"I Narcanned Your Honor Student"

Nurses General Nursing

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I find is amusing...

macawake, MSN

2,141 Posts

This bumper sticker is on my clipboard at work :p If you don't get it or find it insulting/inappropriate, you are in for a world of hurt if you end up working as a nurse, especially in ER/ICU/Psych.

Why is it that you and some other posters seem to think that your own coping mechanisms are generalizable to everyone?

After more than two decades of policing and nursing I still find that T-shirt excruciatingly stooopid. I'm not offended by it, it just simply doesn't serve a purpose for me.

I'm also utterly convinced that if one wants to get the message across to society as a whole, that addiction can affect poeple regardless of socioeconomic class, there are more effective ways to spread that message.

If you are going to let a sticker hurt any of your ‘feelers', you are not only going to be poor at your job, but you will probably bottle a lot up and have some psych issues of your own down the road.

Again, people cope in different ways. While I agree that all new nurses will need to figure out a way to handle the stressors that this job throws our way, it's not one solution fits all.

Whatever stress I might experience at work, I get out of my system by going to the gym and by spending quality time with people I care about outside of work.

When you Narcan the exact same people every SHIFT!

I would think that fact only functions as a stressor if you haven't accepted the fact that you aren't going to change the world. I had arrived at that conclusion long before I started my nursing career. Once you accept that you can only do your job to the best of your ability and that the motivation to change has to come from the person battling addiction, the fact that both police stations and ERs have distinct revolving door qualities, no longer has the power to frustrate or upset you.

Wait until you work your first code and those working and standing around are laughing/talking about your weekend plans with other nurses/docs while you perform compressions.

I guess the places you work/ed are different from my own experiences. Where I work and have worked codes are normally not a time where people stand around in the same room laughing and joking, making weekend plans. There's plenty of talk and laughter at other times, but codes are in my experience run in a much more focused manner.

Honestly, saying that you hang around laughing and making weekend plans when you and coworkers are actively trying to save a life, to me sounds like you're trying to wear your jaded world-weariness like a badge of honor.

Just a general observation. The OP isn't a nurse yet. Why would anyone be upset at her for the whatever assumptions she might make or how she feels, when she doesn't yet have the benefit of nursing experience. She is drawing her conclusions and expressing her feelings based on the experience she has today. That's all any of us can ever really do. Look at her relatively short post and how it actually doesn't contain any accusation directed at any specific poster in this thread. Despite that her post has generated page after page of responses. Interesting phenomenon :)

About the honor student bumper stickers, I find those rather ridiculous too. But they don't bother me. If parents want to express their pride that way, I say let them. It has no effect whatsoever on my life. Since they don't bother me, it automatically follows that I don't have a reason to feel smug or reciprocally :sarcastic: superior when a honor student gets "narcanned".

anna7hanna

13 Posts

Did she tell nurses how they should feel about this? Or did she express how she feels about this?

I was just thinking the same thing...

anna7hanna

13 Posts

Excuse but to add to the comments about fiscal responsibility...

The money...do we include the elderly who falls 3 times a week at home and is helped by EMS, do we include the alcoholics that continually go to the ER and get hydrated weekly and go back out and do it again: there are so many examples.

I say that the addicts are chosen because people don't understand the disease/addiction and therefore think addicts are disposable. If we can send billions of dollars of aid money to countries and support sanctuary cities and have hundreds of thousands of people cheat the SSDI system or welfare fraud that is blatantly rampid here in America but than point a finger at addicts, what does that say about us.

Three strikes and you're out didn't work in the prison system and two srikes and you're out; allowing a person to die won't either. There are so many posts on this forum by nurses complaining they waste their talents on junkies that it's discouraging.

Congressman Picard doesn't believe the current theory of addiction as being a disease or why not apply this rule to all scenarios where we waste resources in healthcare? Why pick on the addict?

Congressman Picard of Ohio wants to send a message to the world that you don't come to Middleton, Ohio to overdose. That's right Congressman Picard; the addicted people overdosing are doing it on purpose (some maybe but I believe the majority aren't).

As a congrssman he has the power to introduce bills to have the drug companies selling narcan to reduce the price...instead let the people die from a disease/addiction? Chief Paul Loli of the Fire Department of Middleton says that 85% of the overdoeses in Middleton, Ohio are first time ODs, and that 15% are the repeat ODs.

