deathnurse

While you may make more money and have more job opportunities, you'll certainly inherit all that is wrong with health care. Our RT's are CRUISIN' compared to what we go through in 12 hours a day. And they don't have the family crap to put up with as much as we do. We've got a Viet Vet RN who gave it up to manage vents and he's happy. Been with it a long time and makes as much as we do and he's STRESS FREE. Don't be a nurse.

Ya' wanna' be a nurse? You passed the test. You want more letters after your name? Become a professional in another field. It's folly to stick on BSN after the RN. There is NOTHING that an ADN can do that can't be done by a BSN, so don't consider yourself a lessor person after you spend the time and money on the "credential." You'll be wiser though. And more learned. You'll know of better ways to invest your time and efforts than in persuit of a lofty nursing degree. Good gawd, don't get a masters. Or a doctorette. You'll only be steered towards a lower valued teaching position, with a lower income (but will probably at least have a retirement, not like a hospital nurse.)

When you're saving money, you won't see snazzy ideas such as these. When you've got OPM (other people's money) from universities, county facilities, and so on, you start to see the paper mill projects come to light. They need more nurses, higher salaries, and better retirement. Not "Shared Governance."

Take your breaks before they take your spirit. Insist that "night shift" can handle it. It's a 24 hour job and this mantra that day shift has to do it all is preposterous and shouldn't be fostered. I had a good day Sunday. Was able to shave a patient, just for the 'l of it, and started an IV for another nurse who was swamped, because they actually waited for the NEXT SHIFT to bring up another patient. Such simple concepts will keep nurses happy, increase retention, and cut down on recruitment costs.

psychomachia has the definitive answer. And, again, I'm amazed at the very question. Oh, give me a wino at change of shift! It's now 0232 and my rants and rave continue, despite the Cuervo conditioner. The dog's lickin' my hand again.

You're FREE! Don't ponder the life of a nurse! You're outta' there! You won't be abused by patients, doctors, managers, relatives, and visitors any more! You won't be sued! You won't catch a deadly disease or have a patient spit in your face! You won't go home completely worn out and zapped of your strength! You won't build up a slow tolerance to MRSA through your nasal passages! NO MORE NEEDLE STICK DANGERS! Drunks won't hit you. Night shift nurses won't ask you to take out the trash! Doctors won't berate you for not knowing every little bit of information so they can get out the door faster! Visitors won't ask you to get them coffee and an extra couple of chairs while you're trying to stop someone from bleeding! When YOU'RE sick you can GO HOME without screwing other employees into taking on more patients! YOUR OUTTA' THIS CRUMMY BUSINESS! Or are you? Me? Oh, I love the abuse and all of the above. I make $31 an hour, almost 50 years old. No retirement. Too worn out to work overtime. Got an HMO that almost covers me and my family. I could work as a psych nurse with the hands-on training I got from my managers, fellow employees, and fricken doctors that treat you like krap. Maybe I could strip in a club? Nah, that's for younger guys. With larger...egos. I wanna' hurt somebody. Bad. REal BaD! (Ok, it's 0200 an I'm on a roll here. The bottle is half empty, not half full.) Lemme have it, all you touchy/feely types. Go ahead, ya'll.!!!

professionals. yeah. professionals.

This is a GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY for you! Stay out of patient care and use that "degree" for something else. Pharmacy sales is a good one. Converting over to a pharmacist is even better. Or maybe transfering into physical therapy. But a nursing degree is a pretty sad label...

Had to through that in.

Yeah, the situation sucks, but we're making choices aren't we? Get out of nursing and into a business with more respect.

We could use him here in Las Vegas.

Not in that order.

and the grief that goes with it.

Nursing is the most well-respected occupation in the public opinion polls. But it doesn't appear that they are polling the patients and visitors in the hospital. Patients love nurses until they need them. Then, they require their exclusive presence to meet all of their needs hand and foot, to the exclusion of that nurses other responsibilities. Doctors need nurses and resent their phone calls and updates. Visitors intrepret a nurse as having all of the information that was ever acquired throughout a patients lifetime locked up in the nurses brain somehow. And, they also expect you to wait on them hand and foot.

...and the problem is, specifically: How could anyone even consider that they would have to attend this "mandatory" meeting at the whim of a managers coercion? Can't you all take a JOKE? Tell em' OFF! If you can't, I'll talk to them for you. I enjoy that kind of thing. So subservient, so subservient....

