mari31666

i started at 31 an hr plus night differential. we get for experience also. we have to pay co payments for our insurance and pay for parking. we have no food options on the night shift and are lucky if we can find left over milk for our coffee. i have to say that i appreciate being paid well, however it is never enough. ny is very expensive to live in and at our facility most of the patients get government medical coverage. sometimes i ask myself why i bust my butt for a meager existence. i pay out over 1/3 of my pay in taxes. my kids have to do without a lot of things so our patients can get quality free medical coverage.

i thought i only heard those kind of things in new york

:trout: How about: Never bring your new "baby mama" to your old "baby mama's" delivery. or your two pregnant girlfriends to the same labor and delivery unit on the same night at the same time. also don't eat a whole pizza at 3 am and then come to labor and delivery with vomitting. not much sympathy will be given. especially if you continued to eat after vomitting.

we do circulate and scrub for c/s, d&c, d&e and cerclage removals. we all do recovery room also. we are required to have BCLS. the circulator also does baby care, but peds is always at every c/s (circulator must page them at the start of c/s). Anesthesia must be present in OR and is on the unit or the anesthesia on call room 24/7. they must respond to all codes. they have to be available at all times and we page them prn. almost all our patients get epidural so they are responsible for the patient as well as the nurse and the residents. even for private patients, everyone responds to the emergencies and near misses. it's team work. all of us are overworked and over burdened but we seem to get thru it.

we get scrub and circulate orientation when sign on. did two weeks just scrubbing. the nurse educator who worked for many years on l & d did mine. talk about hell. my facility has 3 ors on labor and delivery and we better well damn know how to scrub in an emergency and the tech is off or on vacation or even on break.

i forgot translator. i'm in brooklyn ny. we got them all.

we circulate, scrub and do newborn care. as well as do all the ward clerk duties, do our own peri care and transfer our patients (cuz it's easier than hearing the techs tut and whine because you ask) and stock the rooms on the rare night that it's not crazy busy. not to mention how we have to baby the husbands/fathers/over bearing mommy of the expectant mothers. and have to keep a straight face when we see a male who is either the laboring woman's father/brother/inlaw/cousin and sometimes teenage son staring into the lady parts during birth. it's definitely strange. gotta love it.

the other day i was assigned to recovery in labor and delivery so i got a repeat c/s that came in contracting. it seems to be that each time i get my hair done i end up circulating in the OR. so i whined a bit. after the 8 hr wait time since patient ate 2 mins before walking into triage, i take her to the OR and she gets a spinal. i lay her down and begin to prep her belly. by the time i got to the second sponge she sat up a bit and proceeded to vomit :barf01: fish, rice and carrots, some went right into my left eye. yech! i let one of the docs know but i had to keep prepping and keep going until baby was out before i could contact someone at the front to come relieve me. all the time trying to remember her hep status. it was definitely nasty. and i had to go to the ER to get irrigation, talk about my hair getting messed.

in labor and delivery we see a lot of blood, body fluids and poop. i deal with it. i just hate counting the bloody laps from a c/section in the O/R when you circulate. and scrub in on a section gives me nightmares. could be that i had to scrub for 10 days on orientation, and hated it every time. although i must say that i hate fetal demises and i saw one d&e to date. that was the absolute worst.

i just want to let you know that where i work we don't have policies about such things. usaully the parents hold their baby past the point of death. the other night i was covering another nurses pt. the couple did not want to see the baby at all. 17 wks multiple genetic anomalies. baby was born alive with heart beating and it beat for several hours. the nurse asked me about paper work and i then learned that it was still alive and she placed it in the dirty utility room. i was horrified. her reply to me when i asked who was with it was "what do you want me to do? hold it?" i went back and saw it and held it and talked to it (sex undetermined) prayed something and i rested it back comfortably to check on my own two patients in triage. when i came back, the poor sould had passed. needless to say i was sickened and disgusted by this nurse, whom i never really had a great liking of to begin with. and she is senior and i'm only new nurse of 1 yr, and hear all the comments of how i will learn and change. everyone pray that i never lose this sensitivity. otherwise i will have to have someone tell me it's time to move on when i do.

someone i know called me up and told me she had a tampon stuck up there and wanted my opinion of what to do (i work l&d) i stopped laughing after about 5 mins and asked her since when was it there and she told me 3 or 4 days. she kept trying to get it out cuz she was too embarassed to go to the er. i told her to get there quick. they removed it and she was mortified and on abx. but she will live lol. and forever use pads!!! a co-worker of mine who is an rn also in ob said she got one with a plastic applicator stuck up there. luckily she got her husband to remove it. we all peed our pants when she showed us the position. she sure is flexible lol

