Jennerizer

Shawn - stop beating yourself up. Patients are going to fall. It's a fact of life. The only reason administration cares now is because Medicare won't pay for any costs associated with it. Go back 10 yrs & most hospitals weren't even using bed alarms or even tracking falls. Now, where I work...at one point they wanted the night shift to turn on every single bed alarm regardless of whether the patient was or wasn't a fall risk. Talk about insanity. Only reason that got dropped was because of patients complaining on the surveys regarding hospital satisfaction. Administration is ridiculous with their expectations and the nurse is always made to feel like they are being blamed. If the administrators were so concerned, then they'd have better staffing ratios and also something in place where patients with a higher level of acuity don't end up on a unit they don't belong on just because a doctor says so. Let the guilt go. Focus on what you want in your future and go for it. Don't let this one episode make you second guess everything.

Sounds like you both had a bad day. My best advice is to not dwell on it. Not every nurse likes being assigned a student. Don't take it personally. And don't allow one person to get to you the way she has. Learn from it & move forward.

You are not a horrible nurse. Some doctors are big babies that have social deficits. You are an advocate for your patient. Not for the lazy doctor that forgot to write a script. I think what you did was perfect...contacted the MD who was in the hospital and able to write the script. You'll get yelled at for many silly things. Don't take this to heart. I've gotten yelled at for calling critical cardiac enzyme results in the middle of the night, for arranging an emergency helicopter transfer, for requesting meds that the doctor told the patient he was going to order...the list goes on & on. At the hospital I'm at now...they do not tolerate doctors who act that way. Just remember...you did the right thing. Don't apologize for it. As you gain experience, you will grow a thicker skin & less tolerance towards people who act like jerks. Let go of the guilt!

I don't think you did anything wrong at all. We don't d/c the drip just because they convert to NSR. There should be parameters within the initial order...like notify MD when heart rate less than 70 or SBP less than 100. I can't stand nurses who purposely try to make other nurses...especially newer nurses feel bad or dumb. It's a great time to educate. Don't take it personally.

It happens to the best of us, but I'm sure it won't happen again. Let the guilty feeling go. You're not a robot, you're human & the patient is fine.

I'm not even sure what you are talking about.

You can't even really blame admin because it's our govt that came up with these unrealistic patient satisfaction surveys in which the hospital always loses money because it is impossible to achieve perfection in healthcare when the survey is based on perception only. Still though, the hospital should have a policy in place and back their nurses who are simply trying to care for sick patients.

I get what you're saying. I see it all the time. Nurses these days are viewed as personal assistants rather than medical professionals. I was admitting a patient last night and during the assessment, the family member kept interrupting because they were hungry and wanted something to eat. This is what nursing is becoming and the hospitals cater to it because they want/need high patient satisfaction scores which nowadays includes making sure the entire family is satisfied.

New nurses in Florida make around $20/hr...sometimes more, sometimes less depending on the county. Keep in mind though...we have no state income tax. The tourists pay that. 😁

Volusia county/Daytona Beach is one of the lowest paid counties in the state for nursing.

Had a male patient ask me to wipe his butt clean while he was on the toilet. He was perfectly capable of doing this himself, but he seemed to enjoy having a female do it. I told him I would get our male pct to help assist him. Suddenly he didn't need anymore help in that area.

It's another one of those things that looks good on paper because JCAHO is pushing for 80% of hospital employees to be vaccinated. These hospitals that are firing employees for not complying...makes me wonder if everyone in administration is also under the same rules. Or are they the 20% that are allowed exemption without any consequences? My hospital hasn't gotten that brutal (yet). If someone refuses the vaccine, they have to wear a surgical mask everywhere inside the hospital...except the break room.

My hospital only pays 10% more to work on a holiday. I'm sure if it were time & a half, they'd have more than enough volunteers. I managed to get all of Thanksgiving & Christmas off, but am working all of New Years.

The hospital I'm at doesn't have much of a code team. An ICU nurse and a respiratory therapist. Your fellow nursing staff is the team & it is run by the charge nurse. No doctor ever shows up. We are all required to be ACLS certified.

My first semester professor had approx 6 months floor experience before it overwhelmed her & she went running into the education dept for a job. Regardless, she was a good teacher even though she couldn't handle actual patient care. It's not for everyone.

I switched doctors after seeing how rude mine was to the nursing staff....all the time.

