Published
Saw this on a Facebook group.... funny, but SO true...
You know you are a NICU nurse when...
1. You've eaten hamburger patties bigger than most of your patients
2. You define colors by the color of stool you've seen- i.e. baby poop green/yellow
3. You don't understand why talking about sticking a needle in a baby's head is making other people at the dinner table ill
4. At one time or another have had breast milk, poop or urine on your work clothes
5. You have affectionately called a patient cletus the fetus, wimpy white boy, troll or FLK (funny lookin' kid) in report
6. You can change your patient's bed linens with one hand while holding your patient in the other
7. You can make an IV arm board out of some 4x4 gauze and tape
8. You've almost caught your hair on fire while in your patient's bed...a.k.a. radiant warmer
9. You've used a sock or a piece of tape for a restraint
10. You check out the scalp veins, cap refill and fontanels on a friend's new baby
11. You use a cotton ball to obtain urine samples
12. You use saran wrap to keep your food fresh and your patient's warm
13. You think all crying babies need benadryl, versed or intubation
14. You think the pulse oximeter, CPAP and those crappy no sticking leads were created by the devil
15. You have ever shown a doctor a green residual while they were eating
16. You have obtained a 10cc residual when the patient only gets 1cc
17. You have put an intensive care patient in a swing
18. You don't get excited if your patient has a heart rate of 180
19. You do chest compressions with two fingers
20. Most of your meds come in TB/1cc syringes
21. You prepare your patient's bath water in a Dixie cup
22. You draw blood from your patient's heel
23. You use a rubber band for a tourniquet
24. You've seen two complexes on EKG screen and not been excited-you merely pat your patient on the butt and it's all good
25. Newborn babies look like preschoolers to you
26. You tell people what you do and they think you sit around and rock babies all day
27. When you tell people what you really do they start to cry and/or vomit
28. You have assisted with surgery on your patient in their bed and on the unit
29. You have at one time or another in the heat of frustration threatened to throw your patient in the trash can
30. You have considered using duct tape to hold a pacifier in a screaming baby's mouth
31. You have met your patient's father, mother's boyfriend, and husband all in one day
32. You have made a mental note that no matter how stupid people are they still know how to get their groove on
Hmm, our 8th floor windows don't open either. But there is always the pneumatic tube system with it's 1 kilo weight limit!
There HAVE been times when I'm so mad at pharmacy or the lab, and they have the gall to ask for a tube, to send them one with a nice, stinky Pregestemil diaper tucked inside....
I have noticed that working in the NICU I use my nose a lot. You can tell what a kid may be growing by the way they smell and you know what they are eating by the way their diapers smell.
I sometimes laugh when I am charting a diaper change. I never knew that 50K and 4 years of college would qualify me to examine baby poop with an eagle eye and to know when to show it to others.
woman, i am going to hunt you down. you earwormed me!
sorry :sofahider; but i do hate to suffer alone . . .
or you ever get breastmilk in your eye. been in the nicu over 2 years now and that happened to me last night for the first (and hopefully the last) time :barf01:
got a urine shower the other day, myself, from a bitty girl, no less. how she managed that, i don't know. fortunately it was near the end of the shift and i went home and took a looong shower, but i couldn't help thinking that if the same thing had happened with a grown-up patient, i'd have stripped right down and had the hazmat team set up a shower right there on the spot :chuckle.
Thanks Steve for your post...I loved it and sent it to all my NICU co-workers
I would add that for all the years I have been doing this, every once in a while you get the reward of seeing your little pts out and about, for instance I was in Walmart yesterday and saw a kid I helped care for last year. When I spoke to him he grinned from ear to ear--such a beautiful smile...he doesn't remember all the bad stuff he had to go through and he just smiled so sweetly that I just about had to cry right then and there:) Of course mom had to give me a great big hug as well and it's very nice to get to see that other side of the sick babies...makes it all worth while!!
When you don't assess strangers' veins, like all the other nurses, but you *do* estimate the gestational age of every pregnant woman you see just in case they deliver right in front of you.Further, when your pregnant friends hit 28 weeks you relax, because that's practically term, right?
When you see no problem with cussing out a newborn who won't eat/pooped on you/puked on you/won't stop crying/won't give up a measly drop of blood for a Dextrostick, as long as you do it softly and in a sweet nursery-rhyme voice. Hey, they don't know the difference!
So very, very true! I'm not even sure when I started doing that first one quoted up there... I just suddenly found myself guesstimating such things one day!
I love it!
-You've discovered the therapeutic value of pointing and glaring at your twitty preemie.
-"twitty" is an acceptable adjective to use in describing the overall status of your patient during rounds, as is "twitchy"
And I don't know about you all but I constantly hold my children's hands in such a way that I can assess their radial pulses.
prmenrs, RN
4,565 Posts
"...But there is always the pneumatic tube system with it's 1 kilo weight limit!..."
Snort! Sure glad I wasn't drinking anything...