I really like the Reader's Digest new monthly article. 13 things_____ won't tell you. This month it was teachers. So here are some I would like to see listed for nursing:
I really resent when you call and say you need a nurse immediately and when I get to the room you tell me you need a drink of water with a lot of ice. That is NOT something you need immediately and not something you need a nurse to do for you. Next time I won't hurry.
Standing at the desk staring at me isn't going to get me moving any faster, I am on the phone with the doctor getting orders. Glaring doesn't help either.
I understand you just had surgery, part of your recovery process is getting up and walking, so get up and walk.
Your doctor is an #@$hole, he will kill you sooner or later. Please don't sit there and say to me "well, my doctor says..."
Your family is crazy. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
If you hit me, I will prosecute. I am not your punching bag.
You break my heart. You have been sick for so many years and yet you still smile when I walk into the room. AND manage to make me smile.
I love my work, but it is my work. My life is outside this place with people I love.
Please don't talk to me like I am stupid or deaf. I have a four year college degree and great hearing.
Use your call bell and your inside voice. Screaming nurse, nurse, nurse and banging your cup on the tray table will have people thinking your crazy and they will just ignore you.
When you come in acting like an idiot, your not advocating for your mom. The second you leave every nurse on the floor will avoid that room because they don't want to do a thing to tick you off.
That hug you gave me meant the world to me. The thank you for your great care? Made my day. Yes, I will be back tomarrow and one way or another you will be my patient.
Nursing is hard physical work. Nursing is hard physical work. Nursing is hard physical work.
Yes, it was my first post. I have been on here for a long time as a guest, just reading. I love this site as a tool for learning and understanding our trade. It just so happens that the first time I decide to post, I chose a VERY opinionated subject that really got my inner fire burning... OOPS in introducing myself. I am really not a bad person just very stern in what I believe. As for letting you know that I was a vet tech, it was to show that I am not a total newbie to medical care or human care. Vet is like pediatric (not the medical sense but the human sense), you have to deal with the pt AND with mom and dad.
People are mean and hateful, loving and sweet. Being sick brings out the WORST in people. All I have to do to remember this, is to think of my husband. I would never want him as a pt. I feel sorry for the nurse that does ever have him under his/her care. He is wrong in his reaction but it his "self-preservation" mode kicking in and that is the only way he knows to be. When he is well, he is the most kindest, gentlest person you would know.
I know when I leave school and enter the "real world", I will see and know many things. I won't like a lot of them. But I know I can be understanding, kind, and sympathetic when needed and I will know when a pt is being demanding, it might just be that they are scared, in denial, or just flat out ****** off that they are sick. I won't be a maid although I will feel like one. I won't be a family therapist although I will feel like one. Yes, I will think that someone might be here just for the drugs, but I will do my duty and be there for the next person that needs me more.
I hope I am making sense and trying to explain the fire in my first posting. Yes, we are students, but we need to know everything. The good, bad, and ugly.
Thaank you, Mi Vida :) I appreciate your perspectives, both as a student and as a patient on the receiving end of a pan. So, you like most of my posts, eh? You know, the real test is whether or not you checked out my not-Ted-Bundy avatar's work...! (I would say "not-Bundy" but Bundy means something specific and different here so that reads wrong to Aussie eyes)
jrw - it is unfortunate that this was your first posting foray, and I'm glad you both feel comfortable standing up for yourself and your beliefs, and intend to stick around. Obviously, how you post is up to you but please bear in mind that misinterpretation's easy here, even when one takes care. It's possibly to both feel steongly about something while reining in the indignation. or not - your call :)
And after a second attempt at hijacking... back to the thread!
1. I'm sorry your meds are 10 minutes late. Obviously, I cannot give ALL of my patients their 0900 meds at the exact same time!
2. No, I cannot tell you "what is going on with" the patient next door.
3. Do not come to the hospital to be taken care of, then call in the charge nurse and complain that the nurses keep interrupting your sleep. This is not a hotel.
4. I know its 0700 and you are tired; but, no, I will not come back later to take your vital signs. Again, this is not a hotel and I refuse to administer your Toprol without getting your blood pressure first. Honestly, I'm actually trying to keep you alive, not be mean.
5. Thank you so much for asking me to sign your Bible before you get discharged. It was an honor to care for you. You just made four hard years of school worth it.
