A few observations on nursing, as seen through the eyes of an RN who's been there, done that, and got the claw marks on her back to prove it. **Warning**: Not for the overly sensitive, the idealistic, the uncorrupted, or those without a warped sense of humor!
NursesAnnouncementsArchiveArticle
Not to put too fine a point on things, but......sometimes, nursing really bites.
It bites when you've built a life and a reputation on what you can do with a stethoscope and a nose for the subtlest signs of trouble, and some corporate pooh-bah tells you that your job is on the line---not because you're doing a lousy job caring for your patients, but because you haven't completed enough forms on them to make the Sierra Club call for your head on a recycled glass platter.
It also bites when you have no control over patients' family members.....like the phlebotomist who thinks she's an RN and will loudly declare to the entire floor that you're the worst nurse on the planet and she's having her Auntie moved RIGHT NOW. You know how a lot of nurses take medication for depression or anxiety? I take medication to keep me from slapping stupid people and blaming it on the side effects.
Speaking of depression and anxiety: I wish someone would do a definitive study on how many nurses do take meds for these stress-related conditions. I'd bet a month's salary that a very large minority of nurses have at least a half-empty bottle of Xanax in their medicine cabinets, which, by the way, is actually not a good place to store meds. (The shelf above the refrigerator is where most of mine live...well, except for the metformin, which I forget to take at dinner if it's not on the dining-room table.)
Then there are the silly, amusing, and downright hilarious things that happen in nursing that make it worth NOT drop-kicking the idiots through the goalposts of life (and losing your license in the bargain). Have you ever seen a nurse or aide who can't be bothered to bend over and pick up a used Band-aid off the floor, yet can perform a perfect head-first dive behind the med refrigerator to find the pack of cigarettes she dropped behind it? And you've got to love working the postpartum floor and trying diplomatically to convince a 19-year-old primip to name her new daughter something less apt than "Meadowlark Sunshine" to induce hatred in that same child in the future......like within five minutes of starting first grade.
You also have to hand it to the average nurse manager, whose title tends to reflect her/his distance from the bedside. They just don't get enough credit for their contributions to our profession. Yes, I'm a nursing director myself, and no, I haven't worked a floor shift in over two years; but when you get to the upper echelons, the titles grow more pompous......and the cluelessness is increased exponentially.
Take the person above me on the food chain: she is known as the Regional Director of Clinical Operations. She's a good egg, though, and I'd never talk smack about her, whether here or anywhere else. But if you go above her, you run into the Vice President of Clinical Operations, then the grand-nurse of them all, the National Director of Clinical Operations and Health Services. I've never even met the National Director of Clinical Operations and Health Services. For that matter, I don't really know for sure that she exists. But I'm not taking any chances.
Just a few odd musings on a wet, windy night somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Which reminds me: have you ever driven to work in the rain........while drinking coffee.....forgetting that you just took 80 mg of Lasix......and then stepped into a puddle upon disembarking? Me neither. Until today. Thank Heaven for the change of clothes I keep in the trunk "just in case".......
