rnwayne

I've been a "male nurse" for 27 years now and have seen this issue change over the years. I do think my age and experience has also played a role in how I'm viewed. I've seen many young nurses both genders questioned if they knew what they were doing. Gender bias isn't as strong as it used to be with most people. It's absolutely true that MD'S will show their dark side to female nurses more often than with males. I saw a surgeon just last year walk into preop and proceed to take one of my peers apart. I interrupted him with the info that it was my patient. He stopped cold and told me to be more careful next time. I think the important side of this issue is that each of us must be sensitive to the needs of patient's, family, MD's and other nurses. I've worked with female nurses who were men haters due to bad relationships. It took a little work to earn their respect. Remember we all come from different cultural backgrounds and have different experiences. We don't easily put aside the cultural bias we were raised with. It would be great if we were all treated with respect all the time. That won't happen in my lifetime or yours. Be very slow to become angry. I don't know if I'm paid more than my peers and honestly don't want to know, but I try to be the kind of nurse everyone wants to show respect to.

Our hospital has a different type incident report for everything that could happen. The one you need is what we call a "Problem doc". Verbal complaints to the boss just get brushed aside but put it in writing and it's much harder to ignore. As for the visitor that complains, I always tell my assistant director, or the nsg supervisor to go talk with them now. We also by the way have a "patient complaint" form. Your job shouldn't have to be harder because of someone's laziness. Read up on your facilities policies for dealing with problems, and disciplinary action. The system usually works if you yank the right chains.

I've worked on a medical floor for 18 years. We have a separate floor for surgery but of course surgical patient's with infections come to my floor. Doctors are treated noticably different on our surgical floor. Being a guy has always worked to my advantage with rude to the women MD's, but as you've observed, many surgeons are uniquely immature in their behavior. I once told a surgeon he'd done something stupid. Instead of taking it out on me, he went to the nurse exec who then spent the day on our floor giving my director a hard time. When nurses fail to respond to the "wait on me" surgeons, they stay on the floor longer and cause more problems, not just for you but for other staff. My advice is to be confident of who you are and what your role is. Do what needs done to get what you need for your patient's. Don't hesitate to speak with your director when you think a doctor has behaved inappropriately. I've seen our director take a surgeon aside and set limits for him.

No we don't use ultrasound or microintroducer tech. We still work by what we feel only. Efforts to educate administrative people concerning what we need are going very slow. Their pat answer is always that we need to train more nurses to help. Got my hands on a proposal today for an independent company to contract for doing all our PICC's. It apparently started at the top and the buck's been passed down through the ranks; iI think looking for someone who understands it?

I've been placing PICC lines for 10 years in a 140 bed independent hospital. As a staff nurse on the medical floor with other patient's to care for, I've been finding it more difficult to take the time needed to place a PICC. I can't just ignore my other patient's for the 30 to 90 minutes it takes to place a PICC. We also have an assistant director and one of our nurse educators who also place PICC's. I'm interested in learning how other hospital's manage PICC's