When we were younger new flegling nurses :D

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Following on from a thread we appear to have hijacked regarding nursing many moons ago and how we remember things done. Have started this thead :D

Right what I remember when training and qualifying in the 1980's

Hiding when consultant came onto the ward

Eating breakfast in the toilet

Enough people on the ward to ensure all care was given and time to talk to patients

Bed pan rounds (didn't do the pans piled on trolley tho)

Pressure rounds (set trolley at set times checking patients pressure areas)

O2 on pressure sores

trial on using maggots on wounds

Tidy clean wards

Right anyone else :lol_hitti

Specializes in Med/Surg/Ortho/HH/Radiology-Now Retired.
manual handling, australian lift, 2 people lifting patients up the bed when really should use more people, although now you use the hoist.

the very reason many of us older nurses have such bad back problems! no hoist's in 'those' days! we used our bodies as crane's!

and.............

"weekend" cleaning! :uhoh21: :rolleyes: so called because we did it on.... yep, the weekend! lol wheels on the beds, overway, bedside locker's! imagine young nurses,- any nurse!- doing that today! lol

living in the nurses quarters! something i think today's nurses miss out on. we had some memorable and fun times.

washing and re-using bandages! true! in 1967 in the australian outback, we used to wash, by hand mostly!, while on night duty, bandages which were suitable for re-use.

collecting all the thermometer's, (the old mercury/glass ones), in a glass jar from the little holder on the pt's bed and soaking them (all together), in a pink disinfectant. can't recall the name of it now.

and/or .............. doing the obs (observations) rounds carrying the thermometers (all of them) in a jar filled with same solution! after you took a pts temp, you placed the thermometer back into the jar with all the others! with each pt you just took any thermometer from the jar and popped it into the pt's mouth! wiping it with an alcohol swab of course! can you even try and imagine doing that thesedays??!!! lol

oh my! i am showing my age here now! those were the days ..... not! lol

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Specializes in Medical and general practice now LTC.

there were the days

I remember doing that with the thermometers :) and I do have a bit of a bad back from all the lifting.

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Specializes in med/surg.

Those dressing packs that had cotton wool balls (!!!), & green & red forceps - red for dirty & green for clean!!

Oh & I do remember silastic foam - it was state of the art for cavity wounds!! Haven't seen it though since I did my return to nursing last year. We used to remove it daily, wash it in that pink stuff you got in normasol type sachets - then replace it until it didn't fit correctly anymore then you'd mix up a new pot. It was really cool stuff to make!!

I remember the senior staff nurse I worked with, who stood at the end of each patients bed in the morning & asked, at the top of her Irish accented voice, if they had had their bowels opened yet.

Our thermometers were kept in plastic containers by each bed & cleaned in-between patients. You'd wipe them with an alcohol swab before each use too.

In may last job & my current job we do weekend cleaning. Though where I am now that doesn't involve patient areas but we do have to check all the lights, call bells, bed brakes/control, O2 & suction. However, I have to say that it's usually done on a Sunday late when we can have as few as 5 patients in the ward!

No poo machine in the USA???? They don't know what they're missing!! Perhaps someone from the UK should get a rep to talk to them! Hehehe!!

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Specializes in midwifery, ophthalmics, general practice.

oh yes weekend cleaning... if you really upset sister, you could find yourself doing all the really rotten jobs! all areas of the ward were included.. strip down the patient beside cabinets and clean them, clean the bowls... if it didnt move, we cleaned it!!

back rounds.. done every 2hrs if you could manage it. we would have died of shame if a patient went home with a pressure sore.

taking all the flowers out of the ward at night time and having to label them so we gave them back to the right patients in the morning

being sent for a 'long wait' or sending a silly student for 'fallopian tubes' from theatre

yes.. living in the nurses home and having some amazing parties!! also going to some amazing parties at police stations and fire stations!! blue watch at greenwich fire station.... hmm better not say any more!!

having to work out insulin carefully...

working 10 days to earn a weekend off...

working 10 nights on a trot to get a week off..

being terrified of sister.. and the staff nurses! having enough staff on the wards to give good patient care..

Karen

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Specializes in med/surg.

I remember that I couldn't wait to be a staff nurse so that I didn't have to do so much work!!

Students ran the wards while the staff sat in the office & smoked & drank tea/coffee! They only emerged for ward rounds, drug rounds & to help with the more difficult dressings.

By the time I qualified it was already changing & now there are no students to run the wards - they're all "supernumerary"!!

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Specializes in RN, BSN, CHDN.
I remember that I couldn't wait to be a staff nurse so that I didn't have to do so much work!!

Students ran the wards while the staff sat in the office & smoked & drank tea/coffee! They only emerged for ward rounds, drug rounds & to help with the more difficult dressings.

By the time I qualified it was already changing & now there are no students to run the wards - they're all "supernumerary"!!

This happened to me too, when I was a student the staff nurses never did a tap-then when I qualified the bloody students never did a tap:uhoh21:

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Specializes in med/surg.
This happened to me too, when I was a student the staff nurses never did a tap-then when I qualified the bloody students never did a tap:uhoh21:

:lol2::lol2::lol2:

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Specializes in Advanced Practice, surgery.

Ohhhh this is bringing back so many memories, Madwife you are quite right we used to run the ward from our 2nd year then as soon as I qualified students became truly supernumery.

I remember on my first ward after qualifying asking a student to help me with feeding some patients and her telling me that she had to go and read some books, I asked how she would learn the practical elements of nursing so she told me that because she would be degree nurse when she qualified she would be better suited to managment than us old fashioned trained nurses :lol2: :lol2: :lol2:

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Specializes in Medical and general practice now LTC.

I remember on medical wards the students ran but always saw sister and staff nurses working on surgery. The only time a student on surgery took charge was when they was doing their management assessment

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Specializes in ICU, Haemodialysis, acute medicine and s.

Some of these bring back memories

I qualified with a nursing degree in 1997, in this day Nursing degrees were not the norm and we were completely seperate from the school of nursing, we wore different uniforms and lived in with the regular uni students and we had no bursary, we got a grant and a student loan like all other uni students. I remember being tret quite badly on some wards because they did not like degree nurses and thought we only wanted to go into management, I guess some of my colleagues did but the only reason i did a degree was my parents wanted me to go to uni and i had the A-levels so went for it. So glad i did now.

I remember the mercury thermometers and the pink solution, and having to pick up the mercury with a syringe when you dropped one.

I remeber not being able to call other memebers of staff by the first names, it had to be sister watson, staff nurse Jones etc.

I also remember back rounds and the back trolley and the whole general task orientated way of working rather than the individual patient care theory.

I've only lived in Scotland for 18 months and notice that all wards and hospitals up here have disposable bed pans, but it certainly wasn't the case back in Hull, where we still had metal bed pans or plastic slipper pans which went through a traditional bed pan washer (which inevitably broke down every week, leaving you to scrub the pans yourself)

Does anywhere still use Virkon? we used it for everything back in Hull, I had 6 months off and went back to nursing in Scotland and they don't use it and haven't heard of it.

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Specializes in ER.

Anyone remember silastic foam bungs are they still around

Is that like a medical bong?:idea:

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Specializes in Advanced Practice, surgery.

:lol2::lol2:nope not a medical bong it came in a tub which you mixed together, I think then you poured the liquid into a wound cavity it filled the cavity. you took it out and washed it every day until it no longer fitted the cavity. Then repeated the process all over again. THats what I remember although it was over 15 years ago

Great stuff not sure about the evidence around it though.

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