Someone said: "I think that R.N. and others who won't accomodate you, should think about you and your baby's health..." Wrong. That's like the old saying, "Friends don't let friends drive drunk." A REAL friend doesn't get drunk and transfer personal responsibility to another "friend." Be an adult. If you want to get drunk, you're on your own. If you want to have a baby, YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN. You make your choices. You want to be a nurse and be pregnant? Don't expect your employer or fellow employees to help you out. Be responsible for your own actions. Don't get pregnant and show up to work saying, "You have to accommodate me." Don't screw fellow employees with your inabilities. Ya' wanna' have a baby? Make sure you're financially secure FIRST and then QUIT. You owe it to the kid anyway. I'm tired of having to work with pregnant, slacking co-workers who won't lift patients or cover MY lunch (MRSA patients), same as I'm covering for them. I'm not a popular poster here....

This is an outstanding example of the reasons that no one should become a nurse and work with other women.

I've been trying to find out CEO salaries and havn't had any luck. Maybe someone's got inside info on web sites/financial listings?

Or even a laptop? Amazing... Anyone heard of/work at the hospitals that use Palm devices to carry patient info? MD's can walk through the front door and recieve/beam patient info on the way in. Labs, etc. We am behin' da' times, ya'll.

Sometimes I'll let her out and give her extra food if the seams are straight.

In an emergency... You've got to know what's going where. Ya' can't dump high dose K riders through the right atrium. Nipride can get an unwanted "boost" if ran though the same line as a piggybacked or primary faster rate fluid. And look out when the other fluid is finished...the nipride will slow down. Sedation (diprivan) not working? Where do you look first? If you were told it's in the black port, go there. If the TPN is running into another port, both are white, and they may not be labeled. You need sedation in a hurry sometimes and TPN can wait. Line clogged? Where do you go next? Dump the TPN and save the BP. You got that stuff in report, or you should have. Is the patient "bleeding dopamine?" Is the line patent in an emergency? You want the pressors up by the neck so if CPR starts there will be less thrashing around of the extremity sites and you won't lose you line. Needless to say, you've got to label all of the lines just to speed things up when you add or subtract drugs. The order that the drugs are hooked up to a manifold can also screw with the titrations...you don't want a volatile, slowly infusing drug to enter the manifold LAST. Some of it's speed will be amplifide or reduced by the actions of the other fluids through the same line. Compatibilities aren't that much of an issue with central lines...indeed, sometimes you've just got to say screw it and test for whatever happens. The actual dwell time of the solutions in the line before they hit tissue may not be a factor with larger bore access. And that stuff about nitroglycerin in it's own special tubing that prevents "leaching" is pretty much ignored in my shrine. We use the same tubing for everything. Also...dated an anesthesiologist...that was fun. Was always a stickler for what was going where. In an emergency, you've GOT to know. And after you know, you can goof off.

Two things... I'm a pilot. In its early infancy, the use of cellphones was kind of thought to have interference with radio communications and possibly navigation equipment. This has since proven to be untrue. Indeed, you can rent cellphone "inflight" if you wish to pay the high costs of connect time. The restricted the use of personal cell phones for reasons of 1.) being unsure of their effects, and 2.) Loss of income to the cellular providers on board the planes. Second thing... Microwave transmissions do generate disruptions in current flow to "some" devices. Early microwave ovens weren't as well shielded as the new models made today. Early cellphones enjoyed the same problems. Older heart pacemakers and older cellphones and older microwave ovens may not mix. But even then, you would have to lay on top of them with your pacemaker to have an effect on it. Most of us know that a simple magnet placed on top of an implantable pacemaker will turn it off or into override. A magnet needs to be placed in direct contact with the pacemaker. A microwave generates magnetic fields, hence the confusion. But things have changed. You drive a car to work, not a horse. You can use a cellphone on an airplane or in the OR. We all do it. Take the signs down. Use your cellphones. One last thing...a nurse should always know which drugs are going through which line/port/site, etc. Someone above wanted to know why... Someday they may find out the hard way...

In ER/ICU: Tape it or lose it. Anesthesia or paramedics never gets "dinged" for it, so why should you? Got "drips" running on a step down unit?: Tape it or lose it. Elsewhere, consider the access ability and long-term need, patient agitation, safety of not having a line, and make your choice to use tegaderm only, which, truthfully, is probably the "cleanest" way to go. Just not always the "smartest."

Yeah. Energy fields are screwed up. Let's make up a new "Nursing" diagnosis for that one. We'll never get any respect if this gets out. "Yeah, uh, Doctor Smith? The reason I'm calling you is because Larry Wilson's not, how can I put this, feeling too "aligned" this morning. Yeah, it seems that his E-fields have been skewed somewhat." "What's that? Can you repeat that order? Do what with the cattle prod?" Any more treatment options for screwed up energy fields? Talk radio, maybe? Chiropractic? Sympathetic equally screwed-up nursing personel? Ok. The door has been opened. Go ahead everyone. Kill me with your logic...before my "field" dies out and I give up on life. Life. Don't talk to me about life.