Tennessee has passed a bill that will be the first state to allow any and all adults to free education at the community colleg level. Wow; many states will follow suite. How much is that costing the taxpayer who (in all llikely hood) already paid for their education and in all probability may have student loans. I say this to compare to the 2 strikes and we won't come because if this anti-treatment of addcits bill is allowed; other states will follow suite.

If it's all about the money than use your power in Congress to change the pricing of narcan. Oh, would the drug lobbyist object? How far in their pocket is this congressman? The smart thing to do would be to pass a bill to lower the cost of narcan sold to the EMS community.

Where does all the heroin and cocaine come from? Mexico, South America, Afghanistan...how does this all come into the United States? Primarily through Mexico via the Rio Grande River, by coast via boat, submarines, air planes, bribed officials at the border of the Mexico-America crossing, cossing over the multiple areas of the states that border Mexico, persons strapping it to themselves and basic smuggling in general. Some have a theory that the CIA and or the military of the U.S. are smuggleing heroin from Afghanistan. The Taliban banned opium years ago yet our troops protect the farmers who grow it. They say the military is trying to convert the Afghan farmers to grow other crops...ok :banghead:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwik_aPJwuvUAhVSxmMKHRY1CyAQFggrMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtoncitypaper.com%2Fcolumns%2Fstraight-dope%2Farticle%2F20836192%2Fwhy-dont-we-bomb-afghanistans-poppy-fields&usg=AFQjCNF_qXhz_h8HT60xdSR3wo07ZRdjEg

These addicts brains are changed by the drug; the drug tells them that at all costs, to get the drug. Now we're going to legalize premeditated murder against sick persons?

They said it when Obama introduced ACA (Obamacare). Death panels...here we go.

I've already got many more ideas for t-shirts slogans with this added to the mix.

I believe people have dificulty associating drug abusers as individuals inflicted with a disease like any other disease because it is unique in the aspect that it is a sickness that the individual has inflicted upon themselves whereas many other diseases are not. It is the difference between an individual getting hit by an unforeseen car and an individual walking out into oncoming traffic. I do understand and agree that drug addiction is an unfortunate disease however I can also see why many lack sympathy for habitual abusers. It is hard to see an individual who is both the antagonist and protagonists as just a victim.

C0SM0

103 Posts

I think it's hilarious! I'm getting on Amazon right now to buy one for myself! Thanks for leading me to it!

Specializes in Emergency Dept. Trauma. Pediatrics.
I didn't mean to imply that you didn't understand. I'm sorry if that is how you interpreted it. Also, I didn't say I agreed with the proposal. For all I know this politician is a despicable person and is hoping the problem will just go away when all the addicts die but he does bring to light a very real problem. Narcan is currently a cash cow for pharmaceutical companies and I doubt we'll see the price come down anytime soon. In the meantime small towns in America are struggling to foot the bill for the rapidly increasing and disproportionate numbers of ODs in their communities. And FTR the leadership in Middletown has strongly stated that they will continue to treat overdose patients. I really don't think this bill has much chance but if all the publicity helps these small towns come up with a solution then in the end something good will come of it.

Well at first I thought they can still maintain airway to get them to the hospital, but then I saw that some of these same yahoos proposed that EMS can stop responding period to any OD calls. Like I said though, I can deal with some people just being dumb, it was the amount of people in the healthcare field, EMT's Paramedics, Nurses showing support of this and the reason always being that addicts choose to be addicts and they are a drain on society and two strikes is more than reasonable.

I live in a city that has one of the highest OD rates per capita and it's a huge issue. But at the end of the day the answer is not to just let them die to "learn their lesson" (not your words just back to the arguments I saw)

I actually think it's going to get worse, my state anyway has really begun the crackdown on opiate prescriptions, which is needed; however now the people addicted to those scripts will switch to heroine.

Wuzzie

5,116 Posts

Well at first I thought they can still maintain airway to get them to the hospital, but then I saw that some of these same yahoos proposed that EMS can stop responding period to any OD calls. Like I said though, I can deal with some people just being dumb, it was the amount of people in the healthcare field, EMT's Paramedics, Nurses showing support of this and the reason always being that addicts choose to be addicts and they are a drain on society and two strikes is more than reasonable.

