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How to Dress Like a Nurse

How to Dress Like a Nurse

Do you live for fashion? If so, a career in nursing may not be for you. Here’s a little fashion show of the funniest and least trendy get ups I’ve gotten to wear during my career as an RN.

The Nursing School Uniform

Now I don’t know about your nursing school, but my nursing school made us wear the most horrendous uniforms for our clinicals. Stark white and stiff, I felt like I was wearing a…

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Filling Your Cup

I read a meme on Facebook the other day that said “Health care is the only profession in which people break themselves in order to fix the broken”. This resonated with me on several levels. First, I thought of injuries inflicted upon nurses during our long shifts on the unit, whether it be back injuries from lifting heavy patients, accidental finger sticks from dirty needles, etc. But then I…

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Losing For Good

Over the last 8 months I’ve lost 40 pounds. This is the story of how I succeeded in my own weight loss journey.

How I Gained the Weight

As a child I was chubby. Seeing as this was during a time before social media and Netflix, I was active, and I spent much of my time outside playing ball with my brother and his friends. The chubbiness developed from my mom’s incredible (and I do mean INCREDIBLE)…

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5 Lies Nursing School Made Me Believe

5 Lies Nursing School Made Me Believe

Nursing school is intense. Day in and day out our nursing instructors drill information into our brains, convincing us that all nurses everywhere have somehow maintained all this knowledge and skill. Well I’m here today to squash that myth and share with you the top five lies I believed while in nursing school.

1. If a patient’s clean sheets touch my scrubs, the patient will die…

Similarly if my…

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Overcoming Mistakes

We all have a traumatic nursing story. It’s a mistake you made at work that will haunt you until the end of time. The problem with these traumatic accidents is that, if left unchecked, they can cause a serious lack of confidence in our nursing skills.

Let me explain.

During my traveling assignment in Arizona I had a patient who had a condition which required him to be straight cathed multiple…

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Nurse Bullies: The Silence Ends Now

Nurse Bullies: The Silence Ends Now

Have you ever been the victim of bullying on your nursing unit? If so, you’re not alone. Bullying among nurses has been a long time “tradition”, and has been engrained as part of nurse culture for far too long. The Joint Commission defines this phenomenon as follows:

Workplace bullying (also referred to as lateral or horizontal violence) is repeated, health-harming mistreatment of one or more…

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St Louis Arch

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When the doc orders 15 labs, an EKG, a bolus, 3 new antibiotics, and two scans and is pissed because all of that wasn’t completed in the past five minutes

Last time I checked I am not an octopus!

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“I didn’t become a nurse to get a front row seat to other people’s tragedies. I did it because I knew the world was bleeding and so was I, and somewhere inside I knew the only way to stop my own bleeding was to learn how to stop someone else’s.”

Nurse proverb (via jaysunshappyhour)

Beautiful

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Excerpt from A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, by Laurence Stern

I am of the sentimental category. What kind of traveler are you?

“Thus the whole circle of travelers may be reduced to the following heads: Idle Travelers, Inquisitive Travelers, Lying Travelers, Proud Travelers, Vain Travelers, Splenetic Travelers.

Then follow The Travelers of Necessity, The Delinquent and Felonious Traveler, The Unfortunate and Innocent Traveler, The Simple Traveler,

And last of all (if you please) The Sentimental Traveler, who have travel’d - as much out of necessity, and the besoin de voyager, as anyone in the class.”

Laurence Stern

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Explore with your pet

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Every time a nurse floats to my crazy busy unit for the first time

That one nurse to whom everything is an emergency...

Me:

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Continuity of  Care

Continuity of care. Something that is so important to the success of our health care system. There is so much more to patient care than many people realize. Coordinating  care between doctors, physician's assistants, therapists, nurses, nurse's assistants, charge nurses, house supervisors, case managers, discharge planners, social workers, ect is enough to make anyone's head spin. Not to mention taking everything that those people have worked at during dayshift and transitioning the care over to nightshift. Without respect and teamwork within the interdisciplinary teams the transition can be a disaster for patient outcomes.

I've been lucky enough in my two years of nursing to work equal amounts of time in dayshift and nightshift. What I've learned through the transition from being a noc nurse to a day walker is that continuity of care is important not only for the safety of the patients, but also for the sanity of the nurses.

I started out working on nightshift and I quickly developed a prejudice towards dayshift nurses. "You left me WHAT to do?" "What do you mean you didn't have time to clean up that patient?" "Why the hell aren't you're 6pm meds passed?" "Oh, you just didn't get around to calling that doctor and thought I would have time to do it just because I work nights?" And so on and so forth. Of course I never verbalized these questions, but it was always an inner dialogue with myself. After all, if I left anything for the dayshift nurses to do they would lose their cool real quick. However, as I grew in my professional role, I learned that having all of my task list completed before dayshift arrived not only made me look like an efficient nurse, but was also extremely helpful to the nurse who was resuming care of my patients, and they were much more likely to do the same in return. I soon developed a teamwork atmosphere about myself that I felt pouring into others on my unit. Transition of care flowed well, and for the most part, we were all happy to be working together.

Fast forward to my first travel assignment, again working the graveyard shift. Often understaffed and denied a CNA simply because we worked nights was a common occurrence at this facility. It left many night shift nurses bitter. "Dayshift gets TWO CNAs and TWO extra nurses to take care of the SAME number of patients! What bullshit!" So I discovered that it was a reoccurring event for the nightshift nurses to leave tasks for the dayshift nurses because they had "more help". And boy, oh boy, would they get mad. Nurses reporting nurses to management, writing people up for missing something on their documentation, failing to call a consult, leaving a patient's room messy. Everyone was always on edge and I could not wait to get out of there.

