We have a blog on our local newspaper's website to talk about local stories and concerns. I go there occasionally, but not to often because to be honest the people on there just get me so darn mad. Here is a recent entry ranting about nurses:
First from a teacher talking about her RN dgter:
I want her to do well, but I guess I kind of regret my decision that would keep me on my feet, multi-tasking all day long, doing my paperwork on my own time, while attending night college classes, because even with a masters' degree, I need hours to keep my license. Can nurses even imagine going home with much of their work in a briefcase, still to be done on their own time?
I've taken my turn with my siblings taking care of my father after an operation. Since his room was right across from the nurses' station, what I saw on night turn at least, is that the nurses spend most of their time at the station, chatting, and I guess waiting for something to happen. (Although when something does require their attention, most seem resentful.)
It just seems like it would nice to sit chatting to adults, compared to keeping up with 25 active youngsters.
I tried explaining to her that many times what is seen as nurses sitting at the desk "chatting" may actually be interns, unit clerks, aides or nurses that may be discussing patient care. Or maybe, it could have been a "slow night." WOW, then the attacks did begin. I am just washing my hands of the whole thing, some people just aren't going to change their minds not matter what. Want a sample of the worst?
How funny , the aids and clerks do mostly all the work for the RN's.. On the midnight turn i know for a fact most nurses are sitting and waiting for something to happen . Midnight turn is a breeze for the nurses and thats why so many prefere that shift
Yeah it is funny how she complained about working so hard . I'm a unit clerk and we work all night with paper work that the night nurses are supposed to do but wont . Its a joke to hear them complaining moving from one chair to another and getting upset when a patient needs them
At least a school nurse is not union and probably works the entire time she gets paid versus a union nurse that can do nothing all day and get protected by the Union. Gee I wonder why (Local hospital) is going bankrupt. The union morans think it is ok to pay someone to take smoke breaks all day
Wonder how they will feel when there are no viable hospitals (or nurses) to take care of them or their loved ones. UN FREAKING BELIEVABLE.
misconceptions of nurses i blame partially on the media, partially on past views of nurses being the hand maidens of doctors, partially on that one bad nurse you had in the hospital that makes all of us look back, partially on the "me me me me" entitlement of society, and partially on ignorance to the profession.
just because you see me sitting on the phone doesn't mean i'm talking to my boyfriend, i'm probably talking to a doctor i've paged twice for a patient going bad and when the MD calls you don't take a message!
just because you catch me sitting down doesn't mean i'm playing solitaire! i'm probably charting for the first time all night and have been standing without being able to pee for 8 hours already.
just because i'm laughing doesn't mean i'm having fun! if i don't laugh i am going to lose my darn mind!
and just because i don't answer the call light right away doesn't mean i don't care. i might be next door with the CNA up to my eye balls in poop or i might be trying to save the patient in the next room who just coded. i'm coming, i promise. give me a chance.
i've been a patient too. i've had good nurses and i've had bad nurses. but i think what i realize, not only because i grew up with a mother for a nurse, but because am a nurse and i spent much of my teenage years in a hospital bed.... is that THE WORLD IS NOT REVOLVING AROUND ME. the hospital is not a luxury resort and for every time i'm sick, that nurse has 6 or 7 of me and more than likely there's someone who needs them more than i do when i make a nonemergent request. my ginger ale can wait.
and this is often misinterpreted also... prioritizing. if i say to a patient, let me titrate this IV rate next door and i will return with your peanut butter crackers when i'm finished, don't hit the call like in 2 minutes and say i am ignoring you. i'm coming! you are important to me, i just have something more emergent to do!
this, combined with the fact that we are nurses are expected to be emotionless robots who can stand without eating, peeing, sitting down or even yawning for 12 hours or more and we put up with it because we have no choice. so when the ignorance combined with the scared family member combined with "i need it now" all mixes together... THIS is why we are disrespected.
i was kicked in the stomach by a patient @ 5 months pregnant (which subsequently ended in miscarriage). i couldn't press charges, couldn't cry about it, couldn't hit that man back... i had to just smile and pretend i was thrilled about being donkey kicked by an old man and it was probably MY fault because i startled him or something. ANY other profession would have the right to dismiss anyone who hits them. we get peed and pooped on, spit on, kicked, scratched and have over bed tables thrown at us and we have to say "oh honey, thats ok. you're sick".
i'm happy being a nurse and i love what i do. but crap like this is just that--CRAP.... people can be very ignorant. we are truly in a thankless position and sometimes i don't feel like i work in the hospital, i feel like i should put on a shirt that says "holiday inn" and walk around with a tea trolley.
Oh, Allison, Im so sorry you lost your baby. My God. How awful. I give you utmost kudos on still being a nurse.
that was actually before i became a nurse, it was when i was a paramedic. it all happened kinda fast, i started having horrible cramps and then starting bleeding and right there in the ER... that was in 2006. it really was hard on me to even go back to work, i was off for a few weeks and then i refused to work on the code team for postpartum and L&D as well as did not work in the GYN rooms for probably a whole year (and my boss was very cool about it)... the sound of babies crying and seeing pregnant women was terrible! i am going to be very careful this time. i am going to really keep my distance.
i have another very good friend of mine that used to be a ER nurse who is now a nursing instructor because her hand was maimed by a patient. they got a hold of her thumb and index finger and actually caused not only an open fracture requiring surgery but because it was on her domninant hand she is not longer able to have full ROM of those two fingers. she could not press charges on this patient bc the pt was AMS. sad.
SHe misspelled moron, mispelled prefer, miscapitialized union and has odd punctuation usage. Since she's a teacher one would assume competence with these things. I love when people complain about the competence of others when clearly disproving their own.