I live in a city that has one of the highest OD rates per capita and it's a huge issue. But at the end of the day the answer is not to just let them die to "learn their lesson" (not your words just back to the arguments I saw)

I actually think it's going to get worse, my state anyway has really begun the crackdown on opiate prescriptions, which is needed; however now the people addicted to those scripts will switch to heroine.

So, and I mean this with absolutely no intended snark, what do you propose the small towns should do when the money runs out? This is a real crisis now. There isn't time for legislation.

Specializes in New Grad 2020.

I am not a nurse but I think it's funny.

So what if someone is an honor student? Sometimes even the well to do have problems like that. I know a woman who is a Doctor. A medical Doctor who treats patients. Someone who makes more money than I am worth and you know what? She's a drunk and drug user. My family have nothing to do with that ****.

Specializes in Pre-hospital Critical Care.
Why is it that you and some other posters seem to think that your own coping mechanisms are generalizable to everyone?

After more than two decades of policing and nursing I still find that T-shirt excruciatingly stooopid. I'm not offended by it, it just simply doesn't serve a purpose for me.

I'm also utterly convinced that if one wants to get the message across to society as a whole, that addiction can affect poeple regardless of socioeconomic class, there are more effective ways to spread that message.

If you are going to let a sticker hurt any of your ‘feelers', you are not only going to be poor at your job, but you will probably bottle a lot up and have some psych issues of your own down the road.

Again, people cope in different ways. While I agree that all new nurses will need to figure out a way to handle the stressors that this job throws our way, it's not one solution fits all.

Whatever stress I might experience at work, I get out of my system by going to the gym and by spending quality time with people I care about outside of work.

I mean I am not saying that everyone can't cope differently. How you cope with this profession is not mine or any one else's business. OP said that this message "Deeply Disturbed" him/her, and its my observation/opinion that if a simple sticker deeply disturbs them then they better find a slew of coping mechanisms because the unjust, unfair horrors of nursing will make this look like nothing. How they cope is how they cope, I m just saying you need to learn how.

I would think that fact only functions as a stressor if you haven't accepted the fact that you aren't going to change the world. I had arrived at that conclusion long before I started my nursing career. Once you accept that you can only do your job to the best of your ability and that the motivation to change has to come from the person battling addiction, the fact that both police stations and ERs have distinct revolving door qualities, no longer has the power to frustrate or upset you.

I wouldn't call it a stressor, especially in my ER with 20+ overdoses a shift if not much more. I am very much used to and even find amusing our frequent fliers. Is it annoying?, sure, do I care or let it frustrate me, not even a little bit.

I guess the places you work/ed are different from my own experiences. Where I work and have worked codes are normally not a time where people stand around in the same room laughing and joking, making weekend plans. There's plenty of talk and laughter at other times, but codes are in my experience run in a much more focused manner.

Honestly, saying that you hang around laughing and making weekend plans when you and coworkers are actively trying to save a life, to me sounds like you're trying to wear your jaded world-weariness like a badge of honor.

I would assume our ERs are different. We have multiple codes a night, we had 6 last night in a 5 hour span, its not so much jadedness as just another job to do, in fact codes are one of the easiest interventions you can do as a trauma RN, the steps are so ingrained and practiced with us that its now second nature, especially with the traumatic arrests we get. And its close knit, and a teaching hospital, so there are many people always standing around, talking, asking questions, debating, stepping in, etc.

Gizmopup1

11 Posts

I can't help but think this is a big symptom right here - "No one gives a damn." This is why we are seeing honor students (and many other people) on drugs, why we have so much depression, and why we are breaking down as a community at large. Is it really such a bad/offensive thing to have something you are proud of displayed on your car bumper?

Niknnan

5 Posts

I am an RN, and my son was narcanned just over a year ago. After dying in the ambulance and a 6 day coma that resulted in brain damage, if anyone should take "offense" to this, I think I would qualify. Instead, I have to agree with the majority, dark humor is definitely a coping mechanism. Sorry, but even I laughed at this....

RNCowboy

2 Posts

If you're offended by that sticker then you're going to have a rough career as an RN. Thick skin and a sense of humor are necessities.

I've worked with people who share your high and mighty attitude...hope you like working alone. Nobody will want to be around you. Easily offended people suck in our profession.

Suppose youd know that if you were actually doing it.

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