What was it like to be a nurse in the 1980s

Mommavik, ADN · Apr 19, 2016

I agree; there's so much that has to be done on my shift there is no longer time to sit and talk to my patient about her problems at home that are affecting her self care (therefore affecting her staying well after she goes home) because if I do then I'm late on evening mess and wind up on overtime (getting fussed at for choosing more on budget)

Been there,done that, ASN, RN · Apr 19, 2016

Kewl beans, Farawyn . Would like to hear more about you mom.

Mommavik, ADN · Apr 19, 2016

It was a different time then; they knew about gems but didn't think gloves were cost effective since hand washing would remove them (yeah, I know)

maxvoca · Apr 20, 2016

Oh wow you were a nurse in Manhattan in the early stages of AIDS? I would love to hear anything you had to say about that if you didn't mind or have the time.

SororAKS, ADN, RN · Apr 20, 2016

I graduated in 1988. To my knowledge, nurses didn't wear caps or white uniforms. Myself and most of the nurses I knew questioned doctors and spoke up. In many ways, from what i can see, many things haven't changed. What has changed is the corporate environment. There's much more of an emphasis on "working smarter, not harder" and "efficiency" than there was back then. There was much more of an emphasis on actually healing the patient and getting them ready to return home than there seems to be now. People are much more litigious now, there's much more emphasis on customer service and the all important surveys.

featherzRN, MSN · Apr 21, 2016

I graduated in 1988. To my knowledge, nurses didn't wear caps or white uniforms. Myself and most of the nurses I knew questioned doctors and spoke up. In many ways, from what i can see, many things haven't changed. What has changed is the corporate environment. There's much more of an emphasis on "working smarter, not harder" and "efficiency" than there was back then. There was much more of an emphasis on actually healing the patient and getting them ready to return home than there seems to be now. People are much more litigious now, there's much more emphasis on customer service and the all important surveys.

this is about when I started as well.. I spoke up, didn't wear a cap even in nursing school (although I did wear a white uniform until I got in ICU) and always wore gloves. We questioned docs plenty and I'd say I was probably even MORE autonomous then since we didn't have hospitalists to bother in the middle of the night. We did mix certain drips in the ICU, but other than that the equipment was similar (no sharpening needles, glass IV bottles, etc). The smoking thing is about the only thing I remember as being different and I'm really glad that's gone. :)

TNnursejane, BSN, RN · Apr 21, 2016

I graduated nursing school in 1981. I worked in ICU so we didn't wear our caps and wore scrubs supplied by the hospital. We did get coffee for our docs and gave up our seats for them. We worked 8 hour shifts through the week and 12 hr on the weekends. It was not unusual to work all three 8 hour shifts in one week then swap up 12 hour shifts every other weekend. That was when nurses and doctors could smoke and eat in the "back" the med room. We socialized more then I think than now. It wasn't unusual for some of the doctors and nurses to go out and socialize after work. But all the social stuff out of the way, we still advocated for our patients and questioned doctors on orders. I remember actually telling a physician "no" when he told me to just "PUSH" the versed and it wouldn't hurt the patient. I pushed it like it was supposed to be pushed - SLOWWWWW! But that being said, we didn't speak up as much as we do now. In nursing school, we were taught to respect the physicians. That's where the "GOD" complex came from I guess. The patients weren't as sick as they are now. The ones that they put in ICU now are the ones that were shipped to bigger facilities back then. The patients on med/surg floors now are the ones we had in ICU. Things are much different now! Good luck on your research!

hotwaterbottle · Apr 22, 2016

Interesting reading all the comments. I worked as a "nursing extern" one summer (1981) at a hospital down south while I was staying with my parents during break before senior year of nursing school. We wore a white dress (mine was above-the-knee; I'd purchased it at a store in Boston that seemed to have a lot of old stock and I hadn't realized that most of the dresses nurses were wearing were longer. I think the dress was from the 70s or maybe even 60s?) I also used to purchase these white pantyhose from that same store (during nursing school and for a few more years) that wore like iron. They too seemed to be older stock, judging by the photo on the package. While I was working as a nursing extern (which was like a nurse's aide with a few added duties, since we were all nsg students) I worked in oncology, postpartum, and nursery. I really loved nursery and babies so by the end I was allowed to choose my area and stay there. There were five rooms for healthy babies (there was a special-care nursery on another floor which I never saw) and I would be in charge of one room holding 12 newborns. There would be 2 nurses, one covering 2 rooms and one covering 3 rooms (always seemed unfair to me). But in each room, it was just the nurse's aide or nursing extern doing all the work. We had to weigh and measure all the babies when they were born, and give them their initial baths, and continue to do daily baths until discharge. We would bring them out to the mothers for feedings unless the mom wasn't up to it. I mostly worked night shift but if I worked 3-11 we'd put the babies in the window to be viewed by visitors. When I worked on the oncology floor, I remembered one man dying at age 30 and his wife was wailing so loudly that they shut all the fire doors on the unit. Sad. I also remember some male patient's brother asking me when I got my break (maybe due to the shorter dress I was wearing) and wanting to date me. There was also one pt who was so handsome that my knees were knocking when I took his blood pressure. Also, I remember in nursing school while doing my med-surg rotation on a neurology unit, I had a pt who was either a paraplegic or a quadraplegic and made some comments to me when I did his bed bath, that made me uncomfortable. For these reasons (plus mainly since I'd liked babies and kids since I was very young), I wanted to work with babies and kids as a nurse.

