Ok,I work in a city hospital as an RN in new york. It is so busy sometimes you don't have time to breathe. I was asked by my nurse manager to write something on what nurses do so that she could give it to the doctors. The doctors told her that they have no idea what a nurse does all day. PFFFT! Anyway I am overwhelmed and have started a list of what nurses do so that I can write something using it. I want to hear from other nurses who could possibly think of things that are slipping my mind at the moment. Its a big job to try and explain all the things we do on any given day, because every day is so different. I feel that the doctors need some good education ( maybe they'd show us an ounce of respect then? or is that wishful thinking?) Any help would be greatly appreciated. I want to write a really good response. Thanks in advance!
Heres a few things I jotted down real quickly:
Monitor vitals
assess for pain
teach
listen
Advocate for patients
determine if orders are complete/appropriate
communicate with all levels of hospital employees
(doctors, nurses, dieticians, social workers, respiratory therapists, pharmacists, , even nonlicenced personnel such as housekeeping, families, kitchen and phone/TV)
Assess for changes in patients condition
Assess for actual or potential problems with the patients health status or safety
Perform care for total care patients
Tasks like suctioning, trach care, feedings, blood transfusions, ekgs, drawing blood, start iv's, start Foleys, acquire samples for the lab, check orders and make changes accordingly, interpret cardiac strips, calculate I and o's
Throw in an occasional code & put your other patients on hold until you are able to resume your duties. Then you will only be behind another hour or two for the rest of the shift.
Maybe an inservice taking up another 10 or 15min of valuable time.
Throw in an occasional code & put your other patients on hold until you are able to resume your duties. Then you will only be behind another hour or two for the rest of the shift.
Maybe an inservice taking up another 10 or 15min of valuable time.
if i were the nm, i would have told that doctor to take a flying leap.
end of discussion.
leslie
It is important to consider that what this person received from the NM was nothing more than hearsay. We do not really know the NM's intentions here, nor the Doctor(s) who approached the NM.
For example, the NM could have taken this upon herself to educate the Doctors, and just made up a story about the Doctors asking to limit questions about their motives.
Another possible situation is that the Doctor felt their peers were not appreciating Nurses, and wanted a comprehensive list of duties with which to defend.
To sum it up, we really don't know what the intentions here are...and that is why an attitude of "Take a flying leap. End of discussion" is often less than productive. Not to mention, it makes the appearance of undermining the OP of this thread.
What I would add is take physician orders, clarify orders, make corrections to orders, communicate orders, interpret orders - it seems to me the nurses spend a lot of time figuring out what the heck is going on with the orders.
Don't forget make coffee, run and get coffee, warm up coffee, get creamer for coffee, clean up spilled coffee, get coffee for family, assess and measure coffee that has passed through the patient. And while you're at it, anything that comes out of a patient must be assessed, measured and described in notes.
It is important to consider that what this person received from the NM was nothing more than hearsay. We do not really know the NM's intentions here, nor the Doctor(s) who approached the NM.
For example, the NM could have taken this upon herself to educate the Doctors, and just made up a story about the Doctors asking to limit questions about their motives.
Another possible situation is that the Doctor felt their peers were not appreciating Nurses, and wanted a comprehensive list of duties with which to defend.
To sum it up, we really don't know what the intentions here are...and that is why an attitude of "Take a flying leap. End of discussion" is often less than productive. Not to mention, it makes the appearance of undermining the OP of this thread.
neither scenario is acceptable.
if the nm took it upon herself, it is passive-aggressive and still undermines the professionalism of nsg.
if the md felt his/her peers were not appreciative of nsg., then asking a nm for a job description is still degrading and spineless.
any doctor worth his/her salt, would inherently know, appreciate and defend nsg as their backbone.
i want a nm that knows how to defend and honor his/her staff.
I don't think I noticed documentation mentioned....problem oriented notes, progress notes, assessments, meds, pain control documentation...all the other paperwork like admission databases, d/c paperwork, incident reports, consents, medication reconciliation forms, medicare forms, and the list goes on. Our secretary came up with 92 different documents that OUR unit ALONE uses....the paperwork we have on file at all times.
Also, the phone calls. While trying to do all the other work that everyone has mentioned here, we have to take the phone calls from family members, pharmacists who can't call a doctor themselves to fix an order, PAs, NPs, doctors, surgeons, other areas of the hospital that need your patient NOW (radiology, specials, OR, etc.), Social workers, dieticians, diabetes ed., liasons from other facilities that want to know if the patient is ready to go back, VNAs wanting to know if the patient is going back soon, etc., etc., etc.!
I like the idea of having an MD follow a nurse around...or better yet, ask them to let all the nurses have a couple of days off...then they'd see what's NOT done and get a great idea of what we do!
Why don't you tell your manager that nurses are busy writing stupid lists up for their managers who don't know what nurses do because they are too busy kissing up to the doctor's ridiculous demands.
Why not suggest that these inquisitive doctors spend a day shadowing a busy ER nurse or better yet, Med-surg nurse. There you go.
For God's sake, YES!!! I just about blew my stack reading this. If the docs at this hospital are too stupid/lazy/self-involved to know what nurses do, no list is going to suddenly "enlighten" them. Who do they think takes off the orders and takes care of the patients--Elijah's ravens? And why isn't your manager bringing them up to speed if they're so clueless? This sounds like something she should be taking care of, not palming off on her staff, who are too busy taking care of patients to be writing little lists. (Or are you supposed to work on this at home on your own time?)
It is important to consider that what this person received from the NM was nothing more than hearsay. We do not really know the NM's intentions here, nor the Doctor(s) who approached the NM.
For example, the NM could have taken this upon herself to educate the Doctors, and just made up a story about the Doctors asking to limit questions about their motives.
Another possible situation is that the Doctor felt their peers were not appreciating Nurses, and wanted a comprehensive list of duties with which to defend.
To sum it up, we really don't know what the intentions here are...and that is why an attitude of "Take a flying leap. End of discussion" is often less than productive. Not to mention, it makes the appearance of undermining the OP of this thread.
Well, I hate to sound jaded, but this sounds exactly like the kind of thing a student would say. For those of us who have been in the trenches for decades, we know exactly what this sort of exercise means. We've seen it before, many times, in many forms. Just wait until you've got a few years behind you; you'll see.
I find it stretches credulity that someone could grasp complex disease processes and their respective treatments, work alongside nurses who care for their patients and carry out those treatments they order, yet then they claim with wide-eyed innocence that they have no idea "what nurses do." Sorry, that just doesn't pass the smell test. Then it's the nurses' responsibility to make the doctors a list? No way--that sort of intellectual laziness is inexcusable. If they really want to know, they can jolly well seek out the nurses--it's not like we're that hard to find--and educate themselves.
how about spend the other 23:55 minutes with their patients they don't do. Unless the doctors would start doing total, holistic patient care for that 24 hr period of time.
Specializes in Community Health, Med-Surg, Home Health.
I work at a city hospital in New York as an LPN. I think it would be a great idea to document what nurses do all day to give the physicians an idea of how hectic our days can be. I would also want the same from them. An exchange of information may bring about empathy, cooperation and respect between the disciplines.
:lol2:
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code50
24 Posts
Meds (prn & scheduled)
Throw in an occasional code & put your other patients on hold until you are able to resume your duties. Then you will only be behind another hour or two for the rest of the shift.
Maybe an inservice taking up another 10 or 15min of valuable time.
Take 15min. to choke down a meal. :smackingf