Please dont hate me for saying this...

RN2BENAUSTIN · Sep 3, 2008

Hey guys....I feel really terrible for all of this. I honestly made a judgment too early. I have seen these ER nurses in some serious action, and I can honestly say that I spoke way too soon - I really wish I could take it back, but now its out in the e world!

As far as caring, I think anyone willing to work 12 hours helping others is a CARING person...period. None of us can adequately judge the level of "caring" of someone else unless you are in their shoes. All of our backgrounds, history, and personalities will make us all respond to patients differently. But, if you didn't want to help others, than you would not be on the board! So, I feel like anyone on here, is a caring person, and we all will show it in different ways and should not spend time tearing each other down. You have all seen some terrible things, you all work too many hours and mostly on your feet. I am sure each and every experienced nurse on this board has drove home crying over something they witnessed, lets focus on what we have in common. Because if we focus on our differences and what one thinks is better than another, we will never make any progress.

Again, if I could take it all back I would...but I do believe things happen for a reason. For me, I was able to hear your stories and feel your frustration, I turned my focus on what all these nurses are doing, and realized how much patient care is done when they are not at bedside.

And I know this sounds a bit cheesy :) ... I want to say THANK you...not only for all the advice...also for doing what you do every day. There needs to be more appreciation for what all nurses do and see.

crb613, BSN, RN · Sep 3, 2008

On a lighter note....

Got to Love a Good Nurse

A motorcycle patrolman was

rushed to the ER with an inflamed appendix.

The doctors...operated and advised him that all was well.

However, the patrolman kept feeling something pulling at the hairs in his crotch.

Worried that it might be a second surgery the Doctors hadn't told him about, he finally got enough energy to pull

his Hospital gown up enough so he could look at what was making him so uncomfortable.

Taped firmly across.....

his pubic hair were three wide strips Of adhesive tape, the

kind that doesn't come off easily.

Written in large black letters was this sentence: 'Get well

soon.... From the nurse in the Jeep you pulled over last week.':wink2:

Roy Fokker, BSN, RN · Sep 3, 2008

Hey guys....I feel really terrible for all of this. I honestly made a judgment too early. I have seen these ER nurses in some serious action, and I can honestly say that I spoke way too soon - I really wish I could take it back, but now its out in the e world!

Give yourself 10 lashes with a wet noodle and we'll call it even :)

I think we all learned something from this thread.

That counts for something, yeah?

Have a great day y'all.

cheers,

amarilla, RN · Sep 3, 2008

OP, thank you for bringing this up, for all reasons good, bad and indifferent.

When I left a career in finance for health care, most folks who know me well were *shocked.* It's not that I'm not appropriately caring, patient, kind or focused...

it's that I've had a few memorable, nasty experiences with nurses in hospitals myself, (as a patient or as a family member of a patient.)

When my father was dying in the hospital, the nurse who walked me into ICU remarked to her colleague that she was taking me, (ten years old at the time), for a visit in the 'vegetable garden'. Standing in his doorway, she explained that I was only being allowed to see him because he was going to die, then promptly left me in a room with my unconscious father, full of tubes and flanked by machines. I will probably always remember how frightening and painful that day was for a scared, alone little girl.

Flash forward: I go into the hospital, miscarrying. Hearing the nurse tell me that the baby 'wasn't actually alive', (pregnancy turned out to be blighted, but I didn't know that then), and that I should be happy to miscarry naturally so early instead of later having a dead baby to deliver.... :crying2: I might mention that I have no children and this was the first and only conception I'd ever had the blessing to experience. Wow, how the tears flowed. *sighs.

I could also tell you about the big NYC teaching hospital where my stepfather had his knee replacement...where he was left to soil himself in the bed, fell trying to get to the bathroom, and wasn't given the appropriate therapy. I rushed there after work one day after they'd picked him up from the floor, only to see five nurses chatting away and laughing at the nurse's station just a few feet away. They didn't care, plain and simple. There wasn't even an incident report filled out about his fall. He had a stroke two days after returning home.

My point is: it happens. There are people out there who are just doing a job without investing of themselves into care. There are insensitive, rude, lazy and incompetent people too, just like any job. There are also plenty of skilled, warm and wonderful ones...

and it's a shame that the negative experiences can overshadow the overwhelming good that most nurses do everyday. Yes - they are under tremendous strain, are often emotionally torn and physically beat...

but the good ones will cry right along with you, even if it's only in the break room later on.