Since I already was very used to taking care of newborns from that previous job, I was able to get into a newborn nursery job after I graduated in the early 80s. It was a long commute, but it was the only job I was offered that squared with my interests. It was actually kind of hard to get into a specialty at that time, but ironically, I also had this new nursing home calling me and wanting me to be their DON as a new grad! That scared the heck out of me; having gone to a 4-yr baccalaureate program, I didn't feel I'd gotten nearly enough clinical experience, so I turned them down, although I felt bad because they seemed desperate.

The newborn nursery job was the easiest RN job I ever had, but after only 11 months, the unit turned into a mother-baby or "coupling" unit. I only did that for a couple of months, since I moved out of the area with my boyfriend.

I was then able to parlay my experience into working in a NICU, which was kinda my dream but also very scary. We had three parts, intensive, intermediate, and continuing care. There were secretaries in the intensive and intermediate areas, at least on days and eves, to help with orders and stuff. Plus an attached blood-gas lab. The neonatologists were pretty nice, and there were also med students rotating through. We'd heard of "HTLV III" while on my previous job, but didn't really start to deal with the AIDS issue until this job. We would have a lot of mothers who were IVDAs, sometimes knowing their HIV status and sometimes not. So if you got a needlestick from a baby belonging to one of these moms, it was pretty anxiety-producing. I always wore gloves while starting IVs, and when taking care of those babies would even wear them while feeding, since babies often spit up on my hands. And speaking of my hands, I got really bad eczema working there, due to the frequent hand-washing and the types of liquid soap they had. Once I had to take two weeks off from work because of a weeping mess on one hand.

I do remember that job was kind of "clique-y", and there were some nurses I was actually afraid of, but there were also a lot of ones who I enjoyed talkng to. And the management was very professional. And unfortunately, nurses were able to smoke in the break room. I usually ate my meals in there as the cafeteria was far away and I usually brought my own meal to save money. But people would be puffing away in the break room, which was a small room and the windows didn't open, and I did not enjoy that when I was pregnant.

I forgot to mention, in the newborn nursery job, we would change into these little white scrub dresses and put our clothes in a locker. So the hospital provided our uniforms. In NICU, we bought our own scrubs. The few times I was floated from NICU to labor and delivery, we changed into their scrubs and I remember the doctors up there were much more flirtatious--I remember one put his arm around me, which never happened in the NICU. The neonatologists were more like kindly pediatric types. Of course, there were no computers on the unit. There was no surfactant or ECMO--I heard that came a bit later but I'd quit in 1990 to take care of my kids for several years. Unlike what another commenter had said, we'd let parents hold babies even if they were on a vent, although that made me nervous. Really, I was always nervous about chest tubes or ET tubes being dislodged, so I preferred to work with the less severely ill kids. There were also "cuddlers", who were volunteers who were allowed to come in and just hold babies, which of course we didn't always have time to do.

One thing that stands out about that NICU job was that we always had plentiful supplies. You could stock your area next to your baby with needles, angiocaths, diapers, nipples, etc. each shift and we never had to spend time running around the facility looking for supplies as I did in my more recent jobs.

Catcar1963 · Apr 22, 2016

Workload less demanding? My first job in 1985 was on a Neuro floor at night. On a good night we had 4 nurses for 44 patients, but most nights we only had 3. By the time I saw my 15th patient and got back to the first, there were a few occasions when patient #1 was dead and in full rigor.

Midwest4me · Apr 22, 2016

I became a nurse in 1985. Yes, same core nursing tasks: patient advocacy, questioning MD orders when needed. Seemed we had more autonomy back then. As an LPN I answered to the RN of course but my delegation of tasks to CNA was more accepted where as these days my directions are ignored often; they "make sure with the RN." That's frustrating and demeaning. Wore a nursing cap the first year or so then it became obsolete. As an LPN in nursing homes many years ago, there were fewer RNs so we were definitely in charge.

I passed medications, performed treatments, delegated tasks to CNAs, did rounds with doctors. Many changes these past 31 years. Tired of nursing. Tired of the toxic, bullying environment. Anticipating retirement next year.

40yearsandcounting · Apr 22, 2016

Team nursing. This is how it looked in the mid to late 70's. We called our head nurse and supervisors, "Miss ..." So, naturally we called our doctors "Dr..." We did give up our chairs when a doc approached. They smoked at the nurses' station. I worked 3-11 and I typically worked with with one LPN (who was not allowed to give I.M. narcotics, which were all given either p.o. or I.M. back then, by the way) and we were responsible for 21 patients! Of course, the patients were nowhere near as sick as they are today. Many of today's patients who are on med-surg units, would have been in the ICU back then. I was a brand new nurse with a BSN and most of the other nurses were diploma grads, many had graduated from that hospital's school of nursing. They had no mercy on me! But by the end of the first year, I had gained their trust. Almost all rooms were semi-privates and we had two four-bed rooms, where Medicaid/Medicare patients were placed. Makes me cringe to think of that now. We tried very hard not to call any docs to clarify orders. Apparently they never made mistakes! I remember as med nurse, we would pour our meds into little paper cups that fit into a metal tray. Typically we balanced that tray on the edge of the sink in the med room because there was no counter space. Every now and then, it would tip over and and the whole tray would be lost! Good old days? No.

40yearsandcounting · Apr 22, 2016

I mixed chemo without gloves or apron and I was pregnant at the time! And amazingly, he is a normal almost 40-year old!