6. I'm sorry the pharmacy sent your rash OINTMENT in LOTION form, but my guy in the next room needs a blood transfusion, platelets, and potassium, so you'll be using the LOTION during my 12 hour shift. And, no, I will not call the doctor on a Saturday to get a new order for the ointment instead of the lotion just because the lotion is "messier" than the ointment form.
7. Please don't tear up when I tell you I'm off for the next three days. Tomorrow's nurse will take great care of you too. It gives me such pride to know you felt secure while your care was placed in my hands.
8. Your doctor ordered an IVP of Lasix just to keep you happy. He's tired of you complaining of being "puffy" while on all your IV fluids. Lucky for you, I checked your BUN and creatinine levels (high) before I gave it or you would be in a world of hurt by now. I wish you guys would realize that nurses are not just medication machines. We have brains too.
9. I have no comment on the nursing shortage, Obama's healthcare plan, or the hospital food. Oh yeah, please quit telling me how nurses make alot of money and how I must be pretty "well off".
10. I know you don't like (insert hospital policy here), but I can't do a thing about it.
The purpose of venting is to keep from boiling over...ever watch a pressure cooker on the stove (dating myself, I know). A vent just lets out a bit of steam at a time..
The purpose of venting is to keep from boiling over...ever watch a pressure cooker on the stove (dating myself, I know). A vent just lets out a bit of steam at a time..
Yep-- those folks who criticize should walk a few miles in our shoes. Work a 12 hour shift which is really a 14 hour shift, which is the 3rd day in a row, with 5-8 patients of varying degrees of severity in their illness and varying degrees of niceness in their personalities.
We say it HERE. We don't say it on the floor or to the patient, okay! ?
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
if you keep "firing" the nurses, pretty soon the only nurse willing to take care of your demented 100 year old mother will be the float nurse from l & d. and she doesn't know a thing about mis.
believe me, lady, the last thing you want to do is make mom's nurse angry. so following her around and insisting that your mother deserves only the very best care and you're going to watch the nurse like a hawk to make sure she gets it is going to have the opposite effect of the one you're after.
contrary to what you read in "redbook" and "reader's digest," sitting at dad's bedside and writing down everyone's names and what they did for dad will not ensure that he gets the best care. it will, however, ensure that none of the staff wants to cross the threshold into his room.
we do, however, respond well to chocolate!
lying to the nurse only ticks them off. i really don't care about the morality of your living arrangements, but if you're not married and don't have poa for healthcare, you are not the one to be signing the surgery consent. and i'll find out when your daughter calls and says she'll be in to sign the surgery consent and asks if her mother, the patient's ex-wife is still there. then i won't trust another word you say.
i don't care if you and squiggle bunny have been together for 17 years and are married in every way except the legal way and you would be married in the legal way if you hadn't been so unfortunate as to marry those other people first -- that other person is squiggle bunny's legal next of kin and you are not entitled to any information.
again, i don't care about the morality of your living arrangements. if you and "big girl" have been together for 17 years and are married in every way that counts except the legal way, and you would be married the legal way if same sex marriage were legal in your state, i will go out of my way to ensure that you spend as much quality time with "big girl" as possible. i like it when people are honest with me up front, and will call social work to get working on a poa for health care for you.
i don't care about the morality of your living arrangements and if you think god wants you to have five wives, who am i to dissent? polygamy isn't legal here, however, and only one of those wives is your legal next of kin. and no, you don't get to pick which one. you already picked when you took that one to the justice of the peace oh those many years ago. nor am i giving the same information over and over to each of your five wives, 67 children and 500 or so grandchildren. pick one spokesperson.
i think it's very sweet that your father has found love again in his golden years, and you're very open minded about the fact that he's cheating on your very much alive mother. the new love is not, however, his legal next of kin.
no, i won't tell you where "that cheating tramp" is laboring to deliver the baby that may or may not be yours. it isn't l & d because you've beaten her to within an inch of your life, and i'm not letting you visit so you can finish the job.
yelling, cursing and spitting at me is unlikely to make me more sympathetic to your very, very dry mouth.
you want to go home ama? what makes you think i'd want to stop you?
if i were as stupid as you seem to think, i wouldn't have all these initials after my name. no, i won't get you just one little drink of water -- you're scheduled for surgery in two hours!
