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:

I remember eating my lunch in the parking ramp between test sections. Those were two very stressful days! Also, checking the mailbox every day for three months until I found out that I had passed the boards. :uhoh3: ;)

lol i hink ill take theh 2 dyasa as stresfull as it was - i am NO good at this computer after all these yrs and i would be dying trying to type anything - especially if there were essays - then itd take me 2 days anyhow roflam

Specializes in Brain injury,vent,peds ,geriatrics,home.

Thanks Sonnyjohn for the interesting info on nurses caps.I kinda miss them although only wore them in nursing school.I know a few guys think thier HOT.

rofl!! i havent thought of many of these in years...

milk and molasses enemas slowly heated on the stove...and administered to the patient

bath thermometers:confused:

your hair had to be off the collar:devil:

no socks allowed........white hose only!

the shift supervisor on nights had to approve any phone calls made to md's..even if the patient was coding!

those werent the days my friend!

I was a student in 1973! We HAD to wear caps, white hose & clinic "nursing " shoes. I remember carring metal "tubexes," so we could find one,for "htpos", glass meniscus cups, for titrating all your meds, ekg's that burned your fingers, if the needle burned the paper, & got stuck, AND bedsore/ decubitus treatment of "sugar" put directly into the wound , with a heat lamp, apparently it would not grow some bacteria, I don't remember, BUT it did work! I am 58 yrs. old. Go OLD nurses!

Before plastic tubing , they used red rubber tubing , for everything! .

Specializes in Alzheimer's, Geriatrics, Chem. Dep..
In 1991 when my DW was sitting for her exams, I made a tailgate lunch on both days for her and her buddies. I could see the strain on her and am so glad that I was able to test on the computer in just 1 hour and ten minutes. And only had to answer 75 questions,AND knew the results in just 48 hours.

What a sweetie you were!

So now you are an RN? You can probably request a name change? I think...

Congratulations!

Specializes in Alzheimer's, Geriatrics, Chem. Dep..
while the Challenger exploded. It's one of those things you always remember what you were doing when...

Oh my gosh yes ... I remember my brother-in-law freaking out - I was living with them at the time. I couldn't believe it...

So, as older nurses, we have seen history made, both in medicine and nursing, and in the world.

I will always remember, though, this "green bean" (brand new) RN, BSN, who could run circles around everyone else - very impressive. Kudos to you new nurses who have to learn SO MUCH in so little time! Whereas those of us who've been around got to learn it more gradually.

Just a little BTW I thought I would throw in there...

Specializes in Alzheimer's, Geriatrics, Chem. Dep..
I took my boards in Pennsylvania in July 1976. 2 days of written tests and you had to wait at least 6 weeks for the results. And you got scores for all the specialties, not one meshed score. We were allowed to work as Graduate nurses then b/c there was such a long wait for the results. I just finished NP school and took the boards this summer. Took them on computer and got the results within one week. I passed by the way. Well, it's funny reminiscing about the good ole days. And remember there was no such thing as the Baylor program, or 12 hr shifts. Much less flexibility back then.

Congratulations on your NP!! Woot!

Specializes in General.
1. You stood when the doctor came in the station/floor. (OK, I'm really not that old, but my supervisor was and she made me do it.)

2. You carried (or rolled) the Kardex along behind the doctors when they made rounds.

3. You had all the meds written on little cards that you put in a slot on a rolling med tray, above a cup that had all the pills in it.

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?)

5. No unit dose. Big jars of pills, from which you dispensed.

6. Resharpening needles (no, I'm not that old, either. But we had a class that included the arcane skills in it because I went to school in the south and some grads ended up in rural areas.)

7. How to sterilize a surgical pack in an oven. (See above class)

8. Making up sugical packs.

9. Mercury thermometers.

10. Pharmacy closed on nights, supervisor carried the keys.

11. Seconal and Nembutal. Everyone got one of those each HS.

13. Before cimetidine was invented... 30 ml of heavy cream, 30 ml of maalox alternated every two hours.

14. Iced saline lavages to stop GI bleeds.

15. No IV pumps. You had it memorized: 8 hr bottle (and yes, they were bottles) = 125 ml/hr, 12 hrs = 80 ish mls/hr, 6 hr bottle = 166 ish/hr. and you knew the gtts/min because you knew the manufacturer of the gtt chamber. An Abbott chamber 8 hour bottle ran at 31 gtts/min.

16. No hand-held calculators. I and O, med doses... everything long hand.

17. Early volume cycle ventilators had no PEEP. You stuck the expiratory hose into a big jar of water with a ruler attached so you knew how many cm/water pressure PEEP you were creating.

Could we go on and on or WHAT???

What about when the head nurse was "Matron"

Specializes in Alzheimer's, Geriatrics, Chem. Dep..
What about when the head nurse was "Matron"

Don't remember that but I do remember that the head nurses and supervisors were SCARY PEOPLE! ha ha ha!

Vacuum tube system (like the ones at the drive-thru at the bank where you put the papers in the box and push it up) for Pharmacy orders; so high tech at the time! Maalox and baby food to decubs and excoriated GT sites, heat lamp to sacral decubs w/ butt cheek taped to side rail if necessary. We still clean inner cannulas w/ peroxide and little brush; only now it all comes in a nice little trach care kit. Charting done in blue for 7-3, black for 3-11 and green for 11-7. Backrubs w/ lotion @ HS. Bright orange DNR stickers right next to pt's name on the door to their room- weirdly morbid.

the ole metal tubex..........didnt we fight over those like crazy??

and the hot ekg paper.been burned many times....and yes i rem the s&a's got burned on that test tube sev times till i learned how to hold it rite....some of these things i havent thought of in yrs....and before yall think i was working in the total * dark ages * i graduated nursing school in 1974.and am only 52 yrs olds...a babyboomer nurse!

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