I frequently get asked this question by family/ friends after work. How do you guys answer this question? Do you talk about your day, with respect to Hipaa of course, the ups and downs? Or do you simply answer something to the likes of "Oh it was fine" or "It was good" and not get into it.
I find myself doing the latter. To non-nursing family/ friends who ask this question, I find it hard to talk about the realities of my job, I work with the critically ill, so it's not exactly light stuff to talk about. And most of the time I think they are just asking casually out of being polite, not that they really care how my shift went.
So to spare them (and myself from reliving the emotional/ moral distress) I usually just end up just saying "It was good." Even though many times it was not good. How could it be 'good' when your patient is near death or died. Or just found out they have cancer or that they overdosed on drugs...It's not stuff people are necessarily prepared to talk about/ hear.
So I settle for the very vague "it was good" or "i was busy, but it was fine" meanwhile my heart is in a knot about the truth of how my shift really went. It's hard not talking about it and holding it in sometimes.
So I would like to hear from all my fellow nurses out there how they deal with this question.
As male nurse I have had some really bad days due to female pregidices and jealousy. I am not GAy or their personal manservent. I worked as an LPN for 16 years then as an RN/BSN for 15 years and a Nursing Practisioner for 6 years and the female staff still treat me as their Orderly.
With my husband, I answer honestly. I'll tell him, "It was really rough. I had a patient die and I wish I could have done more for them." With friends, I might tell them about an annoying or funny coworker but not really patient stories. With my family I say, "It was ok."
We had a new grad a few years ago in the ER, model thin and beautiful, but used to having others do things for her. EHS delivered a patient who horked a loogie and threw the Kleenex on the floor. She gave EHS doe eyes, and asked them to pick it up for her. They did (turkeys!) and I asked them why they never did that type of thing for us COBs!
If a snotty Kleenex gives you the shivers, I will save you the 3yo's poop when we need to sift for small change. Yucky for you, but I'll have fun watching you gag.
I'll happily sift through the toddler poop in exchange for cleaning up 1/2 a liter of Kayexalate in which I found my patient swimming when I returned from lunch :-)
I talk to my husband about work if I need to. When I first started in the ICU I had a lot of things to talk about. But now I usually give simple indicators of how my day was (good, fine, busy). "Crappy" (or @&!#ty) means that I need to talk. It really is important to vent if there are serious issues going on at work. Otherwise I will talk to him about if a coworker is bothering me or there is a problem I need help solving, but beyond that we don't talk much about work.
vanilla bean
861 Posts
They're just jealous of your spelling skills.