jsepark119

These are really good questions! As you mentioned, the answers you get are going to vary widely, depending on personalities and context. As for myself, I've been working outpatient oncology for 2 years (full time, 9-5, weekdays) , worked inpatient ~2 years (8 hour shifts, .7, night for ~8-9 months, evenings ~ 1+ year). 1. Stress level wise, I think there's always going to be something at least slightly stressful during the day, but I generally am able to leave most of the stress at work. It helps to have supportive coworkers. 2. Currently married with no kids. I work during the day, but my husband works from 2-10 pm. So we don't get to see each other much during the week. I would say we are doing alright and generally healthy. It has required some work for us to communicate and be intentional about how we spend time together. So not so much a problem because of my job so much as a we-gotta-figure-it-out-cuz-we're-married-and-stuff issue. But so far, I don't think our relationship has suffered because of my career choice. If anything, the experiences I've had over the past few years have helped me to be more patient and understanding (although yes, there are a few times here and there that work may have made me crabby xD). One thing I've learned as a nurse is that you never know how much time you have left, which helps to keep the negativity down and the level of affection up. I don't know if this is true for everyone else, but it has been for me. 3. Mood wise, I'm usually not moody or unhappy going home, if that's any help. I just get on with the rest of my day. 4. I get out a lot during the weekday after work, staying out reasonably late so I can get to work sane the next day. I will say, while I was working inpatient, it was very different. I came home stressed at least a few times a week, worked odd hours so didn't have much of a social life, was pretty anxious, and had trouble sleeping. I didn't go out much, but I'm an introvert so that might have been more self-imposed (trying to be more social nowadays!). I accepted that as a "first year" sort of thing, but will admit, pretty happy to be in my current position, working with the patients I do now. :) Hope this was helpful!

One of our patients would continuously yell "BILL!!" for hours and hours until we gave her Ativan, at which point she would stop. As a result, whenever we had a patient who had trouble calming down, the nurses would be looking for Bill. :)

Sometimes being a nurse will suck, and it will suck a lot. You will doubt everything, including yourself, hurt all over, be afraid, be angry, be frustrated, and ask yourself why you decided to do this. Even in those moments, you are what you choose to be.

The one I remember best is when you're changing the spike on tubing from one bag to another and forget to take the first bag off the IV pole, spilling 500 cc's of saline all over the floor, yourself, the (very alert and oriented) patient, and the patient's bed while you desperately try to figure out whether your should spike the next bag or take off the first bag clumsily with the spike/line in hand, or just drop everything and cry. Then your preceptor, as she tries not to laugh at you, tells you, as punishment, to remake the patient's bed, then leaves the room and proceeds to tell the other nurses what just happened. Totally happened to me on my last semester of nursing school... lols

I actually wasn't sure where to put this post, and I'm not sure how many people would be able to comment, since this is a bit of an odd situations, but hey, I'm a noob-nurse, and I can use all the help I can get. :). I've been working on an Oncology/Medical-Surgical/Telemetry floor for over a year now. Our hospital system isn't doing so well financially, sad to say. In the last few months, the administrator decided to merge Pediatrics onto our floor, since we average 1 pediatric patient/day, and there just isn't enough pediatric volume to justify an entire floor for pediatrics. So now we have kids on the floor. Other than a personal fear of small children unrelated to treating pediatric patients (har-har), it's been an odd transition and it's only been a few weeks. Our floor is just not very kid friendly, but we don't have the room or resources to make it environmentally more welcoming for the kids. We're having one of the old storage rooms be turned into a play room, but it's relatively small. I wanted to ask of all you veteran peds nurses, how would you go about using this kind of situation to make sure we can provide the best nursing care possible for these new patients? if you've had a merge like this before, I'd appreciate the advice. We get almost every kind of patient on our floor, but we do focus on oncology, and most hospice patients in the hospital are also sent here. Would you organize the floor a certain way? We've already grouped together the "peds" rooms, although these might also be used for another kind of patient as well. A few of the ideas we've had are making craft boxes or toy boxes for each kid who comes in, maybe donated by staff or even by people outside the hospital (crayons, markers, coloring books, stickers, etc.). We already have the small playroom idea going. Should we do something for the parents? Looking forward to the comments. :)