I decided to become a nurse because of those experiences I had, not despite them. I think it's pretty amazing that just offering someone a tissue, listening, taking a moment to update them, or allowing them to ask questions and be heard can make so much difference.

Don't let it discourage you. Let it inspire you.

JMO.

Best,

Southern

PetuniaRN · Sep 3, 2008

RN2BENAUSTIN,

Do not feel bad for asking for insight into something that bothers you. I have found that no matter what the topic is, someone on here will disagree with you and start little nitpicking fights. Seriously, just filter through it and hopefully there are people who are posting that have something useful to say. Coming from a family of nurses, I have felt very unsure as to whether I wanted to be involved in a career that is so well-known for being catty and hateful towards newbies, different expertise, different educational backgrounds, and VERY into cliques. I have experienced many of the things you mentioned from SOME nurses, while seeing many others who were the kind I wanted to emulate. If you search through the posts I guarantee there are other posters who voiced similar concerns. And surely, there were nice and not so nice replies. My mother is a hospice nurse and tells me to always treat my patient as if they were my grandma (who incidentally was killed in a rehab facility by a nurse who documented glucose checks on her chart but none of the glucometers in the facility were used for it and never gave her any insulin (for 9 days). Her BS went up into the 900's and she never woke from her coma. The fabulous nurse also documented interventions on days she was not even a patient at that facility. I guess someone taught him that documentation was make believe.) So every time I feel like a crabby old Nurse Ratchett, I think of her. Incidentally, when referring to "caring interventions" I was referring to specific interventions that are labeled "caring" on care plans as we learned in school. Examples include back rubs, lumping nursing interventions together to allow the patient more uninterrupted sleep, offering self (praying, listening). So that was misunderstood. Take care. Good luck with school--it's even more difficult than trying to be understood on here!! :nurse:

suanna · Sep 14, 2008

actually my experience is the oposite. every ER i have worked has been a very autonomous environment for nurses. before the doc gets in the room, the labs are drawn and sent, ekg, asa given. i don't think a busy ER would work well at all if the nurses had to wait for orders. maybe this is a small rural ER you are referring to, but here in the big city the nurses run it. i know the floor nurses where i work can't give a tylenol without an order, if i had to work like that i wouldn't last very long. one of the things that attracted me to the ER is the autonomy.

The hospital I work for isn't a little county hole-in-the-wall. We are a 500+ bed inter-city full service hospital with level one trauma, and chest pain certification. I'm glad to hear it isn't universal that ER nurses can't wipe thier noses without an order from the docs but we have an attending service for our ER that expects the nursing staff to follow basic admission protocals and then sit quietly while the doctors decide what to do next-step-by-step, hour-by endless-hour. I didn't mean to belittle the care provided by ER nurses! I couldn't put up with the 14th this year visit from your favorite drunk trying to dodge arrest or drug seeker who ran out of MS contin. Let alone the welfare mother who stops by after a night on the town to get a pregnancy test (and one to go for her daughter)and some narcotics for her "back pain" "Oh and by the way my kid has an earache, can I get some antibiotics for him, and make it snappy-, I haven't been to bed yet" "Buy the way, where is the menu I need to order dinner" More power to you nurses who can put up with that and still have any compassion for anyone that comes through the doors.

NightshiftRN69 · Sep 14, 2008

Unfortunately there are many nurses like this. I recently worked at a hospital were the majority of the nurses I routinely worked with were like this, even going so far as to put down the nurses that were there before them right at the nurses station not caring who might hear them. The unprofessional behavior was unreal. There have been some nights where I was embrassed to be an employee on the floor. And it's not just nurses I've seen everyone from residents, fellows, assistant nurse manager, RN's, LPN, PCNA's, unit secretaries even cleaning staffing. I don't feel that you become this way after being in nursing a while, I feel that there are those nurses for whom it's a job and then there are those nurses who make ever attempt to care for thier patients as if they were family members those are the nurses who are spending their time on the clock caring and learning about their patient not watching the clock and looking for the next shift to get there or spending their time socalizing. Just don't forget why you are going into nursing.