It's like being a midwife, but for leaving here.

Hospice RN. No one gets out of this alive, so live like a badass until the very last day.

[npr]

Bernard Valencia’s room in the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial Medical Center in Loma Linda, Calif., illustrates how hospitals across the country could fight a nationwide epidemic. As soon as you enter the room, you can see one of the main strategies: A hook hangs from a metal track that runs across the ceiling.

This isn’t some bizarre way of fighting hospital-acquired infections or preventing the staff from getting needle sticks. The contraption is a ceiling hoist designed to lift and move patients with a motor instead of muscle.

As NPR has reported in our investigative series Injured Nurses, nursing employees suffer more debilitating back and other injuries than almost any other occupation — and they get those injuries mainly from doing the everyday tasks of lifting and moving patients.

But the Loma Linda hospital is part of a nationwide health care system that is proving hospitals can dramatically reduce the rate of injuries caused by lifting — if administrators are willing to invest the time and money.

The name of the system might surprise you. It’s the VA — the Department of Veterans Affairs.

At VA Hospitals, Training And Technology Reduce Nurses’ Injuries

Photo credit: Annie Tritt for NPR

[gomerblogworld]

Read more: http://bit.ly/2odnCWY

50 shades of Grey in Radiology

http://gomerblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Radiology.jpg

Read more on http://gomerblog.com/2017/04/50-shades-of-grey-radiology/?utm_source=TR&utm_campaign=DIRECT

www.gomerblog.com

[shinigami-rn-blog]

There are a shit ton of people feeling unsafe right now: I've got your back. Because this what it means to me to be an American, to be a nurse, and to be a human. Yes, even if you're a white, cis-gendered Christian male, even if you voted for Trump.

[copingnurse-deactivated20240217]

When a patient A’s crazy family members try  to pull me out of patient B’s room...

[mydaywasworsethanyours]

You know you’re a nurse when the first thing you think of when looking at this post is….

[shinigami-rn-blog]

I didn't choose the nurse life - nurse life chose me

[aspiringdoctors-blog]

Being an example

“Hi, I’m Dr. Aspdocs, I’m going to be helping take care if you tonight. Tell me about what brought you in to the ER.”

I have said that line probably 100 times. Almost every shift there will be a patient with a little kid with them. And every time one of the adults in the room will say at some point, “See? She is a doctor. A lady who is a doctor.” If the kiddo is a little girl the adult almost always adds, “You could be a doctor like her.” Wide eyes regard me, my blonde hair and glasses and purple stethoscope and blue scrubs.

It always chokes me up a little when that happens in this small community ER surrounded by so much poverty and violence. What examples of female ambition do these kids see?

One time I brought a little girl a stuffed animal- the ER keeps some to give to kids. She took it and said cheerfully, “I want to be a nurse!” Meanwhile the RN was placing an IV in the patient, she was listening. I said, “That is so wonderful! Nurses do very important jobs and the hospital would not work if we didn’t have such great nurses helping take care of patients.” And then we took turns making zoo animal noises.

I hope the nurses hear, “See? She is a nurse. Someday you could be a nurse like her.”

[md-admissions]

OH MY GOD I READ THIS AND JUST FEEL SO MANY WARM HAPPY FEELINGS. PROUD OF YOU, @aspiringdoctors!!

[shinigami-rn-blog]

<p>“What examples of female ambition do these kids see?”</p><p>Oh I don’t know…the single mom who works nights cleaning office buildings? The woman who supports her dependent parents or siblings while trying for years to get her GED? because she won’t leave relatives in need behind?</p><p>As health care providers, it is our responsibility to know the communities we serve and to recognize what they are entrusting us with when they come to us for care. </p><p>If you serve a disenfranchised group, recognize that your patients had to set aside a list of misgivings before they even walk through those hospital doors. It might be generational. Part of what they’ve had to put aside is fear or our judgment or our inability/ refusal to see that *every* family that stays afloat in a community marked by limited resources, someone - likely a woman - is busting ass to make it happen. </p><p>Just because she’s not a doctor doesn’t mean she has no ambition. We are here to serve her and her family, not to judge and pity.

[pnwnurse]

FYI: If an experienced nurse ever tells you they’ve never made a mistake, they’re either lying or dangerous.

[shinigami-rn-blog]

Sometimes, this is your best and most effective nursing intervention.

[snarkynurses]

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ {From Show Me Your Stethoscope} #nursesunite #nurse #nurses #nursing #nursingschool #nursingschoolproblems #nursehumor #medicalschool #medschool #nursesrock #nurselife #nurseproblems #nightnurse #cna #nursingstudent #newnurse #nursingaide #medstudent #pharmacist #nursesproud #icu #medsurg #nursegang #medicalstudent #scrublife #instanursing #nurselove #snarkynurses

[shinigami-rn-blog]

The moment you ask someone you're really into about their poop.