A lot of the hospitals here in Florida are getting rid of the patient care techs....so if you plan on being a nurse, you better make sure you're ok with doing a lot of what a typical CNA would do for the patients. I can understand why turn over is high for new grads....it is crazy out here. I've been a nurse for over 7 years & even I am getting fed up with the shortstaffing, poor pt to nurse ratios, the constant berating of HCAHP scores & how we (the nurses) need to do better.....even though the hospital chooses to keep us running with as few nurses as possible. Our poor new grads are started out on med/surg with 7 patients, no techs and no secretary. If I had started in an environment, I would have turned around & ran the other way. I don't think it's so much that older nurses are eating their young......rather they are too overwhelmed themselves to help very much. I am not jaded towards nursing.....nursing is a fine career. It is when administration thinks because a nurse "can"...that they "should" do everyone's job. We put in our orders, we are doing respiratory treatments, now they are telling us to make sure we clean the rooms on a daily basis.....as well as emptying the trash & laundry. Cater to not only the patients, but their families also...because 60% of the patient satisfaction surveys are filled out by family members. Remind doctors to do this or that. Call doctors with results of tests....and in turn get yelled at by these doctors for bothering them with results. Where is the nursing in all that? We are being turned into a jack of all trades & then blamed when something doesn't go right. Lab messes up a time or a order....well, the nurse should have caught the mistake & corrected it....or the nurse should have noticed no one from lab drew the blood at the exact time & the nurse should have made a call to remind lab to draw the blood. The doctor orders the wrong test or doesn't give a reason why a test is ordered....the nurse should figure it out or follow up with the md. MRI is ordered but the dept is taking awhile to get the patient...the nurse should call & find out why they are taking so long. Pharmacy is questioning medications, have the nurse call the MD to clarify & then call the pharmacist to follow thru on clarification. Pharmacist still doesn't agree? The nurse should keep calling until it is resolved. Why can't the doctor & pharmacist talk to one another? No one around to answer the phone, the nurse should drop everything to answer the random unit phone calls. It goes on & on & on. Put the nurse in the middle & then blame the nurse for everything that isn't perfect. That is not nursing!

I'm with you....off-duty is off-duty. Once I was having dinner & noticed someone choking. Luckily the waiter was right there and did the heimlich & all was fine. Another time while on vacation, I was on the beginning of a 2-day train trip when I hear an announcement asking for a doctor or a nurse. I didn't go because I pictured that I would have to take care of this person for the next 48 hours. I figured if it were a real emergency, they would have diverted the train to the nearest staion or repeated the page overhead. Looking back, I kinda wish I had gone...just to see what was going on.

Mine started in 1865 and called itself a health reform institute, later to be renamed Battle Creek Sanitarium. It was where one of the doctor's brother's decided to focus on nutrition and that is where & why Kellogg cereal was invented!

It used to be the drug of choice until one of our hospital administrator's relatives died after being given 2 mg. For awhile we rarely saw it ordered, but it's starting to be ordered more and more...at smaller doses though.

Yes, HCAPHS surveys. That's all we hear about day after day....gives me a headache. Makes me dislike our govt even more than I already do.

Florida Hospital is attempting primary care nursing and have eliminated techs from many of their units....thus the reason there are a ton of open RN positions. It's a good organization.

We used to get nothing! Now all of a sudden we're getting 1 hour of pay for every 4 hours we are on call.

I believe night shift teaches you better time management skills and prioritizing. You basically have 3 or 4 hours to do the majority of your hands on/bedside nursing tasks. Most patients want to go to sleep at a decent hour, so you're a little more selective about going in and out of the rooms. I also agree that you use your critical thinking skills differently because most of the time you don't have the luxury of waiting for a doctor to round or freely calling an md or having any md available on the unit. Calls at night are based on emergent necessity &/or pt requests. Night shift tends to work better together because there is less staffing as compared to days. You have to help one another to get through the shift. Working as a team builds trust, which decreases the gossip. Sleep pattern is the drawback. I wish they would change shift change to 5 instead of 7, but I doubt that would ever happen.

The job security and financial freedom make me say yes, the direction healthcare is taking due to Medicare not reimbursing the hospital for it's services unless the majority of patients are delighted with their hospital visit...no. I'm not burnt out though....I don't stress about it. Sure it's a career, but it's not my life. When I walk out of the hospital doors after a long shift, the problems/stress disappear. I feel it's a choice one makes & it's one of the things I love about hospital nursing. If I call in sick for a shift or even 3 in a row....someone else takes my place. There's no pile of work waiting for me when I return. I'm not only encouraged to take vacation time or paid days off...it's mandatory at my hospital to take 144 hrs off. That's 12 shifts or 4 weeks of time off....or more if that's what you want. It is discouraging to see admin adding many ridiculous tasks to nursing that are clearly not part of nursing practice. It's insane that a hospital is compared to a hotel. Maye it will lead to nurses uniting and taking a stand.