My next travel assignment was in Alaska working on dayshift (!!!). It was my first time working days and man, was it an eye opener. Dayshift nurses work HARD. Coordinating care in a manner incomprehensible to someone who has only worked nights. It was overwhelming. My task list for each patient was three pages long, my med pass took twice as long, my portable phone rang all day long and I often thought to myself "How will I ever get all of this done before nightshift gets here?"

And if I thought my unit in Alaska was busy, that was nothing compared to my current assignment here in Phoenix. The patient turnover rate is ridiculous, and on any given day I might discharge all 5 of my patients and admit 5 more before lunch. All while doing assessments, multiple neurovascular checks on fresh post-ops, carrying out doctors' orders, calling to clarify orders that are wrong or possibly dangerous, collaborating with PT and OT and ST and case management, delegating to my aides, comforting family members with cups of coffee, reassessing again, charting at five minute intervals, passing meds, passing pain medication, reassessing pain levels, pre-op checklists, consent forms, education, and calling all 10+ people involved in my patient's care to clarify that yes indeed they can be discharged from their care. It's been crazy, but I will say that my time management skills have quadrupled in efficiency.

However busy my days are, though, I always remember in the back of my head what it felt like to be a nightshift nurse. I always remember how mad I would get when the nurse I received report from would leave a task for me to do that should have been completed on her shift. So I rush, I worry, I frantically try to get EVERYTHING completely finished from my task list before nightshift arrives. On the days when everything goes right and I can deliver my patients in a clean comfy bed, all snuggled in fresh warm blankets with their lights dimmed and their pain under control, and fresh ice water in their pitcher, I feel like a super nurse. You're welcome. Glad to do it. But it's a rare occurrence. Most days my patients do not have fresh water. Most days they'll be due for pain medications right in the middle of shift change. Most days my patients look like a hot mess twisted all in their blankets, can't find their call light, and have an empty Kleenex box on their messy bedside table, because damn it to hell I just DIDN'T HAVE TIME. And most days here lately I've found myself saying in report "Oh, she's due for pain meds in 5 minutes, so I'll bring it to her before I leave," and "I see that IV bag is almost empty so I'll hang a new one before I clock out, " and "That doctor I paged never called me back so I'll page him again and get that order for you so you don't have to deal with it", and "Of course I'll get him a warm blanket when we finish report" and "Of course I'll finish that admission that got to the floor at 6:45pm so you don't have to"... of course I'll do this, of course I'll do that. Next thing I know I'm physically and mentally drained walking to my car at 8:30 at night, still feeling disappointed in myself for not having it all done an hour ago.

But I've realized something. It's called CONTINUITY OF CARE for a reason. Health care is a 24/7 job, not just a 12 hour shift. Leaving something for the next shift to complete for you does not mean that you are a bad nurse. It means you worked hard, you didn't have time to get to it, but now your shift is over and it's time to hand the reigns over into their capable hands and go home. It's something I really struggle with, on a daily basis. It's something I apologize for over and over again to the oncoming RN. It's something that I need to get over, because I may be a super nurse, but I'm not a miracle worker, and there's only so much that can be accomplished safely in a 12 hour shift.

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My Nursing Identity

When I decided to become a nurse, I just thought I would work in a hospital and do nursey things. I had no idea that two years down the road I would still be struggling with finding my own nursing identity. A year into my nursing career I knew something wasn't right. I was working at a small rural hospital (and by small I mean a 28 bed facility), and I felt as if my learning had plateaued. My knowledge should have been expanding at a rapid rate during this time, but instead I felt stuck. I wanted to learn more, I wanted to gain more experience. So I decided to become a traveling nurse. It was a scary jump to make, because I wasn't the kind of person to do something without a guarantee that it would work out in my favor. But I did it anyway, and it was the best decision I could have made for myself. Every few months I get to learn from new nurses, new doctors, and new facilities. My knowledge in the nursing field has grown ten-fold in the last year, and I credit that strictly to traveling. Although, since I started traveling with just one year of nursing experience, I have to work on Med-Surg/Ortho units at each hospital in which I am placed. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, because I've learned TONS, but I've always known that med-surg nursing is not what I want to do with the rest of my career. I want to save lives, and make a difference. I want someone to look at me and be able to say "because of you I was given a second chance to live". You just don't get that kind of satisfaction in MS nursing. Sure I can alleviate your pain, I can customize your care plan to give you the best outcomes, and I can advocate for your best interests... But if your life is really at stake, I'm not going to be the one to bring you back. That's left to the higher acuity nursing specialties. ICU, critical response teams, ER, trauma... Those are the kinds of fields I want to get into. But it's not possible while I'm traveling. So what's a girl to do? I'm absorbing every bit of knowledge I can while I'm on the road. I'm studying for the Med-Surg certification exam, because if I'm stuck doing this kind of nursing, I may as well become an expert at it. I'm fine tuning my resume in hopes that when I do decide to settle down in some currently unknown city, I will be hired into an ICU position. But most importantly, I'm learning to be content with my life, be proud of my accomplishments, and make the most out of every day that I am blessed with. We are all capable of reaching our dreams. Maybe not today or tomorrow, maybe not even a year or two from now, but with persistent dedication and a winning attitude we cannot be stopped from achieving our true potential.

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Exploring the Lower Antelope Canyon in Page, AZ.

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