Lunchtime Follies

I'm convinced you can tell how long a nurse has been a nurse by their response to this question:

"Do you want to go to lunch?"

The novice nurse will tell you "No, I can't. I have charting/meds/dressing change/admission/discharge to do before I can go to lunch" the first four times asked.  Then, after being threatened with no lunch on the fifth time asked, this nurse will develop an apprehensive facial expression and finally hand over a clip board that rivals the thickness of that first med-surg textbook we had in nursing school, give a report so detailed it would allow the covering nurse to publish a biography of each patient, and, after a few more threats, walk hesitantly from the unit.

When asked if he/she wants to go to lunch, the experienced nurse will ask someone to take over doing compressions, throw a crumpled report sheet at the person who is covering, and run from the unit like a bat out of hell. 

Now a short quiz:

You return from lunch and the nurse covering for you looks surprised to see you and says "I guess they were okay.  Nobody called for anything."

This nurse is:

A. Novice
B. Experienced

Don't Be a Pill

I love a good pill-taker.  Doesn't it just make you happy when you take a medicine cup full of pills to a patient and they throw them back like a jigger of tequila on $1 shot night?  Don't you just want to hug that patient?  Sometimes I feel like skipping out of their room, it's such a nice treat.

I know swallowing pills is hard for some people (read: my husband) and I feel for them, but, seriously, it's  painful to give a patient 20 pills one-at-a-time. And they never just take the pill from you; they pass it from hand to hand, lay it down on the bedside table and pick it up again, think about taking the pill, ask you for more water, and, inevitably drop a couple on the floor so you have to start all over again. 

Taking pills should be a skill that is mastered before being allowed out of elementary school.

Thank you, good pill-takers, and consider yourself hugged.  This is me, skipping away...

Let Me Tell You A Story

You have to kind of feel for the family members of nurses.  We just aren't that interested when they get mildly hurt or a little bit sick.  "Hmmm.  Take some Tylenol" we respond when they tell us they have a headache/throatache/sore back. We have to see a LOT of blood before we get excited. "Don't bother me unless there's an actual arm or leg off" we say when the kids whine about a paper cut.  Little do they know that if there is an actual arm or leg off, we'd probably snap a few pictures of it and share it with our nurse friends before we sought medical help for it.

I won't reveal any names, but I have several nurse friends who blew off their child's complaints of arm pain for days, even weeks, before taking the kid to the doctor and finding out the arm was broken.  I'm not judging, mind you, it's just an observation.

It can be rough growing up as the child of nurse.  We've seen and heard too much, we know too many stories, we know what can happen in the blink of an eye.  Not only are we unimpressed with minor injuries but we won't let our kids do the stuff other kids do.

One of my nurse friends from PICU used to tell his kids stories about injuries he saw at work whenever they'd ask to do something or get caught doing something somewhat dangerous.  "Let me tell you a story..." he'd say, when the kids ran around the pool, got on their bikes without helmets, or wanted to play outside in a thunderstorm. 

I used to feel bad when my husband or kids told me they felt sorry for my patients because I'm obviously a very mean nurse, I won't even ooh and ahh over a scraped up knee or bruised finger.  Now I don't.  "I've seen worse", I say, "let me tell you a story..."

Say What?

Yesterday I took care of a patient who was VERY hard of hearing.  I had significant trouble communicating with him; as in, he had no idea what I was saying.  So this morning I did some research on what I could have done to make things better (yes, I know, a day late...).

It turns out I did virtually everything wrong. I yelled (talking loud actually distorts the sound and makes things worse), I stood too close, my pitch was too high, I talked too fast, and I did not wear bright red lipstick. 

Yep, the source* I looked to suggested that when teaching older adults with hearing loss, women wear bright red lipstick and men wear lip gloss.  Why should the guys wear lip gloss and not wear bright red lipstick?  I have no idea.  Apparently hearing impaired adults can only hear women with bright red lipstick and men with lip gloss.

* Bastable, S. B. (2008). Nurse as educator: principles of teaching and learning for nursing practice. (3^rd ed.). Syracuse, NY:  Jones and Bartlett

Do You Advertise?

When I'm out and about I get asked frequently if I'm a firefighter.  I'd like to think it's because I look so strong and fit, but it's actually because I tend to wear my husband's t-shirts and most of them have something to do with fire rescue.  I can't help myself, they're big and comfy and I'm a girl, we love to wear our guys' clothes.

I do have a couple of t-shirts that have hospital names on them, but nothing that advertises I'm the fact that I'm a nurse.  At my first job, a co-worker told me to be careful about displaying items such as my stethoscope in my car or wearing clothing that tells people I'm a nurse because people would think I had access to drugs and I was likely to get robbed.  Now that sounds kind of silly to me.  More likely, someone would realize I likely have a steady job and rob me.  Either idea is probably nuts, but the former must have stuck with me because I still don't have much that advertises the fact that I'm a nurse.

I don't think many nurses wear t-shirts or have vanity plates telling the world that we are nurses.  We get asked to play nurse by our family and neighbors often enough, we don't need strangers asking us to look at their rash.

For The Psych Nurses

Today I am grateful for psychiatric nurses.  I have no idea why you do what you do, but I appreciate that you take care of psychiatric patients.  Thank you.  God Bless You.

Isn't it great how there's something for everyone in nursing? 

I once worked with a nurse who's previous job was working on a unit called "Infected Ortho".  Can you imagine? I mean, you can see why those nurses who work at Club Med resorts go in, but there are actually nurses who willingly went to work each day and took care of patients on a unit called Infected Ortho!

There is a key to every lock, even in nursing.

Romance for Nurses Lives On

 

No need to worry that the only way you could read about the romantic lives of nurses in those vintage romance books. Romance for nurses is alive and well in contemporary literature!  Available in eBooks, too.

Why do they think that nurses are all involved with doctors?  Seriously, our co-dependent personalities very rarely let us fall for someone with a full time job.

Photos courtesy of Amazon.com