[mypatients]

Loss

I resigned from my organization last august. In the last month of my work there, I had 2 patients who passed away just days apart from one another. Same ward, same bed. I was during my day shift and the 2nd one during my night shift (we do 3 rotating shifts).

I remember so clearly the look on the patient’s wife face when she came running to me and ask if the patient was going to go soon so she can call her children. I quicken my step and entered his room. The cardiac monitor shows asystole. I held her her hand and told her her husband has left. No amount of lesson in school has prepared me enough for this. I left her alone with her husband with tears welling up in my eyes. Soon his children came and we did all the cleaning and transported the body to the morgue. As I was walking back to the ward, she came up to me, held my hands so tight and thank me for taking care of her husband the past 1 week. I didn’t know how to answer her and the right words wouldn’t come  out of my mouth (i can’t remember what my reply was). I went home that afternoon feeling somehow different. 3 years as a nurse and this was my first patient whom I did the last office. I cried on my way home, I cried while talking on the phone to my colleague. I cried in the shower. Part of me changed that day and I could not explain what the change was. A close friend told me it was the feeling of being alive and someone died. But I know it wasn’t that, it was something else and no words can describe that feeling.

The next day, I was roster-ed to do night duty. Handing over of report. Same bed. DIL/DNR. Family were advised to stay but they refused. They say to call them. I spend most of my time during shift with me. Deep inside me, I didn’t want him to spend the last moments of his life alone. That was the least I could do as a nurse for him. I left the room for 10mins to attend to another patient. When I went back to him, what I feared most happened. He spent the last moment of his life alone. I called his family to inform them. I did the last office and transported him to the morgue. I came back to the ward at 4am.

Quiet. I cried.

For the first time, I cried in the ward.

For the 2nd time, I cried on my way home.

[shinigami-rn-blog]

Hugs to all you big-hearted nurses.

In school, the word "compartmentalization" came up as a coping mechanism for things like this. Weird, because before then I had only heard the term in a "watch out that you don't do this" way.

We part from our patients in many different ways. Some are discharged, some are discharge but we know we will see them again but in worse shape (no support system, housing insecure, sickle cell, dialysis, diabetes...you know the list), or death. My coping mechanism is to complete - to say some kind of wish and farewell - at the end of each shift, when I feel I need to.

The thing about dying alone is tricky. It only takes a second to stop breathing forever, and some people will choose that moment, when everyone has left the room, to finally let go. Many times, the people who do this - who have the control to do this - are kind, loving people who "don't want to be a bother", or upset their loved ones. Sometimes, I think this is a choice.

Sometimes, family members cannot bear to stay for the end, to watch the last breath, to watch the body being cleaned and put in the bag (out of the maybe 200 deaths I've seen, only 3 people have wanted to bear witness to this). They've said their goodbyes, they'll say "that's not my mother anymore", "this isn't how I want to remember, and it's not how he'd want me to remember". To some this sounds selfish, but this is part of their grief story, and everyone's is different.

As nurses, we try to do so many things. Beyond keeping people safe and comfortable, pulling them away from death or sickness, we are also counselors and bodyguards, and sometimes surrogate families for those who are isolated. We must remember the 5th line in the nursing code of ethics: to take care of ourselves.

Please remember, all you ICU, med surg, PACU, surgical nurses... You can always message me if you're having a hard time with a patient death. I'll always have an ear and my heart for you.

[mydaywasworsethanyours]

There’s always that one nurse who the 100 year old grandmothers hate and try to bite.

[shinigami-rn-blog]

I'm the one the MRSA patients want to kiss.

[judgyrn]

So accurate. Welcome new kids

[shinigami-rn-blog]

When your own family believes calling 911 is a legit part of hospice care for your dying relative...

If your goal is to have a super-chill, relaxing, comfortable death at home, DO NOT CALL 911.

[snarkynurses]

You’re joking right? Like what possessed you to call 911, the need for free wifi?? #idiot #fml #goingtobealongday #nurse #nurses #nursing #nursingschool #nursingstudent #nursehumor #nurselol #bsn #rn #lpn #lvn #medicalschool #medschool #md #doctor #hospital #nclex #mcat #medicalhumor #snarkynurses #nursesofinstagram #nursesrock #nursesunite #nurselife #nurseproblems

[shinigami-rn-blog]

I used to feel bad interrupting "excuse me nurse, but I asked for Diet and this is Regular" with "HEY THE GUY NEXT DOOR TO YOU CAN'T BREATHE, SO LETS PUT A PIN IN YOUR ISSUE, MKAY?" but I've since gotten over it.

[boluscoffeestat-deactivated2020]

Trying to figure out if my patient’s behavior is caused by an underlying psych cause, their head injury, something infectious or metabolic, or if they are just being an jerk

[justc4llm3murphy]

Well…he’s super irritable…level of consciousness change or is he just mad because he can’t have anything to eat?

[rnightly]

Haha! I was just thinking this the other day. “Is he underlying psych, ICU delirium, or just an a-hole.” Honestly the answer probably is all of the above.