sugarloaf98

In a private hospital in SA, at night, med/surg, 1 nurse:10-12 patients

My kids always say I smell like disposable gloves! Yes, I do wash my hands!

I have a cousin who works in a clinic, although we call them Practice Nurses here, yes, you get my vote here:heartbeat

No problem....good luck :) Would love to hear how you go.

Here's a link to a paper by Professor Susan Ronaldson "Nursing -A Caring Spirituality" http://www.ciap.health.nsw.gov.au/hospolic/stvincents/stvin99/Sue.htm Hope that helps!

This link might give you some ideas http://education.allegralearning.com/bundleList.php?&state=67&keyword=&specialty=&practice= also, The Australian Catholic University has a unit as part of their nursing degree, I'll try and find a link for you

Spirituality in Nursing:nurse:

I had a conversation with Mum. I said that when I leave school I'd like to help people and I can't decide between being a policewoman or becoming a nurse. She said "well you'll only wind up getting shot being a policewoman so you may as well be a nurse!" God love her and RIP Mum xx:heartbeat

Something I'd love to say and get away with is: "If I were you, I'd get a second opinion"........

By the time the nurse told you about the bedpan he/she could have dealt with it obviously. Interrupting the narcotic administration only puts you at risk of making an error, all for a bedpan!

My advice is when you get handover for a "difficult" patient make it your challenge to ask him/her what is the one thing that you can do for them to make them feel better. Quite often it is something minor to us, like keeping the curtain pulled around the bed, or a hot cup of tea in the middle of the night. To someone lying in bed feeling ill, it's the little things that mount up in their mind and become big things.....which reflects in handover as "difficult"

I work in a medical ward on permanent night shift and there is only a 15 minute overlap between the late shift and the night shift so we have taped handovers. The good thing is that handovers are straight to the point (depending on who is handing over) but the bad thing is sometimes words get lost in the pronunciation if English is a second language and then there is no chance to ask questions to clarify things. Generally, what is lost can be caught up in the notes though. We also start with the name, bed number, orientated or not, mobile or not, then into the specifics.

I'm also happy to take the survey to work and get two or three other nurses to fill them out as well.

I'm happy to fill our your survey. Feel free to email me. Cheers!

Thanks for the laugh Madwife2002! When I trained back in the 80's there was a story abou the "grey nurse" who lived in the old wing of the hospital. Many a nurse recounted visions of her in the stair well but thankfully I did not see her. What is it about ghosts and stairs?

Thanks ingelein, remind me to stay clear of old psych hospitals! ditto,I have a son the Royal Australian Navy..how proud are we!

Can you tell me just one story? More if you've got time!

I would find a product that eveyone wants and sell it on Ebay!

We have had some strange things happen on our ward lately. The call bell system is completely out of whack! Bells ringing from empty rooms! A colleague always has trouble taking ECG's. Yes, always. The machine malfunctions and she needs to get one of the other nurses to take the ECG. The other night, I was doing my morning drug round at the end of the night shift. The sun was not up yet so I had dim lights on in the corridor. Suddenly the lights all went out. I looked up to see which of the nurses were playing a joke on me and no-one was around. As I looked down the corridor where the light switch was located I saw what looked like smoke hanging in the air which promptly "moved" quickly down the stair well. Has this happened to anybody else? Does anyone have famous ghosts that live in their hospitals?

I work in a private hospital on night shift. Ratio 10:1. Things have changed over the years as it seems our hospitals are focused on the dollar. We seem to be running all night these days and I think people who make decisions about staffing levels forget that patients do not all go to sleep once the lights go out.