anotherone

I am not sure who would stay? In a large facility , they may have MANY 15+ call offs, a supervisor isnt going to be able to fill them nor are they capable of for many units. ( I highky doubt any nursing supervisor in a large hospital can jump in and work in most units. ) as for management, in some facilities they do not so pt care and if it is an off shift or weekend they aren't around. do you work in acute care? what if there were 2 call offs and your unit was already short? peoplr always agree to stay or come in?! I am suprised hospitals and other facilities can manage without mandation. do you just work short taking 1-2 more pts? I guess it is staff nurses responsibility for the same reason everything else is....

You are scheduled 7a to 7p. 7pm comes and due to call offs, or not enough scheduledd nurses there are not enough nurses. No one wants to stay, no one agreed to come, they are short as it is so there isn't anyone for you to give report to. That means you (most places use a list and staff gets rotated) get to stay until 11pm or what ever your facility allows for. ayou did not agree to the OT per se, it was mandated. you have no one to report off to, so you must stay on as the nurse .

Depends on how my other pts are but for q1 hr demands that are not needed and I am busy , I have and will say something lile "many of my patients need things at 6:00, I can't be in 6 rooms at once." or will tell them why the request isn't needed. people like this are a blessing to be fired from. Some of our drs have no issues "telling them off" wheras almost all the nurses, myself included, mostly give in

OP , I think I understand. I have had 6-7pts no aides. Yeah, IV starts, rt stuff, labs are "basic" and nursing but we get pts with q4 labs. sometimes multiple. now it is yet another task. no aides (been there too) so some pts require 2 to turn, change, br etc.... some even more.. have to round up another nurse or 2 or 3 or 4! .. but alll the nurses are busy. it is yet another task piled on nursing. so things get slacked on......

wow. back injuries are debilitating. one injury and one's nursing career or any! may be over! wow. some value their ability to provide for themselves and our back. Yeah, complaining won't solve obesity but it may make hospitals have more staff, more lifts, bariatric beds and rooms with bigger bathrooms etc.

I don't care how fat of thin they are.... Not high and mighty but don't think all thin people are that way by chance either. Once a pt is in a certain weight range, and unable to care for his/herself that pt requires more staff to care for him and her and more of a physical effort. I don't understand why people get so upset by this. Many to most people in our society are overweight and obese .. They will get cancer, neuro illnesses, traumas, elderly etc...... I think it is reasonable for hospitals to acknowledge this when looking at staffing and facilities. many older and even "newer" hospitals are not equipped right .

there is so much misery . and so many people who seem and are like monsters.... I am often amazed when I encounter kind people after dealing or seeing some of these lunatics. I think these stories and encounters definitely affect health care staff ( not to steal the "limelight") and that isn't acknowledged often. All my nursing friends have tons of stories like this as do I. My non nursing friends seem to think a minor cold is some sort of grand human tragedy. Working nas a nurse does make me feel very thankful for my luck ( that is what most of it is) so far in life and health..... It makes me roll my eyes at the ones who will be fine who go on and on woe is me over next to nothing. I wanna tell them get over yourself!

heh. i meant to hit quote buy hit like instead..... i started a thread myself on the obese but with a different tone. my back hurts too sometimes. i am female but in your age group. 250-350. that is a near light weight !!!! body mechanics .... yeah sure. i do not turn people myself and will wait for enough help which does delay care. but only an idiot or someone in the ivory tower thinks 2 125lb nuses or aides is all it takes to do care for these pts. does your facility have special beds for pts like this? super overweight and some type of air bed? one look outside in most areas of the country and this is what i expected from nursing........ many of your pts brought their illnesses on themselves thin or fat. but i guess your issue may be with how it affects you. i see this being a big problem as 1 total care pt who is 400lbs requires more staff to assist than a total care who is 130lbs.

not all the time. med surg . sometimes you can plan all you want but if we are short and constant bed alarms and frequent vitals etc.. with even other nurses pts , then there isn't anyone to watch yours. some shifts are a huge spiral there is never a break.

wow, i thnk it is rude and presumptuous to expect a greeting from a stranger. exceptions being work related ( with customers, not coworkers). If people make eye contact or stare i say hello, otherwise I leave them alone.

I never would tell families/pts we are short. Didn't want to worry them and knew it is a no no . Well now on shifts like the ones you describe I refuse to be seen as a bad nurse when we are short 2 nurses and 2 aides. If management doesn't like, well I don't care. Not taking the blame for someone else's bad choices and business practices.

