Sarcasm and Stethoscopes

The musings of a float nurse

[peace-love-colbert]

The Daily Show | March 15, 2018

[neopetcemetery]

someone has waited their entire career to use this headline

[goopy-amethyst-deactivated20250]

Scientist should say something else

[piss-pirate]

This guy needs a raise

[copingnurse-deactivated20240217]

Patient’s family: “NURSE!!! HE COUGHED...” Me:

[studentmotherlife]

For those who are afraid to become a nurse because they have a weak stomach,

It won’t be the vomit or needles or blood or urine or feces that turns your stomach. You’ll get used to that. You’ll come to accept it’s just part of the job and get to the point where you’re thinking of the 38 different things you have to do while absentmindedly cleaning up a bowel movement.

What will turn your stomach will be 40 shallow breaths a minute in a patient in respiratory distress

A freshly born infant that is limp and blue and hasn’t cried yet

Tripled troponin levels on your sweating and anxious patient as you realize they’re having a heart attack

Feeling cord during a cervical check, then trying to hide from your patient the shaking in your voice as you call for help

The pale skin of a Jehovah’s Witness with a hemoglobin of 4 as she declines a blood transfusion and says goodbye to her family because they haven’t found the source of the bleed and she’s running out of time

A blood alcohol level of .18 on a 4 year old who is barely responsive and being intubated after getting drunk on mouthwash and then hitting his head

An elderly woman in the ICU signing her DNR while her sobbing daughter begs her to reconsider, knowing if treatment is stopped then her mother will die

A child in the pediatric ICU who hasn’t had a visitor in months

Not being able to find the heartbeat on a pregnant mom who hasn’t felt the baby move in a while

In the face of everything else that comes with being a nurse, I promise you’ll get used to the poop.

[sarcasticbabywhispererjess]

As a nursing student, what advice you'll give me for my clinicals? What do nurses like on a student? Stuff to do? Stuff not to do? Should I ask questions? Should I just try to stay out of the way? (I'm going to an ICU)

Sorry I took so long to answer… I wanted to give you a quality answer.

Stuff to do… Be helpful (don’t know what would be helpful, just ask). Ask questions. Let the nurse your with know up front what you can and cannot do. Don’t be afraid to be hands on. If your patients don’t have a lot going on, see if your nurse can get you in to watch some interesting procedures happening on the unit (if there are any… not every day is that exciting).

Stuff not to do… Ask questions that can wait until later if your nurse is in the weeds or the patient is trying to die. Refuse to help with “gross things” because “that’s the CNA’s job” (that’s 50% of the job at least sometimes… you’ll have to get over, or suck it up, your dislike of poop; I don’t love cleaning up another adult’s excrement, but it’s part of the job and we don’t have CNAs in my ICU). 

Hope that’s helpful and not too belated to be useful. 

Anything to add my fellow nurblrs?

[sarcasm-and-stethoscopes]

Be prepared going in to placement. Its frustrating dealing with 4th year students that don’t know basic meds.

Treat placement like a job, show up on time, be respectful. Don’t show up hungover.

Be helpful. Staff and managers remember students who answer bells and show initiative. Any placement is like a giant job interview, so don’t slack and make sure treat everyone with respect.

[copingnurse-deactivated20240217]

Me, when people ask what it’s like to work the holidays...

[sarcasm-and-stethoscopes]

Nursing Students when you tell them that you’re going to give them space and not hover

[sarcasm-and-stethoscopes]

Weighing my renal/CHF patient when we both know they haven’t been compliant with their fluid restriction

The scale doesn’t lie, unlike your intake and output record

[just-shower-thoughts]

The worst part about vomiting is not actually vomiting, it’s the 30 minutes before vomiting when you know your going to vomit but your body is teasing you with nausea

[nursingtheheart]

Switching between days and nights is killing my soul.

[tetraterezi]

Your manager blows and that company should be shut down.

[sense-ascendere]

This is very very common to nursing practice. We need staff 24/7, inconvenient or not.

[tetraterezi]

No we need to stop selling the information for nurses to be nurses.

If there was more nurses you could work shorter shifts

But profit is more important.

[nursingtheheart]

I mean…. This is how most nursing works in Ontario and I believe most of Canada. Which is public health not private. I would hate to have to work more shorter shifts in a week.

[sarcasm-and-stethoscopes]

Man, if I had to work 8 hour shifts my soul would bleed

[nursingtheheart]

can you imagine working 5 days a week 🤢

[sarcasm-and-stethoscopes]

I imagine I’d be miserable with a messy house and no groceries

[nursingtheheart]

Switching between days and nights is killing my soul.

[tetraterezi]

Your manager blows and that company should be shut down.

[sense-ascendere]

This is very very common to nursing practice. We need staff 24/7, inconvenient or not.

[tetraterezi]

No we need to stop selling the information for nurses to be nurses.

If there was more nurses you could work shorter shifts

But profit is more important.

[nursingtheheart]

I mean…. This is how most nursing works in Ontario and I believe most of Canada. Which is public health not private. I would hate to have to work more shorter shifts in a week.

[sarcasm-and-stethoscopes]

Man, if I had to work 8 hour shifts my soul would bleed

[sarcasm-and-stethoscopes]

Waiting for my shift to end like

[possuman-deactivated20180713]

why do 90% of all medicines sound like cool wizard names

[possuman-deactivated20180713]

it is i, Zyrtec the allmighty,

[possuman-deactivated20180713]

you are no match for Xanax the Wise

[sasstricbypass]

viagra 

[caringintensely]

And don’t forget Lord Catapres, whose talents include facilitating coping with ADHD, PTSD, Tourette’s syndrome and facial tics, along with lowering blood pressure (not very well, though. But he’s cute.)

[melonmemes]

[aestheticalspace]

A sand pendulum that creates a beautiful pattern only by its movement.

But  why does the ellipse change shape?

The pattern gets smaller because energy is not conserved (and in fact decreases) in the system. The mass in the pendulum gets smaller and the center of mass lowers as a function of time. Easy as that, an amazing pattern arises through the laws of physics.

[sarcasm-and-stethoscopes]

When my student takes the whole assignment and I’m just there for backup

[sarcasm-and-stethoscopes]

Starting a work stretch on a Saturday sucks. Ugh, at least I have my student with me. He’s really hitting his stride, so it’s less teaching, more me encouraging him that he doesn’t need me for everything.