamp on the primary line is the "remote control" of the system, haha.
I filed this knowledge away in my memory bank. Never once used it in my first nursing job on a telemetry floor. But it sure came in handy last week at my new job in a pain management clinic, where IV pumps do not exist. (We just started performing procedures that require pre-procedure antibiotics and/or NS running at KVO).
My coworker did not know how to calculate the drip rate for the antibiotic, nor did she know how to hang the IVPB to gravity and make it "drip" at the correct rate--roller clamp was wide open and we could have bolused pt with Ancef--not a good plan especially since pt had never taken this med before.
Anyway, in that moment I was immensely thankful to my second semester instructor and her words of wisdom about drip rates and roller clamps!
Specializes in Peds/outpatient FP,derm,allergy/private duty.
Wow, fellow COBs are remembering stuff I haven't thought of in years.. a few more..
Cloth isolation gowns, so much more comfortable than disposable, especially working under hot lights...
Smallpox vaccine, and counting the rapid stabby motions with the special needle containing the live smallpox virus. I thought it was cool to see how that unique scar got there.
Ventilators that looked like a cross between R2D2 and a washing machine.
As mentioned by a previous poster, the med cards kept organized in a metal rack, being careful to place the card in the spot corresponding to the time when the next dose was due.
Weighing Pampers, writing the weight on the diaper with a pen. We would weigh it again after baby voided. Most of our patients used cloth diapers which were sent to us in an enormous unfolded stack. They were folded in different ways according to the patient's age
Worked with a doc who still used the forehead light reflector. It had a really nasty leather strap.
I was actually involved in the clinical trials of quite a few of the routine things we do on the unit today. It's really bizarre. I can still remember when the residents and research team started doing them, and thinking they were really weird (and some kind of barbaric and painful), but now they are routine and have reams of evidence backing them as truly the safest and most effective methods out there. Totally bizarre.
Doing spin 'crits, collected using glass capillary tubes directly onto a finger stick or heel stick.
Docs and critical care nurses pacing the hall on the last day of the ACLS course, nervously awaiting their turn running the mega code. (ACLS courses used to be hardcore and very scary, but that changed sometime in the 90s).
Ativan taped to the headboards of seizure patients (yes, really!)
I was actually involved in the clinical trials of quite a few of the routine things we do on the unit today. It's really bizarre. I can still remember when the residents and research team started doing them, and thinking they were really weird (and some kind of barbaric and painful), but now they are routine and have reams of evidence backing them as truly the safest and most effective methods out there. Totally bizarre.
I got to work on the trials for alprostadil (PGE1), artificial surfactant and some kid of blood substitute that ended up not working so well.
NicuGal, MSN, RN
2,743 Posts
Glass chest tube set-ups
Drawing up our own blood transfusions from a bag kept in a fridge in the back room.
Reading blood sugars on a glucose stick....looks like a 40-60 to me
Circle-o-matic beds
No dressings on peripheral IVs
Nice full lady-scaping and enema for a laboring mom
Glass thermometers kept in a jar of alcohol and wiped before using
Overflow beds in the solariums
Week long hospital stays for just about everyone.
Whiskey and vodka bottle in the narc cupboard and an Order for so many mls every so many hours so our alcoholics didn't have DTs
Making toast and coffee in the AM for our patients
Patients smoking in bed