Share your great day experience

[JBMmom, MSN, NP]

Have you left a shift feeling like you just hit it out of the park? Is there a particular experience over the course of your career that you really feel made the other days all worth it? There are plenty of bad day stories here, let's share the times when you really made a difference.

I'll share mine from a while back. I'm still relatively new in critical care and I came into work one evening and the nurse handing off mentioned to me that I would likely not be handing the patient back 12 hours later. Things were looking pretty grim. Without details (because I have coworkers that I know frequent the boards and I'd like to remain anonymous), I asked a couple questions about medications that were going and the experienced nurse and doctor both downplayed the potential medication effects and basically said the patient wasn't going to make it. Well, the beauty of titratable drips with parameters was that I could use my judgment along with the patient condition, to justify giving my hunch a try. Long story short- 12 hours later I handed a relatively stable patient back to the nurse. One of the consulting physicians rounded quite early that morning and was shocked, and he even complimented me on my care. I walked out of there feeling like a million bucks. Might not ever happen again in my career, but I can say that I saved a life that night.

Looking forward to reading about the times you got it just right!

[Lunah, MSN, RN]

Advocating for a patient that I just *knew* was having a larger neuro event than Bell's Palsy or vertigo. Getting said patient transferred to a higher level of care with proper imaging and finding out that I was right (uncommon kind of stroke discovered on MRI). Discovering a couple of years later that the patient's spouse still remembered me and said that I was the only good thing about that day. ❤️ These kinds of encounters make me miss the bedside — those times when I knew I made a difference.