I am so sick and tired of trying to care for grandma while the psychotic family is about to punch me in the face because I refuse to crush long acting didlaudid (are you nuts?) Then, as im being shoved into the wall by grandchild, she says " Im a nurse, and we crush all our pills" Really? And where do you work?????? I barely sleep, I work like a dog, Im not putting up with this @#$%^it! Let security take care of it. Guess what? You just lost your visiting priviledges, get lost so we can take care of grandma, and then.....because your a "nurse" maybe an ALC isnt in the works and you can dive in and crush her Dilaudid!
That's why I'm always so shocked that nursing is always ranked the #1 or #2 most respected profession? Really? Gosh I'd hate to see how the least respected professions are treated. Who are they, anyway?
Actually it isn't the most respected it's the most trusted. Which is why they trust us not to spit in the coffee we need to reheat after they've spoken to us like we're something they stepped in.
I've read Nursing Against the Odds by Suzanne Gordon and I'm interested in reading the Sandy Summers book but sometimes when I read the reviews on Amazon for these books I think the only people reading them are nurses.
LOL, I agree that I'm to be trusted not to spit in someone's coffee. Mostly because I'm practically in fluid volume deficit from running my orifice off - need to conserve every milliliter of fluid I've got. Saliva counts.
lol, i agree that i'm to be trusted not to spit in someone's coffee. mostly because i'm practically in fluid volume deficit from running my orifice off - need to conserve every milliliter of fluid i've got. saliva counts.
"saliva counts".......too funny ! thanks, i really needed to laugh today !
Blee O'Myacin (whose well-written and sensible posts I follow, well, religously) wrote:
How many nuns are spit at called foul names and are expected to take it with a smile?[/quote']
This sounds as if you think the answer is probably none. But I would venture that those many Catholic religious sisters who work with populations under stress and with insufficient resources face challenges similar to those nurses who do the same. (Plenty of sisters *are* or were nurses, after all.)
In my neck of the woods Catholic religious women work with migrant worker populations, the homeless, undocumented workers, chronic substance abusers, prisoners, the mentally ill and so on. Some of them are prisoners themselves, because of their nonviolent protests against nuclear weaponry.
And then there are nuns like 73-year-old Dorothy Stang, shot to death in Brazil because of her advocacy for the poor, or 62-year-old Sister Karen Klimczak, murdered by an ex-convict who lived in the halfway house she helped staff. (Stang was murdered on behalf of the rich; I certainly don't mean to imply that the poor are bad guys, only that as stress increases so does bad behavior.)
Paul Farmer, the hero of Tracy Kidder's *Mountains Beyond Mountains,* honors the model for social justice work that he found in American Catholic sisters:
" Long ago in North Carolina, Farmer watched the nuns doing menial chores on behalf of migrant laborers, and in the years since he's come to think that a willingness to do what he calls, 'unglamorous scut work' is the secret to successful projects in places like Cange and Carabayllo."
They're all heroes to me, and I'm not arguing they need to be anyone else's heroes. But many American sisters today are involved in an amazing range of ministries--with all the challenges and joys that go with those choices.
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flightnurse2b, LPN
1 Article; 1,496 Posts
misconceptions of nurses i blame partially on the media, partially on past views of nurses being the hand maidens of doctors, partially on that one bad nurse you had in the hospital that makes all of us look back, partially on the "me me me me" entitlement of society, and partially on ignorance to the profession.
just because you see me sitting on the phone doesn't mean i'm talking to my boyfriend, i'm probably talking to a doctor i've paged twice for a patient going bad and when the MD calls you don't take a message!
just because you catch me sitting down doesn't mean i'm playing solitaire! i'm probably charting for the first time all night and have been standing without being able to pee for 8 hours already.
just because i'm laughing doesn't mean i'm having fun! if i don't laugh i am going to lose my darn mind!
and just because i don't answer the call light right away doesn't mean i don't care. i might be next door with the CNA up to my eye balls in poop or i might be trying to save the patient in the next room who just coded. i'm coming, i promise. give me a chance.
i've been a patient too. i've had good nurses and i've had bad nurses. but i think what i realize, not only because i grew up with a mother for a nurse, but because am a nurse and i spent much of my teenage years in a hospital bed.... is that THE WORLD IS NOT REVOLVING AROUND ME. the hospital is not a luxury resort and for every time i'm sick, that nurse has 6 or 7 of me and more than likely there's someone who needs them more than i do when i make a nonemergent request. my ginger ale can wait.
and this is often misinterpreted also... prioritizing. if i say to a patient, let me titrate this IV rate next door and i will return with your peanut butter crackers when i'm finished, don't hit the call like in 2 minutes and say i am ignoring you. i'm coming! you are important to me, i just have something more emergent to do!
this, combined with the fact that we are nurses are expected to be emotionless robots who can stand without eating, peeing, sitting down or even yawning for 12 hours or more and we put up with it because we have no choice. so when the ignorance combined with the scared family member combined with "i need it now" all mixes together... THIS is why we are disrespected.
i was kicked in the stomach by a patient @ 5 months pregnant (which subsequently ended in miscarriage). i couldn't press charges, couldn't cry about it, couldn't hit that man back... i had to just smile and pretend i was thrilled about being donkey kicked by an old man and it was probably MY fault because i startled him or something. ANY other profession would have the right to dismiss anyone who hits them. we get peed and pooped on, spit on, kicked, scratched and have over bed tables thrown at us and we have to say "oh honey, thats ok. you're sick".
i'm happy being a nurse and i love what i do. but crap like this is just that--CRAP.... people can be very ignorant. we are truly in a thankless position and sometimes i don't feel like i work in the hospital, i feel like i should put on a shirt that says "holiday inn" and walk around with a tea trolley.