You Know You're an Old(er) Nurse If . . .

Nurses General Nursing

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You know you're an older nurse if:

1. You remember working with nurses who wore caps. :nurse:

2. You remember nurses (and doctors) sitting at the nurses station drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes while charting. :smokin:

3. You remember when charting was done (handwritten) in 3 different colors (black or blue for day shift, green for evening shifts, red for night shift).

4. You remember when IV fluids came only in glass bottles.

5. You remember when breast milk wasn't a biohazard. :redlight:

6. You remember when chest tube setups consisted of glass bottles, rubber stoppers, and tubing.

7. You remember when white polyester uniforms were the standard for nurses.

8. You remember when you'd have given your eye teeth for a comfortable pair of nursing shoes (we haven't always been able to wear athletic shoes).

9. You remember when the hospital's top nurse was the director of nursing and not the chief nursing officer.

10. You remember giving lots of IM shots for pre-ops and pain meds.

What else?

HollyVK (with patient care experience going back to 1972) :gandalf:

Specializes in Trauma, Teaching.

When all the supplies from toothbrushes to packs of gauze to angiocaths had yellow stickers on them, to be place on the patient's card at the doorway, so they'd get charged for them

bedpan hoppers

Specializes in O.R., ED, M/S.

I must be "OLD" because I remember most of these! Just keep repeating over and over, "Retirement is only 8 years away"!

New grad at report didn't know what "coca-cola urine was". (Maybe this is a Southern thing...) Told him to take the foley bag and shake it vigorously. If it foams, it's bile.

Thought I was a friggin' genius. Nope. Just old.

Anyone remember milk augar tubes taped to the headboard of the beds in Gyn. Incomplete abortion... get an endometrial culture. Stick it in the augar and cap it... If the cork blows, it's gas forming bacteria and the the woman gets an emergency hysterectomy. (This was something the "house officers" did, not the nurses. But you're still talking primitive here.)

Specializes in CCU,ICU,ER retired.

I remember all of this and now I am just sobbing (LOL) When did I get this old somebody needs to tell me before I forget again!!!

How about crash carts that weighed over 100 lbs and were a mechanics work tool rolling cabinets and defibrillators that needed gel and had to be punched down to work

- beds that raised and lowered with cranks that always stuck out just enough to smack into your shins.

- Nurses not being allowed to start IVs

- cloth diapers in the nursery

As for the ones already mentioned, I remember getting in trouble for wanting to wear gloves for cleaning a really horrible breast tumour wound (not a sterile dressing), I remember bottle IV fluids although we were switching to bags as I started, as for Gomcos- we still have them!

So many of the posts brought back memories, although I am post-cap days.

geesh, in long term care, we still have keys....if you are "sup and a wing" you could do a mild weight lifting program; and we still hand crank most beds!!!!but plenty of gloves,.....many of the things mentioned, i do remember....when a med CLOSET, was just that.....the little aluminum tray with the holes for the med cups, and slots for name cards...no unit dose..maalox on decubiti.....not using gloves for much of anythng , caps, whites......hmmm

on our long-term care unit we're still cranking some beds by hand. yes, in 2006. some beds still have knobs that protrude out the side and hurt a lot even though they're usually padded in electrical or duct tape.

Specializes in ER.

All IV's were metal butterfly types, left in until they infiltrated. Long arm boards to keep arms immobilized.

No IV pumps. Strips of tape along the numbers on the bags or bottles of fluids with the time up at the top, time to come down at the bottom and every hour in between so you could check to see if they were on time. Yep...28 drops per minute for those 8 hour bags.

Milk and molasses enemas. Never could enjoy molasses on my pancakes after that!

No gloves because it would cause a patient to have a poor body image if you wore them to clean them up.

HIV was called GRID.

Nurses ran the flouroscopy while inserting Swan Ganz catheters in the ICU after assembling the "Paley manifold" by hand from sterile supplies.

Having an autoclave in the ER to sterilize our own instruments, bedpans and urinals, and glass syringes. Yes, the nurses washed the instruments, packaged and autoclaved them.

There were not ER's or ICU's in every hospital.

All back surgery patients were log rolled for days and not allowed out of bed for even longer.

Incentive spirometers consisted of a mouth piece from an IPPB treatment rubberbanded to a glove. The patient had to blow up the glove every two hours post op.

Nurses not only stood when the doctor entered the room, but gave up her seat and got his coffee, just before following him down the hall with an arm full of charts taking verbal orders on each patient.

Took care of a few bedsores with maalox and heat lamps.

Having a bald spot on the top of my head from the little cotton ball you bobbie pinned to your head to secure your cap.

Unfolding your cap periodically to clean and restarch the cap.

"Clinic" shoes were the standard, polished and buffed every night.

Milking chest tubes every 2 hours.

Yes, smoking in the nurses lounge. Smelled like a highschool bathroom in there. Even if you didn't smoke, you were covered in it.

All lab, x-ray requisitions were hand written slips put in the bag with the specimen. No computers on the unit at all.

Patients given little bells to ring because there was not call system.

TV's were 5 inch screen and the patient had to pay to have one in their room. Phones were also rental items if available at all.

Each patient room did not have a bathroom, but the patient was wheeled down the hall to the bathroom/shower.

Beds were not made everyday, but every 3rd day if not soiled.

Potassium, saline and sterile water were all kept in the med room in bulk. Potassium with yellow caps, NS with green and water pink. No room for error there!

Nurses mixed all their meds. KCL never went on a pump, dial a flows were a luxury if you could find them.

You treated low blood pressure with Aramine.

Masks were special order items, you never wore them to suction patients.

Trach care took forever as you had to take out the metal cannula, soak in peroxide, clean the middle with pipe cleaners, change the strap with new twill tape hoping you didn't pull it out.

Central line?? What was a central line?

Patients checked into the hospital for "physicals", exhaustion, or because the family needed a break from taking care of mama.

Everybody got valium, mothers little helper.

People went to their private physician office for broken bones, lacerations and everything else because there was no ER.

Family doctors delivered babies.

I am sure I will rememember more, but these are bringing back memories, and not all of them bad!

Specializes in midwifery, gen surgical, community.

Treating pressure sore with egg white and oxygen.

:o

When all the supplies from toothbrushes to packs of gauze to angiocaths had yellow stickers on them, to be place on the patient's card at the doorway, so they'd get charged for them

bedpan hoppers

Both the stickers and the hoppers are still around some places. So are the old hand crank beds.

4. Narcotic lockers and keys. (Ever go home with the Narc keys in your pocket and had a sherriff's deputy come to your house to pick them up? Remember the multi-dose bottles of morphine and you kept track of the volume used by putting a strip of tape on it and marking it at each shift change?)

Big jars of pills, from which you dispensed.

These things are still going on in a lot of facilities (I'm a traveler).

I have gone home w/ the keys in my pocket. No one sent the cops, though. I discovered them myself and sheepishly brought them back to work (I've done this twice).:smackingf

Anyone remember using Mylanta or Maloxx to "paint" the skin of a person with an adhesive allergy, so as to be able to use the offending adhesive on the allergic pt without getting a reaction?

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