Kelman: My feelings, exactly. My younger brother (without the degree) is simply doing computer "help-desk" and troubleshooting type stuff for a major communications company in California. I say “simply” because I don’t feel he knows the difference between his real work stress and physical exhaustion, compared to mine. He can basically live and work wherever he wants. His company will help him move. His income has greatly surpassed mine, and the "risks" in his profession are minimal. He's never been spit upon or physically abused for his income. He doesn’t need malpractice insurance to keep his house and personal possessions. He's never had to run to the ER for emergency treatment for possibly acquiring a contagious disease. But yes, he hates his job right now. Although his company paid for his relocation back to a desirable southern California location, he has had enough and wants to return to the Midwest. What he needs is balance. He needs to know the difference. He needs to suction blood from a GI bleed with an "aiding and abetting" family member hovering over you, screaming that you "are hurting him!" He needs to have gang members come back to him after failing to save another gang member whom, through choice of lifestyles, received street retribution for flashing a gang sign. He needs to weigh his $64,000 a year, supposedly high stress job against my "professional career" income of $48,000 with overtime/multiple shift work. He can depend upon continuing wage increases and profit sharing as he goes through life. I can faithfully depend upon forty-eight to fifty-two thousand a year until retirement. They will always need nurses. And we all know why. And ya' know what the crazy thing is? I really feel that the people in ICU/CCU/Intensive care units have it WAY EASIER than the step-down, transition units. At least there is some semblance of necessity when it comes to staffing. Yeah, it's more intense. Yeah, the risks are higher for your permanent loss of income and law suits from quick decision pressures. But at least I'm only trying to satisfy one or two critical situations instead of a myriad of people pissed off about the lack of care you are providing their loved ones. And in ICU I can kick em' out when they get in the way. Sometimes the hospital will back me up. Rarely though. Nope. I haven't gotten someone "back on-line" so they could meet a deadline to send an email. Didn't get a mouse to work, or a printer to print. Didn't get $30.00 an hour and better health-care benefits and vacation leave. But I've seen coworkers share the excitement of having their blood tested to see if they’d sero-convert. I've helped them scrub out bite-marks on their arms, and wash saliva from their eyes. I've consoled them, crying in the parking lot, worn-out and frustrated to tears. Tears induced by patients, families, managers, "all-knowing" physicians, and upset husbands because they will be late home...again. As for me, the unholy name of "deathnurse" still strikes an unnerving cord in the spines of the unknowing. Yes, I've quasi-legally helped people to die. We’ve all done it and do it by the book. I've also unmercifully kept them alive. I'm very good at that. I've received change of shift report that was simply "He's dead," and I continued our high-priced, keep them in the unit maintenance while playing cut-rate psychologist to appease someone’s mixed emotions. I'm good at that too. Try as I may, I attempt to not compare my life to those of others that I feel are more fortunate financially. They have the larger homes in the finer areas, the more reliable, dependable cars and health-care programs. They have an easier time planning for their family’s futures. Yeah, everyone has stress. Everyone gets yelled at for not doing something on time or more efficiently. Everyone makes decisions, some more appropriate than others. And everyone has rewards. It's just too damned bad that the feelings you get from converting someone’s heart-rate, stopping their bleeding, or buying them more time for more invasive abuse just don't add up to much more than that--feelings. A good MD may get more out of it, but not a nurse. They will drive the older car and live in the higher-crime neighborhoods. Nursing has done me a favor, however. Damn it, I can do ANYTHING. I have the confidence and the in-your-face determination to yell at anyone that yells at me. If an MD that has done a procedure over and over for 20 years can’t, for one damn moment, understand that someone else may find that procedure strange and challenging, I can tell them off. And I can apologize when I’ve let something slip. And I and every nurse can always blame the system for failures. The system is set-up for that. But I will NEVER take the blame for lack of consideration of a patient’s acuity. If the hospitals want people to have better care, you buy more nurses, not more carpeting. You pay higher salaries, not build higher, empty buildings. You continue to reward longevity, experience, and knowledge, not let it stagnate. But fix someone’s mouse, or re-boot his or her locked-up computer. They’ll respect that and marvel at your expertise. They’ll reward you with a good income. And you won’t have to get yearly injections for TB tests, wash the feces from your shoes and be followed out the door by family members wondering why you let one die. Fixing “things” pays better money than fixing people. While fixing people may pay better in “feelings,” ‘dat don’t pay da’ rent. We have no nursing shortage. We have a shortage of nurses willing to work in these conditions. Enough already with these “be a nurse to help people” stories. If you really want to help patients and yourself in the long run, fight for more. Get in someone’s face.