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
i agree with so many of these comments, but wow...
as a student, i may not know all the in's and out's of nursing but i have been a person for 31 years. i would hope some of these people are kidding. i would never want to work with them or have them as a nurse. turn up the white stuff and no bedpan for someone that can't do it themselves? why the heck are you a nurse? it is not all about paperwork and read-out's, shots and bs.
maybe it has been too long for you to remember what a nurse is. let me remind you:
nursing is a health care profession focused on the care of individuals, families, and communities so they may attain, maintain, or recover optimal health and quality of life from birth to end of life.
nursing evolved from the familial roles nurturing and caretaking. the hallmark of nursing is caring more than curing.
the role of nursing has obviously evolved tremendously since nightingale's era but the idea has not. have some of you been out of school too long to remember why you wanted to be a nurse in the first place? has the bureaucracy burned you out? if so, the university's and local college's are offering some great courses for re-training america's work force. the taxpaying public is even paying for it. i will get you the number if you are too busy to look it up.
this is a vent thread. it is for venting by nurses. you are a student. it is rude to step on our vent thread.
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
i understand a place is always needed to vent. it just seems that some stuff should be filed away in your head and left unsaid. i am new at all of this and trying to understand the lingo and irritation towards pt's. i come from a 13 year career of being a leading veterinary tech. now, we used to say callous and hateful things about the owners b/c they were hateful and callous! but, the pt's were different. they can't help it and needed me. forgive me of not "getting" it yet on some of this (seriously). i do mean it though that a lot of what was said was freaking hilarious but some of it was really disturbing.
you obviously don't get it. none of this stuff is said at work. it's said here, in what is supposed to be a safe place for nurses to vent.
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
with all due respect, some nurses spoke up about the bedpan post as well. so it isn't just students that are shocked by that comment.
i am a student, i have been a patient many times, i enjoyed reading 99% of this thread, i like reading a lot of these types of threads because i feel like it gives me an inside look as to what i am getting myself into. a lot of students are in clincals so they are out their shadowing nurses and seeing a bit of what is going on.
like i said, i enjoyed just about all of this thread, the bedpan comment and vent comment seemed appalling to me. i do know what it is like to ask for a bed pan and have the nurse show annoyance and attitude like you are burdening her (her in this case). regardless, my point was, it was not just idealistic and unsuspecting students that were rubbed wrong by that particular comment. some nurses were as well.
evidently you do not understand what it's like to offer a patient a bedpan every morning at 0645, explaining to them that you will be unavailable during report and this is their opportunity to use the bedpan, and to have them demand a bedpan at 0705 every morning anyway. yes, the bedpan comment seems harsh, but i do understand where the poster was coming from. interrupting report every single morning to handle a demand that could have been handled before report is not only irritating, it gets everyone's day off to a poor start including the other patients who now have to wait for breakfast because their fingersticks haven't been done.
and as far as mouthing words around the tube -- i can lip read things like "water", "pain", "bedpan" or "family", but a long soliliquy about your granddaughter's no-good boyfriend or your daughter's deficits in the parenting department are a bit much. i, too would turn up the white stuff.
Specializes in Adult ICU (All over), NICU, Education.
"Evidently you do NOT understand what it's like to offer a patient a bedpan every morning at 0645, explaining to them that you will be unavailable during report and this is their opportunity to use the bedpan, and to have them demand a bedpan at 0705 every morning anyway. Yes, the bedpan comment seems harsh, but I DO understand where the poster was coming from. Interrupting report every single morning to handle a demand that could have been handled BEFORE report is not only irritating, it gets everyone's day off to a poor start INCLUDING the other patients who now have to wait for breakfast because their fingersticks haven't been done.
And as far as mouthing words around the tube -- I can lip read things like "water", "pain", "bedpan" or "family", but a long soliliquy about your granddaughter's no-good boyfriend or your daughter's deficits in the parenting department are a bit much. I, too would turn up the white stuff."
Thank You Ruby and all of those that understand what venting is-I am glad someone gets it!
I posted the bedpan comment and reading so of the responces post reminds me of why I usually do not participate is posting. In my defense, I would never say any of those things out loud to anyone or deny my patient a bedpan. This, I thought, was a venting post and I was saying some of the things sometimes come to your mind when we are at our worst. When you have been putting your pt on the bedpan at least every hour for 12 hours so they can pass some gas, and asked them 15 minutes before shift change if they need anything else and they call for a bedpan 10 minutes after you start report you may be saying the same thing in your head...but what do you do...you get up and put them on the bedpan and hope that they let you finish report before they call again to be taken off the empty bedpan. An like Ruby said...I may be unable to read your lips as your try to explan to me about why you rather watch CSI Mmiami and not CSI NY, but I will give you pain meds and swab your mouth with some ice cold water.
