1/9: What I learned this week - Worst. Vagina. EVER.

[ixchel]

I still can't believe it's January! Where did 2015 go?!

If your unit is like mine at all, brace yourselves.... Respiratory failure is coming. Out of 10 different patients since 1/1, I've had only one non-respiratory failure patient. Only two of those had sputum cultures with the same type of bug. That bug was a rare one for adults, too, so it's been fun, to say the least. All's fun and games until you get a patient who has no concept of covering a cough.

Regardless, Ixchel Medical Center and Chez Ixchel have both been full of lessons. Hard to narrow this week's list, but for the sake of people actually reaching the bottom of it, I did. [emoji5]️

This week, I have learned.....

1. I am fully convinced I have smelled the worst possible smelling lady parts.

2. Apparently I am a great big baby about getting invasive procedures done on me.

3. Receiving unsettling news about your health is much less unsettling when the doctor is hot.

4. Also, receiving unsettling news about your health gets easier to process emotionally with each new diagnosis.

5. It seriously sucks to clock out from caring for a whole unit of respiratory failure (half dead) patients only to come home to your smoker spouse.

6. The first couple of times you get asked, "Am I going to die?", it's a little creepy, until you have enough experience in nursing to be able to answer, "not on my watch!" with a reassuring smile, followed with, "you will be okay." But then, when someone actually does die on that admission, after asking repeatedly, it goes back to being creepy again.

7. My unit tends to be a bit wild, so staff turnover ends up being high. This changes the "personality" of night shift a lot, since the new to nursing newbies like night shift. I like the night shift personality right now and hope the newbies stay.

8. It still feels weird to be the most experienced nurse on a shift besides charge.

9. I might lose my shizz if we don't get psych on consult. As much as our hospitalists feel adequate to handle psych, they simply aren't.

10. You should have 1-2 people on your "speed dial" (hahaha!!! You guys remember speed dial?!) as your medical procedure go to people for those times you can't do medical procedures on yourself. (i.e. Stitches removal in hard to reach places.) (Thank you for that idea, Dogen!)

11. My primary care doesn't feel qualified to remove a mole from my shoulder because it's too big and looks like someone more specialized should do it. (This is the 5th item in this week's list related to this topic. I may need some tranquilizers, to stop thinking about this.)

12. I met my favorite patient ever. EVER. I want to take him home and name him Grandpa.

13. It's hard enough to stop being lazy after night shifts when I get an ideal schedule. When my schedule sucks, it's impossible. Seriously, ugh.

14. BEST THING EVER! (That may be an exaggeration.) Medscape sent out an article saying contact precautions for MRSA and VRE are no more effective at preventing transmission than standard/universal.

15. Our legal system may be corrupt, or be inefficient, but that doesn't mean a suspect is innocent.

Phish, anybody? (Don't worry, Farawyn, no one dies in this one.)

So, my loves, what have YOU learned this week?

[kldepp08]

Honest to god, words don't exist to describe this smell. The potency alone was taking breath away as far as the nursing station, which was nowhere near the patient's room. I have no idea what could possible make a smell like this. I am hoping the mystery will be solved before I go to work next.

After working many years as a medical assistant in OB/GYN.... This smell usually came from a pessary or retained tampon.. We'd have to close down the room!!

[Beffers81]

I learned.....

1. That there is a such thing as boredom when you've been in school for 4 years and waiting to start your first ever RN job (the 25th).

2. I've learned men are some serious babies when it comes to being sick (my husband is driving me cray cray)

3. I've learned that after reading these comments us nurses really do have a wicked sense of humor.

4. I've learned that there are other people on here that also hate the word panties. Ugh....The correct terminology of a lady parts doesn't bug me but I refer to mine as the hooha, my husband calls is paradise or poonany.

[jag nurse, RN]

This has been a horrible week of "learning experiences."

1. Sometimes our best isn't enough. If coworkers want you gone, they will make sure it happens. They will talk about you behind your backs and they will talk to your managers when they think you aren't looking. Even though you make may improvements, it is never good enough for them. And the managers will always side with them.

2. There's always going to be other people that are better than you and more liked than you. In my case, it was an orientee who started around the same time I did. He was the ideal orientee, the shining star of the unit. He set the standards for others high, and managers expected other orientees (i.e. myself) to live up to his performance. He was talked about during my own performance reviews, as someone who was meeting and even exceeding their expectations, a true management's pet. Other coworkers often commented on how they were impressed with him, and how glad they were to see him.

3. It doesn't how much you want something. If others don't want you to have it, they will make sure it gets taken away from you. Sometimes your opinion doesn't matter, when others don't share it.

4. Sometimes, you'll be someone of importance one day and find out you're a nobody the next day. And yet, others will remain at their level of importance.

