lillarn

ssm maxes out $33 hour. poor staffing, poor management--you earn your money.

"can't breed" this from a SOB mother of 5.

But darling, that's a sign of extreme respect! In my ER, sometimes I hear some old lady yell, "WAITRESS!" (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

1. the more hostile the patient, the sweeter you should be. a patient can't maintain hatefulness for long in the face of real kindness. works every time. 2. the hideously bad attitudes of the poverty-stricken patients reflect a fine line between rage and humiliation. respect the fact that many people have no education and really don't know how to act. their parents and schools forgot to issue them the bootstraps they are supposed to use to elevate their station in life. 3. even frequent fliers can dissect aortic aneurysms. assume nothing. 4. you can never have too many pillows.

hear, hear! it's like trying to pacify breast cancer patients with little pink ribbons. we had FOUR call-ins today and another resignation, and i had seven patients all day long--your usual chest pains and dialysis patients and SOB's. i am so tired i could cry. in our er we never, never get to go to the jewelry sales, scrub sales, book sales, special lunches, etc. that the other departments go to all the time. we literally choose our food in our cafeteria by what can be gulped quickly. i highly recommend the peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream.

Our ER is really, really having a hard time too. Over the past few years most of the old-timers have quit. There are no breaks and haven't been for years. Most of our doctors have left too when the organization stopped paying for their health insurance and retirement and malpractice and started subcontracting with some pretty marginal docs. At least, they're not the kind I'm used to working with. Some of our old guys and gals had been here for twenty or twenty-five years. We also have had four or five new forms added to our each and every patient who walks through. The patients have very long waits because the nurses upstairs don't take report, or don't have staff to accept patients (like we do!) I work twelve hour shifts and never stop--except for lunch--I WILL eat lunch. Lunch is 1/2 hour. The other nurses in the hospital get 45 minutes or an hour. Our techs don't help (except for a few jewels who do work--but they never stay long) and don't get held accountable. The ER is dirty, dirty, dirty, and housekeeping doesn't seem to care, so we clean the toilets ourselves and mop the floors so we aren't embarassed to bring patients back. Doesn't help much--after a four hour wait people are angry anyway. Our director is angry with us a lot because things aren't going well. Changes are made without our input and that's just the way it is. People are leaving in droves--and still i'm staying on; a few of us are because we hear it's worse elsewhere and I don't really want to do any other kind of nursing. But last week I saw a nurse get punched by a patient--frightening.

I just got a letter from the hospital saying there would be an extra $25 in my next paycheck. Also, they mentioned that they are paying the taxes on this gift. Be still my heart. We are also not allowed to take a Christmas holiday (i.e., PTO) during Christmas week, and since everyone has to work Christmas Day or Christmas Eve, it's the one day of the year we are fully staffed. So really, we don't even get an extra day off. My application to the corporate world was sent in today. I never thought I'd do it, but I'm going.

New Rule #1: If you are a drug seeker, and you tell me that you are allergic to morphine, toradol, ibuprofen, and tylenol, but that you got this one drug once that started with a "d" --could it be, dilala? or--demolol? don't expect me to tell you the truth when i get you the stuff and you ask me how many many milligrams it is. Corallary to New Rule #1: Telling me that the number of milligrams you got never works and that you need more immediately will make me very, very unlikely to believe that your pain is a 10.

I work security in an ER and one day a young lady was being seen and her mother was with her, cant remember exactly what her complaint was. Anyway she kept making trips to the bathroom trying to give urine when all of a sudden the mother starts screaming, "Oh my god she had a baby! The babys in the toilet!!! Me and the tech run over and sure enough there's mommy crying and a newborn face down in the water. Apparently she was in denial of her pregnancy and was overweight and able to carry the baby in her hips. The mother was clueless. How she got the umbilical cord cut I have no idea but the baby turned out to be ok. One of her sisters visited the ER shortly after and said that the baby was home but the mother was STILL in denial.

ours is 6 to 4 to 1 before 9 or 11 am, then 4 to 1, no floats except for someone to give us our 30" lunch. our techs--2 or three for our whole er, twenty beds, always full, high acuity, not much trauma. do i need to mention no breaks? some of the techs work, some of them prefer not to and let you know it. the ones that don't work stay, the ones that do work last six months or so then see the light and move on.

Absolutely we should make more money, much more. The hospitals run on our backs, always have. As the nursing "shortage" has bloomed, nursing salaries have remained stagnant, thereby increasing the "shortage." (In my view, nurses have fled from the backbreaking, heartrending, thankless work in such droves because of higher salaries out of hospitals.) We will never make what we are worth until we stand up together and demand it.