I am very upset at the way I was attacked, I am a great nurse and treat my patients with respect, but since I am not perfect I do think inappropriate things sometimes-things that I would never tell a patient!
To the students out there who are shocked by some of the posts... just wait. I hope you keep your pollyanna attitude for many long years into your career, but somehow patients and more so visiting family members have a way of wearing you down. I sometimes think that if the grand canyon was baraged with needy hospital patient and their obnoxious family members, it would have been carved out in about 3 weeks time. At the same time, don't let it get you down. There are trying times that you need to vent about but there are also times that make your heart swell with pride and love for your career.
that being said 13 things your nurse tell you:
1. I sometimes work such long hard hours that i think i could be dangerous to you. Asking me to titrate a dose at hour 11 of my third 12 hour shift in a row is sometimes a tremendous request.
2. Small talk is nice, but while we are chatting away i can't help but think about all the stuff i still have to do.
3. We know that you would never treat the doctor the same way you treat us. But it would be nice for you to show us a little of that respect. Even as much respect as you would show the teller in the bank or your hair stylist would be a start.
4. I definitely don't live to perform the embarrassing procedure on you. I really would rather not have my hands there.
5. I try very hard to keep from dry heaving during some procedures and events. Rinsing out that bed pan is often one of them.
6. I do not believe that you really are allegric to the 24 things you listed for me, but i am not going to challenge you on it.
7. I will resent you if you call me in frequently to do a simple task that you or a family members could do your self.
8. I really and truly have not emptied my bladder in close to ten hours, putting you on the bed pan every twenty minutes so you can expell 10 cc's of urine does not help this fact.
9. We will only be upset if your visitor helps with a very small number of tasks. Getting you ice chips and putting lotion on your back are definitely not on this list. Go to town on those.
10. Chances are I haven't eaten anything since before my shift. And, yes, i did eye up that pudding cup as i set up your tray for you, but no, i won't eat off of your tray - even if you do think it's a sin to waste food and are just trying to be nice.
11. If i know who you are and you're not my patient, it is because you and/or your family have a reputation of being a trouble maker.
12. The no fuss patients are my favorites. I check in a little more often if i can and i don't mind giving them a little extra TLC
13. I carry my own malpractice insurance becuase i believe that my employer will throw me to the wolves to save themselves.
13. I carry my own malpractice insurance becuase i believe that my employer will throw me to the wolves to save themselves.
True that!!! i do the same thing for the same reason!!!
another one: I dont get paid to read minds, so when you call me in your room and then just stare at me... ??? (actually i DID say that to a pt once! not trying to be rude, even tho it sounds that way, but he would get irate if you didnt 'know' what he wanted, so I let him know!)
jrw03282009
139 Posts
Yes, it was my first post. I have been on here for a long time as a guest, just reading. I love this site as a tool for learning and understanding our trade. It just so happens that the first time I decide to post, I chose a VERY opinionated subject that really got my inner fire burning... OOPS in introducing myself. I am really not a bad person just very stern in what I believe. As for letting you know that I was a vet tech, it was to show that I am not a total newbie to medical care or human care. Vet is like pediatric (not the medical sense but the human sense), you have to deal with the pt AND with mom and dad.
People are mean and hateful, loving and sweet. Being sick brings out the WORST in people. All I have to do to remember this, is to think of my husband. I would never want him as a pt. I feel sorry for the nurse that does ever have him under his/her care. He is wrong in his reaction but it his "self-preservation" mode kicking in and that is the only way he knows to be. When he is well, he is the most kindest, gentlest person you would know.
I know when I leave school and enter the "real world", I will see and know many things. I won't like a lot of them. But I know I can be understanding, kind, and sympathetic when needed and I will know when a pt is being demanding, it might just be that they are scared, in denial, or just flat out ****** off that they are sick. I won't be a maid although I will feel like one. I won't be a family therapist although I will feel like one. Yes, I will think that someone might be here just for the drugs, but I will do my duty and be there for the next person that needs me more.
I hope I am making sense and trying to explain the fire in my first posting. Yes, we are students, but we need to know everything. The good, bad, and ugly.