So sad for you ( Prayers and positive thoughts sent your way. {{HUGS}}

[Natkat, BSN, MSN, RN]

BV and something inside the lady parts. Like produce.

I learned that working i love working in a field where someone says that a woman has produce in her lady parts is not at all unreasonable.

[Natkat, BSN, MSN, RN]

This has been a horrible week of "learning experiences."

1. Sometimes our best isn't enough. If coworkers want you gone, they will make sure it happens. They will talk about you behind your backs and they will talk to your managers when they think you aren't looking. Even though you make may improvements, it is never good enough for them. And the managers will always side with them.

2. There's always going to be other people that are better than you and more liked than you. In my case, it was an orientee who started around the same time I did. He was the ideal orientee, the shining star of the unit. He set the standards for others high, and managers expected other orientees (i.e. myself) to live up to his performance. He was talked about during my own performance reviews, as someone who was meeting and even exceeding their expectations, a true management's pet. Other coworkers often commented on how they were impressed with him, and how glad they were to see him.

3. It doesn't how much you want something. If others don't want you to have it, they will make sure it gets taken away from you. Sometimes your opinion doesn't matter, when others don't share it.

4. Sometimes, you'll be someone of importance one day and find out you're a nobody the next day. And yet, others will remain at their level of importance.

You just reminded me of a major irritation I've been dealing with recently. When I first started working my current job I was bullied and picked on like crazy. It eventually passed but I still wonder what the heck that was all about. So the next 3 hires after me have been men, and everyone on my shift bends over backwards to help them, and teach them new things, and watch their patients so they can go on break, and if you make a mistake, they laugh and say "oh you're so silly" in the sweetest, merriest voice. And yet they wanted to report me to the BON because I would not give a patient insulin because we didn't have a working glucometer and his tube feeding had been stopped before he was sent to dialysis and I had no way of knowing what the glucose was and I'd rather wait until we can get a working glucometer or wait until he got back to his unit and they could check it there. And it's not just here. I've observed this other places where I didn't actually work there but was on the unit doing dialysis.

And patients did it too. They would be mean as all get out to the female nurses, complaining and being verbally abusive. Then the minute a male nurse showed up, then suddenly everything was just peachy. The snarkiest mean old heifer would turn into the sweetest little old grandma. The verbal abuse stopped, they say please and thank you and everything is fine, just fine. I'm just sitting here watching TV and I don't need anything. That call bell that had been going off every 15 minutes is now silent.

Its not you, honey. It's women's inhumanity to women. I hope someday women do a better job of supporting each other and not throw one another under the bus when a man shows up. But I don't expect to see this happen in my lifetime.

[bluebonnetrn, BSN, RN]

((((Rosie))))

I've learned that I am an "intuitive" nurse, and that's not a dirty word. I can always learn da facts, but that right there cannot be bought.

I've learned the longer I work in a school, the more I miss medical people. Teachers, psh.

Amen to both!! Ditto here

Thankfully this site helps me get my "I need to talk to medical people" needs met

[Farawyn]

((((Rosie))))

I've learned that I am an "intuitive" nurse, and that's not a dirty word. I can always learn da facts, but that right there cannot be bought.

I've learned the longer I work in a school, the more I miss medical people. Teachers, psh.

Amen to both!! Ditto here

Thankfully this site helps me get my "I need to talk to medical people" needs met

Come to the School Nurse thread more often! We are a tight little bunch, and we only bully OldDude.

[Farawyn]

I have learned this. Re learned.

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001439.htm

Athletes need to wipe stuff down. Wipe it all down. That's all I'm saying.

[kalycat, BSN, RN]

I've recently learned that I'm developing a vigorous love/hate relationship with our resident physicians.

[xoemmylouox, ASN, RN]

Diagnosis: "Party Platter *****" Patient had lady parts filled with Blue Cheese Dressing for use as a Vegetable Dip at a New Year's Eve Party

Ok.. This was simply amazing..

[ixchel]

4. As you progress through nursing school, you may find that you like areas of nursing that you swore you wouldn't. I am considering an internship in an area that I said I'd never work.

I was gonna be a midwife delivering babies. Old sick people?! Blech!!!!

I'm now an RN on a step-down unit and I wouldn't have it any other way. I am so glad we get generalist education! I kept an open mind like you have been doing. You never know what you'll love until you experience it.

[Rose_Queen, BSN, MSN, RN]

4. As you progress through nursing school, you may find that you like areas of nursing that you swore you wouldn't. I am considering an internship in an area that I said I'd never work.

Corollary: The specialties you were sure you wanted to work in turn out to be your least favorite clinical experiences.

I thought I wanted to go into peds or L&D. Guess which clinicals I hated the most?