RNforLongTime

Thank you OP for this heartfelt message of appreciation. I've been an RN for 20 years. I can count the number of times I've been thanked by a patient and their families in my career on ONE hand. Most patients/Families, don't think they need to say please and thank you because it's our job to wait on them hand and foot and give in to their every desire. Thanks to those Press-Ganey surveys and HCAHPS scores, we now basically have to bend over backwards to accommodate the patient/family EVERY time! No matter how short-staffed we are, no matter that we haven't eaten ALL DAY! No matter that our bladder is ready to explode. Hold on...I'll be right back with that glass of ice for you.....but I digress. It is usually a joy to care for patients...some days are better than others., that's for sure! We nurses ARE human after-all. I hope you are healing well OP! Prayers for you!

I had cancer too! At age 39, I started peeing blood one night at work������������������Drank a LOT of cranberry juice as my coworker assured me it was just a UTI. Erm no I had A tumor on my kidney the size of a baseball! 90% of kidney tumors are cancerous's and that was the case with me. It was stage one be clear cell renal carcinoma only stayed GB because it was bigger than 6 cm in diameter it was actually 7 cm. I thought I'd end up getting breast cancer with me before I ever expected kidney cancer! Mine came out of the blue. Everything was fine and then one made it work in the middle of my shift at 3 AM I started peen blood with clots bright red blood. No pain at all so I pretty much thought that it wasn't the urinary tract infection. During shift report I had to go to the bathroom and having drank about 300 ounces of fluid Took a specimen cup with me because at that point I made up my mind I was going to go get checked out in the ER as I knew and respected the doctor on duty. After IVs and a CAT scan this doctors sat down on his stool put his hands on top of mine and said you have a 7 cm tumor on your right kidney. Unlike other cancers kidney cancer doesn't respond the same to chemo and radiation so I was blessed that this was discovered as soon as it was and I did not require chemo or radiation...that was April 2012. I had my kidney removed on April 26, 2012 April 26 is my son's birthday������������������

Oh..you definitely did the right thing here. It brought me to tears...these kinds of lies are ok. HUGS OP! You're a great nurse :)

You couldn't PAY me enough money to be a Psych nurse! No thank you! Trust me being in an ICU of a small community hospital that has TWO FLOORS of psych pt's I see my fair share of them and I KNOW I don't have the patience for them on a regular basis. So hats off to all the psych nurses out there as I know I could never be one.

You need to remember to properly sign out your narcotics AS YOU USE THEM!! THIS IS WHY THE COUNT IS OFF!! YET IF YOU were the oncoming shift and the narc count was short you would AND HAVE had a fit!!!

How about you shut your yapper and listen to what the KIDNEY SPECIALIST is telling you rather than try to argue with him. HE is the one who went to medical school and completed a fellowship while you barely finished high school. So please, open your ears and shut your mouth and LISTEN TO WHAT THE DOCTOR IS TELLING YOU!!

I LOVE mani/pedi's! Love massages. I get a pedi every two weeks in the summertime.

In PA, you would be considered a GN(graduate Nurse) and that's how you'd sign your name...wouldn't be allowed to give IVP meds untill you've passed NCLEX.

Well, I'll let you know after the next time we have one in our unit. It's been almost two years!!! The DON/unit leader is 'too busy' to have regular staff meetings with us here in ICU.

This is how I feel as well on most days. When I follow certain RN's on my floor, I KNOW I'm going to spend over half of my shift 'cleaning up' after that person. It's not being petty, it's expecting them to do the JOB that they are paid to do. The exact same job that I'm paid to do. When you sign off an order, it means you've made sure that the order was carried out(labs entered into the computer, consults called to the appropriate Dr, etc). The same person is notorious for signing off orders and not entering them into the computer system. The person has had this pointed out to him numerous times and cops an attitude when told. SO from now on, he gets written up. I've tried to play nice with him and he's been less than receptive to constructive criticism. I'm well aware that you don't have a secretary to answer the phones and put the orders in, or an aide to run the pt to OR or radiology on day shift. Guess what? We don't have that on night shift either. Nor do we have a respiratory therapist or a housekeeper or dietary staff!!! So, I gotta do all that in addition to my regular RN responsibilities. I know things will not change where I am currently employed but since I HAVE to work to support my family, I put up with it. As do my coworkers. Until they get fed up enough to move on but I don't have that option since I've been blackballed by a previous nurse manager with an axe to grind against me from the remaining hospitals in my small town. Sad but true. I take good care of my patients, they tell me this regularly. I'm also a team player. I just get irritated with certain coworkers who don't care about their nursing practice.

I think anybody going into school for LPN or RN should be required to be a CNA first. I was a CNA my final year of nursing school and I think it really helped me develop time management skills because I knew I had so much time to do certain tasks(AM care, baths/showers, toiletiing) before lunch and then so much time to toilet and put the residents to bed for a nap afterwards. With 14-16 residents who require total care, you learn time management real quick. I also learned that certain LPNs would NOT help you with transfers no matter what...they all had a 'bad back". Since becoming an RN, I've worked with CNA's who have told me that they enjoyed working with me because I'm one of the few RN's who will get up and go answer a call bell rather than expecting the aide to do it as the other RN's on the floor would do. I know in my area, there are several nursing homes who will provide CNA training so long as you agree to work for them for a certain time period. I think becoming a CNA is a good stepping stone to a nursing career because just because you are an LPN or RN doesn't make you above wiping butts, answering bells or any other task a CNA typically performs in caring for patients/residents. It'll give you a small taste for what you'll be doing later on in your career.

Don't tell me that I complain all the time because we work with lazy RN's. You're the new kid on the block here. Just wait, you'll see what I mean. You say my negativity is bringing you down? You'd be negative too if you had to deal with the same RN's being lazy and not doing their work with no one to hold them accountable.(The DON is techincally our nurse manager but she is so busy with her DON duties that the day to day issues that occur on a hospital unit go left unchecked by her--we are like a ship without a captain so to speak but that's a whole nother vent) Just you wait my friend till you've been here a few more months, you'll see....you'll see, I promise you that much.

Please clean up after yourself. If you drop it, pick it up. If you spill it, wipe it up. If you use it, put it away! I came back to work tonight after having 4 nights off and had our supply room all nice and neat and tonight it looks like a tornado went through it!! AND we're missing another set of EKG cables AGAIN!!!

Hey, I have to do that where I work as housekeeping leaves at 10pm! We had two patient transfers out of my unit at 11pm making those our only empty beds. I cleaned one of them so there would be a clean room in case of an admission. I'm leaving the other one for housekeeping to do in the am because it should be terminally cleaned as the pt was in the room for almost a month. Yep, I do it ALL where I work

At MY hospital the Dr's(usually DO's) would rather NOT take the elevator up to ICU on the 2nd floor. Why? I dunno. Laziness. As for the guy with garden hoses for veins...we don't have a cath lab in house for emergencies so if a pt does have to have a cath, they get shipped to the Heart Center down the street. My ER doesn't do anything in triage other than take a quick history and a set of vitals...any procedure, like putting in an IV gets done if needed when the pt is brought back to a bed for further work-up. All I'm saying is that if a patient has decent veins as stated in my example, the AC shouldn't be the FIRST place to insert an IV, from what I was taught.