Sunnyday2235

i work nights and would not allow a patient to be in pain all night without calling an md. i try to assess my patients and determine if the dr. should be called at the beginning of the shift, to avoid making calls after midnight. we have a rule that we must obtain approval from our charge nurse before calling the doctor. i don't agree with this as 90% of the time we are not allowed to call the doctors or anyone else at night. this leads to a major lack of communication between the night staff and mds, the charge nurses feel they can answer all of our questions; however they often do not have an answer or the correct answer. it is very frustrating and our day shift nurses do not understand.

what procedures does your organization have in place to prevent wrong site surgeries? i'm curious about the variation in protocols from hospital to hospital. thanks!

Thank you everyone for the much needed advice. We do have a floor manager who only works days. Our call in policy requires us to speak with a charge nurse. To clarify when I don't ask her questions, I just find a really good nurse on shift to ask.

When I applied to nursing school I was asked why I wanted to be a nurse instead of a doctor several times. Now that I've finished school everyone wants to know why I'm in general nursing rather than seeking out a specialty. I guess it is just human nature to expect people to want to do more without considering the finance, energy, time etc. Some people forget that there is more to life than work. And a person's goals may not be work oriented. Your goals may be spending time with your family and nurturing your children. Now that I'm older my goals are certainly different than they were 20 years ago, they are a lot less self centered.

There is a particular charge nurse on my floor that is just a real challenge to work with, I have had numerous problems with her in the past mainly with receiving misinformation. I'm a new grad and have learned to avoid asking her questions about anything because the answer if often incorrect. I called in sick recently and spoke with her, she was to notify the day shift nurse to take me off of the schedule the following night. Because I've had so many communication problems with her in the past, I decided to contact the day shift nurse the following morning to make sure the message was delivered. It was not. I find this to be a huge problem because if I hadn't called a second time, it would have appeared as though I was a no show/no call at work. Any recommendations on how to handle this situation? Do I speak with her about it or report this to our floor manager? Of course I will never report in to her again, now that I now she may or may not relay the message.