when i was a student (but also an lpn) my partner (also an lpn) got this 85 yr old female from a nursing home. we had to give her bed bath. she had so much skin and dirt and scaly silver crud in her ears there was no more opening. and every time we touched her or moved the linens chunks of skin would just fall off all over. it was the worst. my partner did dialysis and er and was wretching for an hour after. when i got home i stood in the hallway and stripped down to undies put everything in a bag and washed 5x in hot water. and i live in a big building in nyc and couldn't have cared less. (imagine the neighbors horror) i still have no idea what the heck she had. i thought leprosy but knowing nursing homes we figured it could have been that she hadnt been bathed in yrs. :chair: yuck

this one is really nasty. i got a full term fetal demise. diabetic mom non compliant go go dancer, who was given so much education on her one and only visit her chart looked like a book. she never went back for prenatal care. she came in cuz she didn't feel baby move in a while. she was 42 wks by dates. baby died in utero probably at 37 weeks. when doc ruptured her fetal hair and something round came out. it was an eye. cripes neither one of us could stand the stench of the amniotic fluid which was mud colored. we both prayed to not have to deliver her, to no avail. baby was out in about 3 hrs and when you touched it the skin just fell off on my gloves. it was like jello. nasty nasty the poor baby's face remains forever etched in my mind and the wretching feeling still comes when i think of it. worst of all is parents wanted to sue us cuz they felt we killed their baby. worst picture you could ever imagine.

i have always thought this to be an urban legend it's just too horrible. i had a young pt with a breech fetal demise 30 something weeks. the aunt terrified her by telling her about having a breech delivery and the head being decapitated and removed by c/s. needless to say the girl refused to deliver lady partslly. 15 yrs old c/s and all this to deliver a dead baby. talk about traumatized.

can't tell you how many times in 1 yr i have been baptized by amniotic fluid and a few times meconium. this is the main reason i dont wear my own scrubs. i usually tell them how i like them but don't need to know them that personally. they will usually laugh. one time though we had a med student and she got amnio fluid in her shoe and freaked and left the attending to finish the entire delivery and came back 1/2 hr later smelling like alcohol and and antibacterial gel. the attending who got the fluid in her eye despite the plastic shield never batted an eyelash and i had it all over my arms, neck and chin not to mention my scrubs. didn't phase us we just laughed at the med student and took bets on how long she wouldnt last. she never came back to l & d. and she was a surgical student. LOL :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

i'm sorry but that is just way to nasty even for the most seasoned nurse.

love hugs and kisses to all. this was the first night i've been off and was able to be awake. damn 12 hr shifts. lol thanks for all the laughs. may our shoes make us walk on clouds

i wonder why that always is? i work in l &d and we always have a crazy busy night. i also work in assisted living with mid-late stage alzheimers and they always seem to refuse meds/strip/wander/cry and act up on the full moon. i used to work for nypd and it was always a crazy night there too. lots of violence/drunkeness. which of course always leads to the er being insanity to the ultimate degree. we should do a study. cuz when we say gee it must be a full moon-it never fails-it is. :smackingf :smackingf :lol_hitti

you definitely can do a specialty without med surg experience as had been the rule in days past. i must admit it's difficult being new and doing specialty. and you do get a lot of "med surg" patients in labor and delivery. i've had several pts with blood transfusions, critical pts after a section, pre eclampsia is a critical area also. it's not just happy baby happy parents. the paper work kills you and you gotta be an octopus during and post delivery. it's a rough first yr but if it's what you really want i say go for it and don't get discouraged

i still cry. sometimes it helps the parents/family and sometimes just me or my co-worker, who is crying along side me

don't get me wrong, we have a bereavement process, box, pictures baptismal on request, we ask if they want to hold and we try to make the baby look as comfortable and baby like as we can. sometimes it is very hard to do this. we always try to comfort and support. sometimes though it isnt best to show all the details. we have volunteers who make hats and blankets that we overwrap the baby in (over hospital ones) that the parents may keep as something their baby wore. lets face it this thing really sucks so we go as far as we can to be there

HYSTERICAL!!!

it's tough no matter how you look at it. i've had 8 fetal demises in 1 yr since being hired (fair huh) i did see one 23 or so wk in the utility room that was not my patient. the tech and i were trying to help the rn and do post mortem but we saw the heart beating and it moved when we moved it. we immed went to the doc and told her and she told us not to confuse reflexes with life. but the heart was still beating. the tech and i just tried to touch it lovingly and said prayers silently and aloud and cried intermittently. when the baby passed we took it to the mother, who held it. the baby did have brain matter coming out of the back of the head and watching something suffer is difficult enough, imagine if it's something you loved and wanted in your life. the other rn later told us that she knew baby was alive but doc insisted no. guess she felt it was best to spare mommy of having to suffer along with her baby. in a hospital not 20 blocks from my hospital they have a level one nicu with babies 21 wks and up so i question whether its a case of resources being a reason we don't go to extreme measures or a case of doing the kinder thing for the long run.

you've been a nurse too long when you recognize yourself in at least half of these posts. thanks for the laughs. and i've only been an rn 1 yr lpn for 3 and i have to stop myself everytime i sign my kids homework page. happiness and may everyone have a great shift :)