JMBnurse

This is an old post, but reading it makes my blood boil and also makes me proud to be a nurse. The pride comes from the unanimous compassionate and educated responses. This situation happens all the time in hospitals every day and the attitude is not only reserved for addicts who abuse illegal drugs, but also handed out regularly to those with a history of chronic pain who are prescribed and have taken opiates for years. What gives a nurse working on a surgical floor or in an ER the right to decide that the practitioner who has been prescribing pain medication to this patient for years or decades is wrong, has purposely turned the patient into an "addict" and it is THEIR job to fix it or "not enable" it? A nurse who thinks like the Tylenol nurse should leave the profession and he/she should be reported to the nursing management at the hospital and the patient's doctor. I have seen patients, who I know personally, denied pain medication after surgery in this type of scenario and it turned out the surgeon was not aware the nurse had done this. It must be reported. Nurses like this need to be educated promptly or removed from their position. As was mentioned earlier, a post-op patient in uncontrolled pain is not healing properly and their post-op path has just been extended. It is the responsibility of the doctor to order the pain medication and the job of the nurse to administer it, period. If a patient who is addicted to whatever- street drugs or prescribed opiates, is in the hospital and their pain is unbearable, they will contact someone from outside to help them. No question about it. Is that what we want? Patients taking drugs that we don't know about when they are in our care? Patients who have had their pain disregarded by holier than thou sadistic nurses will also be permanently scarred by this experience and may avoid important healthcare they need at any cost. Very scary... An addict in recovery who does not wish to take pain medication after surgery will tell the doctor or the nurse if this is what they want. They are aware of the potential problem. We do not need to make that decision for them or debate about whether the decision to medicate them will undo all of their hard rehab work. That is not our business. That is the patient's decision and it is their business. Nurses who administer pain medications to patients are never "enablers". We are doing our job.

This is true for my hubby, too and it has concerned me. We live in a fairly small town and we have an uncommon last name. My husband is self-employed, so he believes that he can say whatever he wants on Facebook. I stopped posting political comments on FB years ago because even if I wasn't in danger of being fired, do I want my boss, who may be completely politically opposed to my opinions, judging me and having it affect my job? No way... I assume anything I post on FB could be seen by anyone. I have asked my hubby to delete some of his more controversial posts for fear that someone from work would see it and recognize the name. Except for a couple of close friends, I don't FB "friend" people from work and never, ever would I friend a supervisor or manager. I don't identify the company I work for on my FB profile. I did not join the FB group for the company I work for. I have all of my settings set to extremely private. I only friend people that I actually know and are friends and family. I no longer post anything political. I don't ever, ever discuss politics at work and if the subject comes up, I change it or politely excuse myself. These days, people can judge each other so harshly over political beliefs and we are all human. Expressing opposing political beliefs has destroyed some families and lifelong friendships over the past year.

When my daughter was in 3rd grade, she came home one day with lice. As a nurse, I discovered it and had not received any warning or notification from the school. I promptly freaked out and proceeded to boil the entire contents of our house and everyone in the family was treated. I told the teacher that I had discovered the lice and treated everyone. To my knowledge, the other parents were not notified. No letter sent home. About a month later, I discovered my daughter had lice again and again I freaked out and repeated the whole treatment process again. Not long after that, my mother and I were attending a school program and my daughter and her classmates were sitting together on bleacher seats and we were across the gym and I was recording the program. As I looked through the video camera lens, focusing on my child, she was sitting next to her friend and their heads were right up against each other as they were reading the program. I kept recording as I watched this other little girl reach up and scratch her head every few seconds. I elbowed my mother, also a nurse, and said, "Well, that's how she keeps getting exposed". We educated my daughter not to put her head against another person's head or share hats, etc. unless she wanted to keep going through the lice shampoo treatment and the nit comb over and over again. Again, I told her teacher, but was surprised that a letter was never sent home to warn other parents. Thanks goodness, we never had to deal with lice again, but that is at least one way it happens, head against head... Great, now I'm itching...

I met my husband when we worked at the same hospital 17 yrs ago. We've been married for 11 yrs. He was a nurse in the ER and I was a nurse on the M/S floor. My first impression of him was that he didn't dress pediatric IV's appropriately. He eventually won me over In our case, it all worked out well, but I think that is probably the exception. Those 17 yrs ago when I was single, I certainly was interested in some of the men I met through work. We spend so much time there, I think it is only natural to end up dating.

If the patient is relatively stable, as they should be coming to a M/S floor, I am okay with a brief, just the facts ma'am report. I'm also okay with looking up some of the information, if you are slammed and the patient is stable. If you tell me that the patient is 25 yrs old being admitted for seizures and has no past Hx of seizures, get prepared for some questions. We are going to have a talk. I've had too many what turned out to be unstable patients and patients admitted to the wrong level of care sent to me. If you tell me they are in four point restraints, we are going to chat about that for a few minutes, too.

