djh123

I like the 'verbal colonoscopy' term...

That's a tough situation, and I don't envy you. But on a lighter note, it reminds me of Davey's Waaaaaambulance thread, and a few current and former nurses in my current job. We were talking about one the other day. I like and respect her, but as another nurse says, she's pretty "Waaah".

That's what the people say...

To me, the n-word or 'Kamikaze' for a Japanese person is not what the 'PC' topic is all about. Those are just offensive and racist things. To me 'PC' is when you go far beyond that and make a problem out of nothing, such as what another commenter mentioned, 'Don we now our gay apparel', where gay only means 'happy'.

I don't disagree with your advice here, but at the same time, life is full of risks. After my mother passed away and I finally dealt with the house, I took pre-reqs at one school, then applied to an accelerated program at another school, which (to me) inexplicably didn't take me (I had good grades in pre-reqs, among other things). Then somewhat on a whim, I moved back to NM, where my ex and I had lived (but in another town), where I knew no one, rented a place that was larger and more expensive than I wanted to pay - so I was definitely in a 'sink or swim' situation. Didn't really want to go back to my previous career. Thought about quitting nursing school in 3 of the 4 semesters. Had a bumpy road finding my first job. But now, with almost 6 years experience and a decent job, and thinking about things like travel nursing, I think 'hmmmm, those late nights studying WERE worth it'. But as we're all saying, I can only speak for myself.

Oh my ... and I was only kidding about that, Old Dude.

Yes. I'd have to look up the lyrics to 'Baby, It's Cold Outside' to see what I think exactly, but without having done that, it seems like a bit much. What about the - what is it called? - micro-sensitivities, or something like that, on college campuses these days? Seems way overblown to me. Everyone is walking around with a chip on their shoulder the size of a boulder. My joke to myself, after hearing about the 'Baby...' banning is that next some misunderstanding idiot will complain that "White Christmas" should be banned...

We've all done it, bro ... glad it wasn't anything super-significant. Speaking of - and I always add this qualifier before I say anything negative about nurses I'm working with, and that is "I'm not perfect either", but on my last couple of work days, on 2 different units - therefore 2 different med carts - I found numerous instances of dc'd meds still in the cart, completed antibiotics (like 1-2 left on a card) still in the cart, and two different strengths of meds for the same patient still in the cart. Oh, and duplicate orders still in the system. Atb orders without a stop date in the system. Need I go on? I probably spent 30-45 minutes each one of those days just fixing stuff. And they wonder why I'm there late...

I hope it gets better or you get out of there. On occasion at my previous job (LTC/rehab) I'd have 2 units - 50-ish people - for 4 hours sometimes, sometimes longer. I'd always have a med tech in those situations, but still, it was just ridiculous. I could only do the highest-priority stuff and deal with any emergencies that came up.

Yep. You're a spring chicken. I got my BSN at 54. Go for it! Actually, I'm editing this because I see all of those 'don't do it' comments. Everyone is different. Only you can decide, obviously. For me, even though I'm only going to do this for a maximum of 10-12 years (and probably a bit less), I'm still glad I did it.

In my workplace, we'd probably need to use those 'points' to buy supplies. :^)

Partly because I've been through a great deal in the past 15+ years, I cuss more than I used to, but I don't do it a huge amount, and not much at work. But there are a few CNA's at work that cuss like Marines. And a LPN - whom I like and respect - and I were working on getting an IV in a quite elderly patient a while back, and she (the LPN) was cussing quite a bit in a low voice because she was having difficulty with it. A little voice in my head was saying '____, don't do that - she's going to get mad', and right after that, the patient angrily said she didn't appreciate that in front of her. My co-worker stopped doing it, but she did it again in front of another patient.

Stupid question, I guess, but you don't have aides to do any of that?

I do a mix of things that are relevant to the patients I see and other topics that I'm just interested in, or apply to my own health.

Hey, that jives with my guess for my workplace. :^) Of course, there may be McDonald's $5 gift certificates, y'know...