After completing numerous clinicals and working as an EKG tech, I have observed and often dealt with nurses that are a prime example of what I don't want to be when I graduate. I also concede that I am a mere senior nursing student with no real-world experience.
1.) Night shift nurse who sits on facebook: Since when did it become acceptable to go on a computer and use social networking sites whenever you don't have work to do. In the time that you have sat on facebook you could have filled charts, done further research on your patients' needs, read nursing journals, assisted another nurse or CNA, or just do something that might help the morning shift. Instead, you sit on facebook trying to see if anyone you haven't seen in a few years got fat.
2.) The "thats not my job nurse": This kills me because as a tech I constantly hear this. "Mrs. Smith needs to go to the bathroom can you help her so I can do the EKG?" The reply from the nurse, "Ask the CNA...thats not my job." The nurse should really take a step back and re-evaluate your career choice because by not helping me you are not helping the patient.
3.) The nurse who openly criticizes patients or gossips with other nurses at the station: Guess what, people hear what your saying. You are making a fool of yourself and instead of complaining how so and so didn't bathe this patient during their shift, why don't you do it yourself? Be a professional, do your job to the best of your ability.
4.) The nurse who uses personal problems as an excuse to not care: I'm partial to this because I'm young but I don't care that you have kids, I don't care that your child has the snuffles and you were up all night. If you are unable to successfully complete the tasks of your job DO NOT COME INTO WORK. I have no sympathy for you. If I was out late partying and had a hangover and used it as an excuse would you care? An excuse is an excuse, either do your job right or call out, you are only hurting the patient.
5.) The nurse wearing winnie the pooh scrubs in an adult acute care setting: Your an adult. Dress like a professional, talk like a professional, and people will treat you like one.
6.) Nurses who always apologize to doctors when they call them: It is a doctor's job to take your call, listen to what you say, make decions based on the information you give them. Get some backbone, speak intelligently, and stick to the facts. If you show them you are serious, they will take you seriously and not blow you off as some stupid nurse who bothers them at home.
Specializes in Nursing Education, CVICU, Float Pool.
Well, I hope you don't plan on working nights as a nurse, because you WILL be calling doctors in the middle of the night for your patient who has a sudden onset of chest pain and you need to get an order STAT. Or how about for your new admission from the ER where the orders are not clear, the admitting doctor is NOT the primary doctor and you have to call the primary doctor AT HOME in the middle of the night to clarify orders?
Most docs that are on call are covering several teams, and they may not have been sleep in over 24 hours. They may have been in several codes, or been called several times right before they had a chance to lie down. It's the courteous thing to apologize for the call in the middle of the night, but my pt in room 213 needs a STAT ABG, and by the way, these drips are maxed out and the BP is still tanking, can you please come in?
But I don't expect you to understand this until you are actually working as a RN.......
I agree that I will really understand when I'm an RN.
I don't expect you to understand until you actually read my post thoroughly and try to comprehend what I'm saying.
It is the Doctors job to take calls from the nurse who is concerned I'm sorry if they get mad for choosing a career that requires their knowledge or presence when they are at home. When you call and have to wake them up unecessarily then yes I would most certainly apologize. My post was about apologizing when calling, not calling in general.
I agree that I will really understand when I'm an RN.
I don't expect you to understand until you actually read my post thoroughly and try to comprehend what I'm saying.
It is the Doctors job to take calls from the nurse who is concerned I'm sorry if they get mad for choosing a career that requires their knowledge or presence when they are at home. When you call and have to wake them up unecessarily then yes I would most certainly apologize. My post was about apologizing when calling, not calling in general.
Let me explain something to you.....
I read your post and I completely UNDERSTOOD it. It don't matter if the doctor CHOSE a career where they are expected to be called. The same can be said for being a NURSE.
And WHENEVER a doctor is called it is NECESSARY. We don't simply call docs to discuss the weather. If we are calling the doctor, it's for SOMETHING related to patient care. I don't know what you know about chain of command or what ORDERS mean, but if there is not a standing order and it's something relating to the pt plan of care, the doctor will be called.
I agree that I will really understand when I'm an RN.
I don't expect you to understand until you actually read my post thoroughly and try to comprehend what I'm saying.
It is the Doctors job to take calls from the nurse who is concerned I'm sorry if they get mad for choosing a career that requires their knowledge or presence when they are at home. When you call and have to wake them up unecessarily then yes I would most certainly apologize. My post was about apologizing when calling, not calling in general.
And in your OPINION, what is an unnecessary reason to call the doctor???????
Specializes in Nursing Education, CVICU, Float Pool.
Let me explain something to you.....
I read your post and I completely UNDERSTOOD it. It don't matter if the doctor CHOSE a career where they are expected to be called. The same can be said for being a NURSE.
And WHENEVER a doctor is called it is NECESSARY. We don't simply call docs to discuss the weather. If we are calling the doctor, it's for SOMETHING related to patient care. I don't know what you know about chain of command or what ORDERS mean, but if there is not a standing order and it's something relating to the pt plan of care, the doctor will be called.
No ma'am you still aren't understanding me. Why in the world would somone call a doctor for no reason. When I say unecessarily I mean when you call and after talking to the doc you both realize that it was a simple mistake that you just wanted to double check on, and their isn't a problem like you thought there was. I must agree that I naturally would say sorry to bother you but patient X is.......
I will never have all the answers and I certainly don't have them now as I'm not a nurse which I said earlier.
In summary I'm saying that I wouldn't apologize to a doc for calling him ab a patients care. And I always keep the please and Thank yous.
No ma'am you still aren't understanding me. Why in the world would somone call a doctor for no reason. When I say unecessarily I mean when you call and after talking to the doc you both realize that it was a simple mistake that you just wanted to double check on, and their isn't a problem like you thought there was. I must agree that I naturally would say sorry to bother you but patient X is.......
