miya

oh yeah!! I forgot about that one too! I was thinking . . .that nurse looked up in years, so to speak, chances are her "character" was probably a nurse before that kid even decided to go to college! When you see nurses protrayed like that, why in the world would anyone want to be a nurse. It looks like an awful job to have, u know? It seems like they would've already had a show about nurses - you'd think it would provide great drama for a TV show . . .

Oh my god! I haven't posted in a long time, but I just had to post again. I'm watching the premier of Grey's Anatomy -- any of you see this?? (new show on ABC) The Doctor, after being questioned by a nurse says, "I'm just a resident, but you take 4 years of medical school, and let me know if I'm right." (Did I quote it right?) Then, as he walks away he says, "I hate nurses." Then, he walks up to a female resident and mistakenly calls her a nurse and she responds, with anger and indignation, "Did you just call me a nurse?" As though it were a racial slur! I mean, nurses have historically been marginalized in many mass media outlets, but this is amazing!!

I was reading last night about some hospital, somewhere in which the administration was trying to pass a cost-cutting rule where the nurses would be required to clean the rooms after each patient in order to enable the administration to cut down on their housekeeping staff and therefore save money. One doctor fought it, saying that if the administrators had any idea what the nurses had to do each shift, they would so just how impractical that idea was.

u missed something. nevermind.

are you serious??? man . . . really?

Yeah, I figure it this way: For one, every single job in the world has parts of it one will absolutely hate - whether it's a typical piece of paperwork, one specific responsibility, whatever. That's a given. And , no one goes into nursing (well, save for a few odd birds) thinking, "gee, I'd love a career doing digital disimpactions and enemas. . . what career offers me that opportunity?" I have volunteered in hospitals before - all through high school, actually, in L&D and in ER. I've been around it before. Seen some things. It freaked me out a bit, grossed me out a bit . . . but I still want to go into nursing.

Sorry I used the words duty and task. Semantics. Trying to ask a specific and concise question. Thanks for the responses.

I was at my public library and found a Fundamentals of Nursing textbook. I sat down and flipped through it and I was thinking, "I could really do this . . . I can really see myself doing this with pride." But I'm still a little concerned about adjusting to the less-than-glamorous duties. I get a bit uncomfortable when I read about, for example, digital manipulation of an impacted stool. Or looking at some of the skin ulcers made my stomach churn a little bit. How did you all adjust to these type of tasks? I'm sure some of you weren't at all affected by it, but what about those of you who were a bit more squeamish? How was the adjustment process? ~Miya~

was just wondering why you didn't think it qualified as a novel . . . Main Entry: 2novel Function: noun Etymology: Italian novella 1 : an invented prose narrative that is usually long and complex and deals especially with human experience through a usually connected sequence of events

Then what is it?

Um, I'm not a nursing student . . .

Malik is an LPN??? I had no idea.

Have any of you considered working in another area of the medical field - whether you worked there prior to nursing, plan to work there after nursing, considered it as an alternative to nursing, etc.? I'm still making my final decision to pursue a nursing program. I'm 100% sure I want to be in healthcare. I'm about 97% sure the path will be nursing. But I still have my doubts . . . Thoughts? Comments?

In the book Nurse by Peggy Anderson the author talks about slowly killing off patients. She wrote about how they would give them high levels of pain medication in frequent intervals. By the time they give the next dose, the previous dose hadn't totally gone out of the system and the dose would build up over time and, I think she called it, "whiting out", I think, or something like that. A lot of people say this book is a pretty accurate (albeit dated) account of nursing. I'm not a nurse yet, so I have no idea!

Has anybody else read this book? I'm just about to finish it. It's amazing to me, how different hospitals used to be only 25 years ago. The patients would smoke in their rooms (thank god that is over with!), and the doctors would blatantly harass (sexually at times!) the nurses, and the nurses still viewed themselves as mere handmaidens to the doctors (not the nurse narrating the story, the nurses she described). Very interesting. Does any of that book still ring true? Do the duties and the responsibilities appear to be accurate?