OP... How interesting... You took the conversation to another room and everyone followed. Wonder what that says? I have read quite a few of the posts and I find the debate interesting. I have been a nurse for 19 years and I still feel it was a calling for me and the day I think that this is "just a job", is the day I will want to quit. My husband recently had surgery and he had some wonderful nurses and some, not so much. I wonder if the latter were those just doing their "job". Obviously, you will burnout if you take all of your patients' problems and issues home every day, but you would be inhuman if you never did. You will take some of this stuff home with you and you will think about it when you are not at work. It is worse when you are a new nurse. What changes is how you learn to deal with it and trust me, you will. You will develop confidence in your abilities and decisions and you will have experiences to draw from. You will not question yourself so much. After that, what you will take home are the grateful expressions on the faces of the patients you care for and their family members. You will think about the kind things they said to you and the respect you will begin to earn from your co-workers and Physicians. Of course, I don't know any Nurses who are volunteering, so yes, we do get paid and it is a job. I think of it as a great job with some benefits that aren't listed on my paycheck stub. I hope you keep as much of the attitude you have now for as long as you can. If you do, you will be a great nurse with a great job.

We are all real nurses no matter where we work. I worked in acute care for 13 years after graduation and have worked the past 6 yrs in Case Management. I may be a little old school in believing that new graduates should work in acute care for at least one year before moving on to other areas. I think it's best to have that experience under your belt and then you can find the right area that's perfect for you and not look back. It's highly doubtful I will ever work in acute care again, but I don't think I would be the nurse I am now or have the position I currently have without that experience. That is just my opinion for the best path, but as long as you like your job, you are definitely a "real nurse".

I wouldn't do this again. This sounds bizarre. Most doctors I have worked with talked to the family at length and then wrote the DNR with progress notes detailing the conversation with the family. Some docs would prefer to have a nurse in the room as a witness to the discussion with the patient or family, but that's it. I have witnessed countless DNR discussions and orders and never remember a problem and have never even heard of anything like this. I have seen more problems with running a code when the patient was supposed to be a DNR. Now, Power of Attorney, that's a different story.

This sounds like just a slight revision of our current system. This sounds to me like, again, it would only benefit the wealthy and college graduates with good jobs. The working poor who are not eligible for Medicaid would struggle with this type of system. They would pay higher premiums if they have a medical condition/s? And if they miss a payment, their coverage can be cancelled? I also think this would lead to a decrease in receiving primary care. We desperately need "affordable" health care for all. This will improve our outcomes.

This article outlines a study done on preventable deaths in the US and 18 other industrialized countries with data from the World Health Organization. The study was done for 1997-1998 and updated again in 2002-2003. I believe the final data from the update was published in 2008. The US ranked last and showed less improvement than the other countries from 1997-2003. Measuring The Health Of Nations: Updating An Earlier Analysis The 18 other countries in the study were: France, Japan, Australia, Spain, Italy, Canada, Norway, Netherlands, Sweden, Greece, Austria, Germany, Finland, New Zealand, Denmark, UK, Ireland, Portugal. "The rate of amenable mortality is a valuable indicator of health care performance, say the authors—one that can point to potential weaknesses in a nation's health system that require attention. "[T]he findings presented here are consistent with other cross-national analyses, demonstrating the relative underperformance of the U.S. health care system in several key indicators compared with other industrialized countries."

I am not sure what you mean as my point was that Mississippi is the poorest state in the Union. I read something recently that said obesity has had a huge impact on their economy. They are 3rd in the nation. However, I'm sure it is comforting to Mississippians to know that this is not their fault and they are wasting their infinite resources. Economy of Mississippi statistics - StateMaster.com Thank you so much. It is my hope that soon this will be shared by all Americans.

Wow, where were all of you flu shot supporters when I was getting pummeled on one of the other threads!

Thank you to our Canadian friends for coming here and offering your opinions on healthcare and assisting in our debate, even though as they say where I'm from, you don't have a dog in that hunt. Please know that not all Americans feel the same. About half agree with you and have fought hard for this for a long time. Those who oppose Universal Healthcare would like to inflate their numbers and use statements like, "most Americans", but like most every political issue, this country is divided right down the middle. If you add to the supporters' column those that may not like the ACA, but know that we must have reform, it becomes less than half for those who oppose reform of any type. We struggle to get so many problems solved in this country because of the sharp division. I find it very interesting the number of people here and politicians who say that healthcare should be left up to the individual states. I find that interesting because I live in one of the few states that has tried this. The conservatives here in my state and others across the country have whined and complained that it is a terrible system and does not work. Many, in fact, hold up my state's healthcare system as an example of how terrible Obamacare will be. That's kind of funny in a sad ridiculous sort of way. Once again, is it because those who say this live in wealthier states? Should Mississippi be left on it's own to provide healthcare for those who live there? Hmmmm....Have you even been to Mississippi? I lived there for 8 years. I think not.

If you don't want to pay taxes at all, well good luck with that. If it were up to me, I would prefer to take the taxes we already pay and instead of using all of that money to buy more "uniforms" we don't need, use it for healthcare for our citizens.

Sorry, CountyRat, we have been hashing out whether or not healthcare is a right for almost 3 weeks now, so the discussion has expanded a little from time to time. I believe that you are correct- Healthcare is a need. I also believe it is a human right. I believe for too long now in this country it has been a privilege and therein lies the problem. I believe that healthcare should be attainable and affordable for all, not just wealthy people and people who graduated from college and have good jobs like most of the posters here. I am not as worried about the poor as we have provided healthcare for them. I am more concerned about those who work hard every day and still do not have access to affordable decent healthcare. I think that is a travesty. As a nurse and a mother, I worry about parents debating whether to take their child to the doctor or an emergency room because they don't have the money and it may be something serious. I don't spend a lot of time worrying about abusers and people who play the system as I believe that is a small percentage and it will be there no matter what we do. Thank you for your response.