Typhoid Mary

I work in Boston, perm nocs. 45./h base, plus shift diff. I work on a very busy heme/onc floor. I am a graduate of an ADN program, with several classes done toward BSN. Yes, I'd do it again. I honestly can't imaging doing anything else.

Thought of another- "withdraw care". This one actually makes me cringe. I get a mental image of a bunch of doctors and nurses walking away from a patient in a bed when I hear this. Needs to be changed to something that dosent sound as if we are washing our hands of the patient.

I'd like to add "habitual aborter", which I saw written in my own medical chart after having three miscarriages. I appreciate that the term "aborter" does not medically mean what it sounds as if it does...but gee whiz, as if I didn't already feel bad enough. I would never use this term when describing a woman who had lost pregnancies. Also, I work in ONC, and our docs will refer to patients having "failed the protocol", This means that the patient had disease progession during chemotherapy. To me, it always sounds as if they think that the patient just didn't try hard enough. Again, would never use this term.

Hi! I am an RN with 8 years at my present job on an oncology floor in a teaching hospital. The last two years a great deal has changed here. My favorite Docs are gone, so our onc census is down and we are being forced to take med/surg overflow from the rest of the hospital. Often, we have just as many med/surg patients as we do onc...sometimes more. This bothers me for many reasons but chiefly 1. I fear that we are exposing our neutropenic patients to heaven knows what, and 2. I don't mean to sound like a snob but if I had wanted to work med/surg then I would have applied to the med/surg floor. I am starting to resent the lack of support and working environment. I am starting to hate driving in here. However, I work with a GREAT group of people, good friends really, I have plenty of seniority, and I have a great schedule that fits well with my family and outside life. So, I am wondering- how do you know when it is time to leave a job? What were your considerations when deciding if it was time to move on? Would any of you be willing to share with me your thoughts before you changed jobs? What did you feel was most important? Thanks everyone, I appreciate your help with this!

Hi, I work on an oncology unit where we nearly always have "one of those" family memebers around...over the years, I have learned to chaulk this up to the fact that families are feeling anxious, helpless- and sometimes resentful...I say resentful because I imagine that it is difficult for some of them to watch us take care of thier loved one- providing comfort with nausea and pain meds and so on...when they are likely wishing that they themselves were able to do something that provided that same level of relief and comfort. Does that make sense? I don't mean to suggest that a family member being verbally abusive to an nurse is ever acceptable, but I don't take it personally and I try to remember that we are not seeing these people at thier best, and that goes for the patients as well. Of course, some people are just down right obnoxious no matter where they are or what is happening around them. We had someone on our floor recently for whom we had to work in pairs...that is, a nurse never entered the room alone, as we found that he was a little intimidated by the presence of a third person and tended not to run his mouth as much as he would when there were no witnesses. As far as the physical abuse of a nurse...I have no experience with this personally, but I know of a situation in my hospital where a nurse was punched by a patient...a patient with a known history of physically and verbally abusing care givers. Well, she called the police and pressed charges, and from what I hear- this is not going over well with hospital management at all...not sure yet how this will turn out. I don't kow that we have any type of services in place for a nurse who feels as though she needs support after an incident with a patient or family member- I will have to look into that.