silverbells_star

I can have you out in the amount of time it takes me to print your paperwork, however to the pt it feels like it took hours, because the darn residents tell the pts on their 0600 rounds they are being discharged but forget to mention that the attending and all the consults have to approve first. So frustrating.

1. Ohio 2. 1 year 3. Hospital - med/surg 4. $24.15 5. 7pm-12a - $5, 12a-7a - $5.50, weekends $2.50, double on holidays 6. No

I love nursing students, love having them on the floor, love having them work with me to take care of my pts.

we just changed and our charge is not to have pts except for weekend nights (cause I guess people aren't sick at night??) They claim our ratios are 4-5 but it's really 5-6 and management has been hinting that it could go up to 7. We are a med/surg, mostly surg floor.

Yes! Pepper the Cat, totally agree, I will work a crazy stressed day shift any day over working nights, any day.

I work day shift and 95% of the time I leave right on time. The people on our floor that don't are the ones that are constantly talking about their families, their vacations, exclaiming loudly to everyone how busy they are. If they would just shut up and do their work they would get out on time too.

Then the pt needs to request to be listed as confidential and they can proceed to inform those certain people what room, etc.

I work full time at a hospital (3-12s), graduated last year, then hourly pay was $23.15 (Ohio) now it's $23.50, I also work casual at a hospice agency ($25/hr). I just tell the casual position the days I'm available after I get my hospital schedule. I find it works great, my co-workers think it's crazy to work an extra day of the week but it really isn't a problem at all.

We have computers in all the rooms, but I don't like to do bedside charting because I feel like I'm only looking at the computer and am ignoring the patient. I rarely stay past my shift, so for me it's not a time issue to do it in the room or an hour later at the nurses station. But there are some nurses on my floor that just sit at the nurses station and gossip so for them I could see that it would save time to chart in the room, they are constantly staying late because they just "can't seem to find the time" to get everything done.

Our patients can't call long distance either but depending on the situation we might let them use our portable phones that we carry. But really it hardly ever comes up, most people bring their cell phones.

This is my second career and I'm loving it, there are definitely days though where I wonder what the heck I did to myself but overall it's a love. I like the variety of the job, I like how everyday, even every hour is different, I like seeing people getting better, I like when a patient asks me if I'm coming back tomorrow. Some thing I don't like are people in management that are nurses that just moved up but have never taken any management classes, I've never seen such poor management as I have in nursing. I dislike that I never hear good things from my manager, I only get calls about the 'wrong' things I've done. While I make more money now, it's not that much more and I work a hell of a lot harder for it. I'm drowning in school loans because of this career switch, but I come home satisfied, tired and proud of the job I did each day, to me that's worth it. sarah

Where i work, ER and PACU often do this to us, some days they even call report early, but then the patient doesn't show up until 5 minutes before shift change or after, so we're in the same boat. Thankfully, we haven't had any bad outcomes. Often though there is some snarkiness between shifts on who should be responsible for checking the patient in. I can appreciate that neither department can hold patients until a better time for the floor, but it seems to happen so often that we get the impression that they are holding onto patients until shift change so they don't have to take any new ones. sarah

"Unhook me from that IV pole, I feel like a damn pin cushion" - IV heroin drug user with multiple admissions for cellulitis

I just finished orientation and it meant a lot to me when, while expressing my worry about being on my own, one of the other nurses said to me, "honey, you're never alone, we're all here to help." that really made my day and helped. I agree with everyone else, no gifts are needed, just be nice, talk to us, don't exclude us in conversations and I think it's important for the manager to check in with you. In my 10 weeks of orientation, the manager never once met with me, never reviewed how I was doing and I found out when my first shift on my own was from the schedule, not from her talking with me. That was very disappointing.

I went back to become a nurse because I always wanted to be one. My family pushed me towards management for many reasons and I enjoyed running social service programs for 12 years, but I still wanted to be a nurse. It was also getting to the point I was bored with sitting in an office, bored with paperwork, with doing the same thing every day. I'm still a baby nurse, but love love love my career change, even though I have a ton of school loans, and come home from work exhausted, I LOVE it