I will never have all the answers and I certainly don't have them now as I'm not a nurse which I said earlier.
In summary I'm saying that I wouldn't apologize to a doc for calling him ab a patients care. And I always keep the please and Thank yous.
Maybe because I worked in telecommunications before I become a nurse, I do apologize for waking the doctor up in the middle of the night, even on the FIRST call to them regarding my patient. It's simply a courtesy. I then state my business and reason for calling and with my nursing judgment, my calls to the doctors are head on majority of the time.
Because I am courteous to the docs, I have a great rapport with most of them. Most are residents and they know if one of our nurses are calling them, it's something going on with that patient.
I've had a pt go into A-flutter 3:1 via the monitor and I simply called the doctor, apologized for waking him, but told him to get back to the ER STAT and he did just that.
You simply catch more bees with honey than you do with vinager. And it goes BOTH ways.
I am a nurses aide. At one point, Io thought that the nurses were just being lazy when they asked me to grab something for so-and-so or to get a quick set of vitals, or an ECG (EKG to those in the US!), or whatever else. After a while, I came to realise that whilst I was doing that, the RN would be paging the doctor to come and see the patient with crushing chest pain, or dealing with a patient who had just puked blood in another room, or was running to get some stat meds for a patient when another pt asked for water, or a blanket. Although, 1 time out of a 100 you get the nurse who is being just lazy, 99/100, they are streched to the maximum.
RE: facebook: EVERYONE should be careful. Nurses and other staff in my hospital have been disclipined for what was posted on there OUTSIDE of work hours (probably not so smart to friend the manager!).
In summary I'm saying that I wouldn't apologize to a doc for calling him ab a patients care. And I always keep the please and Thank yous.
GRRR. Can you please explain why it would be so bad to say to a resident, "I'm sorry that I'm waking you for X, I'm sure you've just fallen asleep, but y and z have just happened, can you abc?" These docs work THIRTY HOUR SHIFTS with little sleep. Did they choose it? Yes. Is it their job? Yes. But it's not going to kill anyone to apologize. In fact, in my experience, apologizing gets you a lot farther than please and thank you when you've just woken someone from a dead sleep.
I also apologize when they're in the middle of their teaching rounds, because they're not supposed to be interrupted, per ACGME guidelines, and yet something always goes wrong. Then they have to come back to the hospital to put in orders, because we have a no-verbal when the MD is on campus rule. Not only are they missing out on education, they're missing out on their lunch time.
I'm going to be interested in how expectations change after some of you all graduate and orient. I really hope that you're able to find a job with the type of nurses you want to be, because otherwise, you're not going to be happy... and there's nothing worse than a holier-than-thou GN.
Regarding the part about apologising to the doctor for calling them. yes, it's their job to take the call and listen to what I have to say. BUT, I learned a saying from my Maw-Maw many years ago that holds true in a lot of situations,
"You can catch a lot more flies with honey than you can with vinegar."
Now, say a patient needs something that the doctor may be hesitant to give. Who do you think he will respons better to, the nurse who was matter of fact or the nurse who was nice enough to apologise to him for call late at night?
As an experienced nurse, my best advice to you would be "don't forget to always put the words, or situation into context". Your post did sound a little haughty for someone who's never been a nurse, but it's nice to think you want to change the world for the better. Having said that, my next best advice is "don't judge what you don't know". One thing you critiqued is a nurse saying "that's not my job" when asked to take someone to the bathroom. If there's no one else there to do so, most nurses will take someone to the bathroom; but, if a nurse spends a shift stepping outside of the job duties, it will affect the performance of what s/he is supposed to be doing. Do you have any idea how difficult it sometimes can be to get a med-pass done on time, when you're stopping to do something else? Not just difficult, but dangerous to be so distracted. Regards your aversion to theme scubbs - I work in long-term-care, with elderly people. They're well aware of their medical problems, and often welcome a diversion from the "white coat" image that has become their life. So, a little Pooh can go a long way to taking their minds off their troubles. I could go on and on, but again, just don't be so quick to judge.
Specializes in Nursing Education, CVICU, Float Pool.
Maybe because I worked in telecommunications before I become a nurse, I do apologize for waking the doctor up in the middle of the night, even on the FIRST call to them regarding my patient. It's simply a courtesy. I then state my business and reason for calling and with my nursing judgment, my calls to the doctors are head on majority of the time.
Because I am courteous to the docs, I have a great rapport with most of them. Most are residents and they know if one of our nurses are calling them, it's something going on with that patient.
I've had a pt go into A-flutter 3:1 via the monitor and I simply called the doctor, apologized for waking him, but told him to get back to the ER STAT and he did just that.
You simply catch more bees with honey than you do with vinager. And it goes BOTH ways.
Yea. I didn't really specify, I'm sorry. I should have said that I would apologize for having to wake/bother them it is common curtesy. I would aslo apologize if I call with a problem and it turned out to not be that big of a deal b/c I looked over something or made a mistake. And really didn't have to call, but thought I did. I think what I was trying to say is that I would not be sorry for calling, but would apologize for having to call. Does that make any more sense? Lolz!!!
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PatMac10,RN, RN
1 Article; 1,164 Posts
I agree that I will really understand when I'm an RN.
I don't expect you to understand until you actually read my post thoroughly and try to comprehend what I'm saying.
It is the Doctors job to take calls from the nurse who is concerned I'm sorry if they get mad for choosing a career that requires their knowledge or presence when they are at home. When you call and have to wake them up unecessarily then yes I would most certainly apologize. My post was about apologizing when calling, not calling in general.