RetRN77

Amen to that! I have heard many times in various places about decisions not to treat UTI's in patients deemed terminal, and I have always been aghast. As you said, they are incredibly painful, and not just necessarily when one tries to urinate. I do not understand why anyone would consider not treating a UTI. It's not like it's going to prolong someone's life. It's a comfort measure, as far as I see it, and not treating it hastens demise. In addition, I feel the same about withdrawing feedings. I wonder where we have come that these things are even considered reasonable tactics. And tactics they are. They are certainly not benevolent care.

Wow. Incredible. Kudos to you for what you are planning and for your concern. To me, it's unconscionable to let people suffer with UTI's and to not feed them. Most especially since it's obvious this poor lady is not even in any sort of coma. (In which case, I'm still a die hard when it comes to withdrawing treatment.) Those kids showing up and saying she would never want to be half paralyzed and on a feeding tube? Well, she's been that way for over a year, sits up in a chair (with help) reads the paper, listens to music, etc. Doesn't sound in the least like someone who feels her life is not worthwhile. I agree with the person who said these kids just want to get on with their lives with her money. I'm praying she will be able to respond to you in letting her wants be known in a way that no one can refute. Waiting to hear the upshot!

That's pretty funny! Although I am surprised it didn't occur to anyone to stick some old fashioned heavy duty cloth bandage tape on the box and write the name on the tape. We used to label all sorts of things that way.

I don't think I'd feel insulted, but it wouldn't make me feel appreciated, either. I like the sweatpant with logo actual gift idea. I would have appreciated that. Nurses week never happened until after I was no longer working at a hospital. In fact, I don't remember ever getting anything at all for nurses week, and I don't recall when it began. But way back when, our hospital used to hand out gift catalogs at Christmas and you could choose your own gift. The gifts available weren't little trinkets. Choosing your own gift felt rather cheesy and we didn't feel especially appreciated, mostly because the supervisors were tyrants day in and day out. Then again, you weren't getting a white elephant, either. I got my first toaster oven that way. I was a relative newlywed and it was very useful, so I was grateful anyway.

I did, although at the time, I was a student, and had already done my L&D/PP rotation. I didn't know any of the nurses in the L&D unit, because I went to the hospital and delivered during the night shift, so I didn't know any of them. I was only in L&D about five hours. However, I did know some of the nurses on PP, some of them mostly because they were friends of my mom, who had only recently stopped working the PP unit. It was interesting at times, but it definitely had its pluses. I received plenty of visits from my fellow students while on PP, because they lived on site, and that was fun. I do not remember any of the PP checks in particular. :) So if I was embarrassed, it didn't last long!

This happened in my family as well. My mom and her siblings shared the care of her mother late in life. At that point, she told me she never wanted to "force" this on us and she wanted to go to a nursing home when the time came. Many times, especially toward the end, I wanted to bring her here but she always refused. I think it would have been hard on her here, also, since our youngest with special needs was just too active for her to deal with. It was a much noisier and active environment than she was used to dealing with. She would tire easily when we were around too long. I think if she ever reconsidered her decision, she probably considered also that the environment wasn't exactly restful. I felt badly that I didn't get to spend time having her here and caring for her as she lived several hundred miles away from me, but that's the way she wanted it.

Oops - thought I quoted the person who posted the original. This was meant for the nurse who drained her hematoma and needed months of wound care afterward.

Forgive me if I've posted this before. Our very first day of clinicals, another student came to me in distress, telling me she couldn't get the rectal thermometer to stay in place. "It keeps falling out!" I couldn't imagine how that could happen. She begged me to come check it out. As I approached the bed, the elderly lady said, "It's in my lady parts! I used to be a nurse! You put it in my lady parts!!"

Oh, my, I feel so badly for you! Who would have thought it would take that long to heal?

Hopefully, your doctors have an efficient practice, know exactly how they want you to deal with phone calls, and will train you to do what they want. The physician I worked for had very specific things he wanted us to tell patients. He always considered his receptionist to be irreplaceable because he had spent years training her to handle calls exactly as he wanted to. He figured the nurses came with the skills he needed and wouldn't need much training. But he found when his long-time secretary retired that nurses were no slouch, either, on the phone. You might not be required to answer the phone. We usually only answered it when the secretary was on break or for some other reason absent from her desk. There were specific cases in which calls were routed to us for medical advice, but, again, the physician taught us what he wanted us to say, and if there was any question, we would put the patient on hold and ask him. It really was not too difficult. You'll find most things that go on in a physician's office are very similar and routine from day to day. I think you will enjoy your new job! You are fortunate to have gotten such a job at this point in your career. Office jobs are hard to come by and usually go to nurses that know the physician from the hospital or other professional contact.

Oh, hilarious!!! Thanks for the laugh - I really needed it!

Good grief! Except for the faking, crying, denial and swearing, I thought you might have been talking about me! I became ill while scrubbed in during clinicals and had to ask the circulating nurse who was supervising me to take over for me. She gave me an outraged look, like "you are kidding me!" but I wasn't. It was probably at least the fourth or fifth time I was scrubbed in, and I'm not the queasy type, so I don't know what was up. I did make it to a chair and did not actually faint, but I did wish I was dead. I think I did finish out the surgery, or at least I stayed in the room until the end. The doctor on the case was one of the nicest surgeons at the hospital and known for being kind to students and for welcoming them to the OR after surgery. Well, he was apparently just plain exasperated with me and ignored me. I was so humiliated.

Totally off topic, VintagePN, but your avatar looks like one of my old supervisors! :)

In the 70's, at the Army hospital I worked at then, we had a princess of a Middle Eastern country as a patient for a few days. She was very polite to us, and was really no trouble as a patient. There was not a huge fuss over her, because we were supposed to keep her presence as much of a secret as possible, but some patients did inquire because of certain things they noticed. I can't right now remember what those things were, as I don't believe there were guards outside her door, but if I recall correctly, there was a "presence" on the unit. She had a private room, of course, and I'm pretty positive her meals were more special than usual, but there really was not much difference in her treatment than for others. Close to the same time, we had one who thought she should be treated like a princess. She was a foreign-born wife of a lower ranking officer, and you would have sworn she thought she was married to a five star general. It never seemed to occur to her that most of us, if not officers ourselves, were also married to officers. She took exception to the menu every day, complained about having hamburgers for lunch, wanted spaghetti for breakfast, and basically thought we were her servants. I'd take the real princess any day.

I'm a little puzzled, because I wonder why the dividing line between being reasonable and becoming "hostile" is when the incoming nurse goes beyond checking the IV site and goes on to further assessment? I understand that it makes the process longer for you and you think it's rude, but it's not necessarily hostile nor passive aggressive. I can identify with you, however. At one of the hospitals I worked for, we had a night shift nurse who was genuinely hostile and difficult to get along with. She could also be very funny, once she stopped trying to intimidate us. She had a couple of moods - cranky and superbly cranky. The patients would say she had no compassion for them. If they complained about the pain of labor, she would tell them they should have thought of that before they became pregnant! At that point, I knew for certain it was not about me, so I gave her as wide a berth as possible when she was extremely cranky, and genuinely appreciated her humor when she was having a "good" day. She really had no business being a nurse, because her idea of a good shift was one in which no patient succeeded in getting any more out of her than the bare minimum she intended. Putting things into perspective, I felt fortunate to only be the outgoing nurse and not the patient.