If I ever cry in front if someone, the worst thing , Ii think,, would be for it to be acknowledged. Patting my shoulder or trying to hold my hand will increase my anxiety or have me thinking you are an inappropriate weirdo. some who say to treat others like you would want to be treated don't realize some of us want to be treated differenly!

A typical bedside nurse position is extremily rough on your back, neck etc.... I can't thing of one single coworker who has been a nurse longer than a few years who doesn't have some muscular skeletal or spinal issue. It can be debillitating and make it gery difficult to work as a bedside nurse and even outside of work. Ugh. i am suprised when i see nurses who have worked at the bedside more than 20years because of the physical labor aspects of the job.

I work 7pm-730am 3-4 times a week. Day shift is way too hectic. nights can be stressful and busy but it is different than on day shift. i try to keep the same schedule but come on... if i did i could never go out to run errands or shop at most places. I miss every holiday and many many other social events. I dont care about them much and as a nurse you are going to miss them whether you work nights or days. Other long term affects I am not really sure about. i guess i'll find out in a few years

could have, shoukd have, would have.... I see many doctors around my age at work. 80 hra at least at the hospital making peanuts, wasting their youth there... I feel the apposite of envy! I usually piy the residents! ( at least the attendings get paid more). i am suprised so many people do go through with it! I have seen some interns over 30.

pts think we are working harder when we are standing to chart as opposed to sitting..... so ... just another way society has to appeal to the lowest thinking of us...... last few timea I went to a dr's appointment s/he told me a disclaimer of how they are charting on computer while looking at me. I know this since I am a nurse but ai knew dra had to chart since about middle school .....

the day we get treated like professionals is the day I will think we are. this is why I am strongly in the "just a job" camp. I have been to ( either through clinicals or as a visitor) many hospitals that do not have nurses stations. most had one or two desks for the clerk/s. It kept the nurses from sitting and also keeps them from congregating together. ( who knows what can happen if we come together). Charting is one of the most important parts of my job, I can do that sitting. If pts, visitors or other staff are too ignorant to understand that, well too bad. I don't care anymore..... although i have charted standing up in order to avoid having to deal with the interuptions at the desk

My last post was filled with sarcasm. I rather have the new md/do if they are seeing me as an out pts/he is already an attending and if inpatient the attending still rounds.

If anything Inthink nursing school should focus a lot more on patho and pharmacology. Bed making, fluff nursing theory, WASTE of time. the longer i go as a nurse the more I understand why many instructors said not to worry about skills so much. And the more I resent the implication and demands that RNs waste their time on stupid tasks a robot can do. It is the dumbing down of the profession. But in reality not THAT long ago only a MD could place an IV or take a blood pressure...... who knows. why even have rns if an ma can do the job? why have an MD if a pa or np could do it.......

Almost anyone can learn to put in ngs, ivs, labs etc. anyone. that is the least of what I bring to a pt. I think of my job and the lives I have saved by assessing pts and reporting abnormalities because of my knowledge of disease processes and pathophysiology. That should be key to any nursing job. on a similar note why does a surgeon need medical school and then at least 5 years of residency and maybe a fellowship. Can't they just teach anyone where to cut.? Do people really have nursing jobs where a thorough understanding of pathophysiology and even pharmacology is not needed?

If I wanted to be an no i would have done that or gone into medicine. I don't want to nor do I want to see a PA or NP over a MD or DO for the same reasons posters here prefer nurses rather than MAs at the bedside...

Lower ratios for nurse.. most of the nurses are new and inexperienced Also the doctors are worked to the bone too. An intern cross covering 80pts who are all acutely ill is a recipe for disaster! so much to do and barely any time to THINK. i hate that part of the job. people act and think my priority is to get them graham crackers or chairs for the visitors. no it is not. i need time to do a safe med pass and think about pt's condition, assessment etc. not be interupted for stupid things. if i say this i get accused of thinking these tasks are beneath me...

As much as I diskike nursing sometimes, it is my job and i rather have one than not. This will just push things towards the direction esme said. For the same reasons I prefer and do when choosing see mds/dos over nps or pas.

We have been told when pulled, "you are lucky to have a job or not get cancelled". I dislike the cancellations due to census or overstaffing alot!!!! we always work short aides and sometimes multiple nurses but we are never allowed to take one less pt or have an extra nurse. I don't know how things work in other industries. aren't lay offs pretty common in other fields?

As I read the op's post, I thought I have heard and seen many things like the above. Gets to the point where it is in one ear out the other, some react by replyig the same way, then there are the criers. I have worked since I was a teen and this happened in other jobs too. I guess none of th were "professional" job before. People that act like this and these comments were not shocking for me. par for the course. frankly , I am suprised when they don't act like ths!!!!!