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:

Uh oh, I remember most of these things. But even more frightening IM STILL NURSING!!! AND STILL LOVING IT!!!!

Saz4370

What wonderful stuff. Yes, I must be an older Nurse, for I remember all that.

So glad things have changed for the better, but we older Nurses can nurse cook book style and do our own math if need be. Can calculate dropps per minute if the power goes out etc.

Best wishes to all the young Nurses.

macspuds

wow...lots of memories. anyone go to a catholic nursing school?...now that was something i'll never forget. also, as a student you never used the elevator, you used the stairs. only walked down the right side of the hallway. giving insulin coverage to a diabetic based on a urine dipstick with orders written like "2 units for 1+, 5 units for 3+, etc....." passing meds for a 40 bed medical/surgical floor....administering blood with blood warmers that consisted of a coil that you placed in a basin of warm water, stricker frames before there were halo braces, using finger cots to give suppositories yuk!!....yea the list can go on and on......lol

So funny when we get british patients asking for the "matron". The who?

Okay so this is what the heck a tubex is/was, I had to google it.

istockphoto_411916_tubex_injection_device_2.jpg

the ole stricker frames..........had to make sure the locks were locked tight.said a prayer and then turned those poor ppl.................quickly!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and said a huge thank god that they werent flipped out of the frame:uhoh21:

Specializes in Alzheimer's, Geriatrics, Chem. Dep..
wow...lots of memories. anyone go to a catholic nursing school?...now that was something i'll never forget. also, as a student you never used the elevator, you used the stairs. only walked down the right side of the hallway. giving insulin coverage to a diabetic based on a urine dipstick with orders written like "2 units for 1+, 5 units for 3+, etc....." passing meds for a 40 bed medical/surgical floor....administering blood with blood warmers that consisted of a coil that you placed in a basin of warm water, stricker frames before there were halo braces, using finger cots to give suppositories yuk!!....yea the list can go on and on......lol

catholic nursing school, oh yeah! (rolling my eyes) - but - it was a good school ..

multi tatoos and piercings of ear,tongue,eyebrow,nose,etc weren't seen

Specializes in TRAUMA,TRANSPLANT,CARDIOTHORACIC.

Didn;t think I was this old....mast trousers,hockey helmets for adult siezure patients,pre-op "nipples to knees' shave for everyone,putting out occasional fires from patients on O2 smoking in bed...making sure all the bedpans were off the patients trays before the Father gave morning communion...always having 2 Budweisers in the med room fridge for the pateints with bad DT'S ,worked wonders..caught many a resident getting into the beers and making them go out and buy new ones before narc count....remember throwing the narc keys in the woods(twice)on the way home,too tired to drive back the 26 miles back...flippin ortho patients every 6 hours no matter what...feeding patents their own bile back,would mix it in coca cola....using a magic marker and tape measure to kep trakc of abdominal distention...catscans that last 30 minutes...had more than a few codes in the scanner..the old glass bottle chest tube setups breaking when they got pushed under the bed and the bed got lowered...no air conditioning on the surgical floors,just the ICU's and that was because it kept the equipment cool...ostomy care at 4pm in July was a real treat..foot tents to keep the covers off the toes....I remember how we would 'whisper" and "check out" a patient with tatoos..especially female patients, in my ICU now,I think I'm the only nurse without a tattoo and I'm a guy and a Navy vet...

....remember throwing the narc keys in the woods(twice)on the way home,too tired to drive back the 26 miles back...

..feeding patents their own bile back,would mix it in coca cola....

Curious, why did you have to feed them the bile back?

Did you throw away the keys so you would not get in trouble? Didn't they have to change the locks? Did they have a second set for the shift that was on duty?

... this is a great thread....

Specializes in Alzheimer's, Geriatrics, Chem. Dep..
...caught many a resident getting into the beers and making them go out and buy new ones before narc count....remember throwing the narc keys in the woods(twice)on the way home,too tired to drive back the 26 miles back...feeding patents their own bile back,would mix it in coca cola..the old glass bottle chest tube setups breaking when they got pushed under the bed and the bed got lowered......ostomy care at 4pm in July was a real treat..

Comments, in order:

You mean resident MD's? "to help them sleep"?

Throwing the keys? Nawww... no way!

Feeding patients back bile? Well I do remember aspirating bile from a Salem sump tube, and re-instilling it. Sounds gross-er when you tell it... You don't mean feeding by MOUTH I HOPE!

The glass bottles breaking under the bed when it was lowered? I can see how it could happen - what a mess - and bet that wasn't too great for the patient -

Ostomy care -- At ANY hour is a "real" treat... bwoot...

Specializes in TRAUMA,TRANSPLANT,CARDIOTHORACIC.

I never quite understood the bile thing...it had just stopped when I got into nursing,I've had older patients tell me about from time to time...ahhhhh..the keys..they always had backups....and as wrong as it was to throw the damn things in the woods..I was younger then and doing back to back 12's with a one hour trip each way...so exhausted at the end of a shift,I just couldn;t go back...I did drive back a few times to deliver the keys...that's when i found out they had "sets' of new ones all set to go...told this by one of the veteran nurses...in honesty(no pun)probably the only dishonest thing I did in nursing,went to an excellant Catholic nursing school, and to this day those Nuns are still sitting on my shoulder...the hospital soon went to a numbered lock system after 2 men in stolen lab coats picked the med room ock in borad daylight and cleaned the whole thing out...

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