DaniV.

Back in my good old days of being a midnight charge (of the WHOLE building), I had a sweet confused lady who insisted she wanted CPR. Attempted to explain multiple times that if she can ASK for CPR, she does not need it. She ended up finding her cell phone and calling 911, so they could give her CPR... fun times on midnight shift!

Care plan throwing pillows at staff PRN....

I am still haunted by my first code. The patient had been a young guy, in his mid-40s. He had been a paraplegic who had started on the unit with vent, trach, urostomy, iliostomy, and wound vac. He had been one of my patients for months, and during his stay, his wound healed, he was weaned off the vent, decannulated, and scheduled for discharge in 3 days. He had always been very motivated to go home, so right after he was decannulated, he had asked for his PRO breathing tx every 6 hours ATC until we got him to understand that they were for when he had difficulty breathing and not just because the clock told him he could have one. He also got to know the pattern of people's walk to the point that he could call out your name while facing the window. But he was not on heparin, lovenox, aspirin, or coumadin.... On his last day, he was a pain. He was anxious, up all night, and despite knowing he has to wait at least 5 hours between breathing tx, he was asking for one almost as soon as you took the mask off. Finally, at 6am, he asked for another Xanax to help him sleep. At 7am report, I was whispering to the oncoming nurse what he was like all night, and she peeked into his room and saw he was Grey and not breathing. Being a nursing home, we didn't have a code team and it was up to us to call 911, do compressions, with the RT to bag him. No emergency meds available for us to use... He died in the hospital after throwing several more PEs, and it still haunts me that I didn't catch that he was bed bound and not on blood thinners or the s/sx of him throwing a PE. I had only been a nurse for 5 months...

I am still a relatively new nurse (13 months on the floor), and still stay perky. Sometimes overly so, especially after the massive amounts of caffeine kicks in... Mostly, not only am I happy to actually be working, but I am happy to feel like "I got this" is true. :)

Take the time to double check your meds....The speed will come... ASK QUESTIONS. I can't read your mind if I am working with you, and trust me, I would rather explain it to you and have you understand than have to constantly clean up your messes after you leave. Google is your friend. Just make sure it is a real medicine site... Breathe. You got this....you just are too scared to know it yet. Leave your home problems at home and the work problems at work...you will be much happier this way. Learn to smile and be friendly...no matter the smell, pus, screams....just take the time to think about how what and HOW you say something, look at something, or hold something might make a patient feel. They don't want to know that you are scared or grossed out....they just want to know that you have their backs.

Samsung added the wonderful block mechanism to their phones that you can only receive calls from selected phone numbers for the times that you choose...All others go straight to voice mail... At my old job - that was my best friend when I wasn't at work. That job, however, was infamous for making people get mandated for OT if you were there...and only the unionize CNAs had any rules about being able to refuse.

I bought a brand new motorcycle and shoes... $300 nursing clogs that I had been staring at my whole time in nursing school (while wearing hideous pure white nursing shoes). Oh, and the hot pink scrubs that I brought...to replace the pile of white scrubs that I "accidentally" threw in a bonfire.

One of my first patients after I got my license was a nurse. She hadn't told people because she figured they would stop taking care of her. She had seen me fumble through my first ever PEG administration on the other patient, and my shaking hands when it came time to change her colostomy wafer (another task that I had only done on a mannikin) and walked me through the steps. She also told me stories about when she was a newbie, and helped give me confidence in myself. I, however, am the type of patient that will sit on the step of the ambulance that someone else called after a motorcycle accident and do my own wound care and apologize that they wasted their time coming out....

I actually had a patient on the LTC wing of my building call 911 and tell them she needed CPR. When I was charge nurse for the whole building.... That was fun times to explain to both the cops who had to show up and the DON when she arrived the next morning.