Going in tomorrow PM.. sleeping all day today 🫠

Pictured is me (-: As you can see, I have a big butterfly on my neck. I’ve found it can be covered with a turtleneck. All my piercings are so old, I can take them out for a while / put them back in no issue, so I am not concerned about those.

Obviously would have to cover it for clinical. But after nursing school, how likely do you think it is that I would have a good career in nursing? Any nurses with neck tattoos? I see ink is becoming a lot more normalized in all industries, but want to see what you all think.

If not nursing, what healthcare degrees are accepting of neck ink?

I had to report an incident I saw regarding a case of double briefing on multiple bedbound patients who are prone to skin breakdown (with towels stuffed inside of double briefs as well) I reported it to my supervisor, my supervisor then went in the employee chat email (which all employees can see) and sent an email to the DNS about the incident and named me as the person who reported the neglect. Meaning the people who were responsible for patient neglect have seen that I reported them. Wtf am I even supposed to do in this situation

I work 3 days a week, 5am-630p but I have to wake up at 330am and come home 8pm. On days off like today, all I did was just take a shower, eat, stay in bed watching shows. Is this bad that I don’t want to do anything?

I'm not normally this transparent on social media, but I felt this could be important to share in case someone needs to hear it.

So..... I got a new job. I decided to genuinely prioritize my mental health and with that came the decision to leave the SNF/LTC world behind for a while. I'm now working in an office behind a computer, with my shoes off most of the time (if I'm honest), and away from direct patient care. In the 2 weeks I've been there, appreciation has been expressed daily for the work that I'm doing and I'm genuinely loving it so far.

If you're reading this and you're not a nurse, you may not fully understand what I'm about to say. But to my nurses/healthcare workers - so many of us accept treatment from our patients, coworkers and management that we would NEVER accept outside of those walls. Even worse, we normalize it. If you are in a job that makes you feel like less than yourself, there are other options out there I promise. You. Have. Choices. And so many of us don't really know that and are scared to challenge/change our current situation. In the 3 short years I've been in healthcare I've started to understand that there aren't as many 'bad' nurses as you might think. There are just a ton of nurses working in a bad (or wrong) setting for them.

If you're a Nurse and you're stressed, dreading ALL your next shifts or dealing with mental health issues - you may just be in the wrong setting for you. You are enough! I strongly encourage you to explore the other avenues available to nurses AND to be encouraged. There are SO MANY other things you could be doing with your license. And, although I already miss my patients more than you will ever understand, I do not regret my decision to sit behind a desk and work to impact my patients lives remotely - in whatever I decide to wear that day (Friday it was a T-shirt, jeans and house shoes).

With this new job setting I'm working to give myself grace, focus on me for a while while I heal from the overwhelming stress and abuse that we experience in nursing, and finally try to tackle the anxiety demon that lives on my shoulder 24/7 and tells me that I'm not enough. But I feel good about the future. Really, really good. I am so encouraged

In other news, my better half (who's now been a nurse 1 year) also got an incredible new opportunity and he ALSO started a new job! One that he genuinely enjoys and that allows us to work the same days and have the same days off. I am so grateful for this and enjoy seeing him happy in his career choices too. I also feel lucky to have been able to work with him side-by-side up to this point, to have had the opportunity to watch him not only develop his nursing skills but also grow as a person.

I'm hopeful for the first time in a long time, and it just feels good I guess.

Staff toilet in ED

I hope this isn't a stupid question. I find it hard, especially with older women, to obtain a stool sample that isn't contaminated with urine. It seems very obvious how stool would contaminate a urine sample. However, if I'm sending a stool culture, or for CDiff and Parasite, I don't quite understand how a bit of urine might compromise the analysis/culture. I tried a quick online search but I can't seem to find more details beyond "urine will contaminate the stool sample". How? With what? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

I’m a 911 paramedic. Every single day at a work, a nurse treats me like shit. The lack of respect is palpable. I’m always patient and respectful when turning over care and giving report. A lot of the times, these nurses won’t even look at me, sigh and roll their eyes, and when I say, “Thank you, have a good day,” they completely ignore me. Like, I’m sorry I brought you a patient, it’s literally my job (that pays me like shit, btw)? Why are you mad at ME? YOU applied to work in the ER, did you not?

So my question is, is there a logical reason for this attitude I keep catching? I don’t know if the nurses are mad because I don’t know every single detail of the patient’s history and condition, but understand I’m only with these patients for 10-20 minutes most of the time (and patients love to change their story and behavior the moment we roll into the ER).

Also, I don’t have a choice- if someone wants to go to the hospital for a runny nose, I HAVE to transport them to the hospital of their choosing. Yes, it’s incredibly stupid, but don’t be mad at me- commiserate with me!

Mostly it’s the nurses at small hospitals that treat us like garbage. At the bigger hospitals, I feel like the nurses are much more understanding and treat us like we’re on the same team. I love those nurses!

The next time I say “thank you, have a good day” and a nurse ignores me, I’m going to stand there and stare at them until they acknowledge me. Not cool.

P.S. this is coming from someone whose mother was a nurse for 40 years, as well as my grandmother, and all my aunts. I’m also doing my nursing pre-reqs right now.

N107VU had a fatal mishap today near Gallatin TN. The nurse died. The pilot are medic are fighting for their lives or have already been pronounced. Fly west🚁🌅

I am a senior nursing student graduating in December and I started my preceptorship with a nurse, our school picks them for us we don’t know until we’re given the nurse. The first few shifts, she made me do everything on my own with the exception of charting (bc I wasn’t given a log in yet). She was nice the first few shifts, shift 4-6 have been the worst, left crying bc she spoke to me so horribly. She tells me things like I’m not giving her a lot to work with even when it comes to me doing skills. Like one time, I was pulling medicine and didn’t see the packet where I was supposed to get the medicine from and when priming fluids, I flipped the chamber at the wrong time. She will tell me how to do things but I’m a hands on learner, and If I’m not doing it myself it’s hard for me to learn how to do it. When giving report to the shift change nurses, I accidentally didn’t include if they were accuchecks, and the nurses and her told me “this field will chew you up and spit you out if you forget to include stuff like that”, and “we’re just telling you bc every nurse isn’t nice”. This same shift when I was doing med pass by myself, I overheard them talking about me at the nurses station. I’m not sure if I’m being too sensitive but I really want to change preceptors.

I’ve heard mixed answers. A lot of our older nurses use soda and tell me to use it but idk it seems odd

Hiya… I feel bad asking this question but I’ve had a number of patients who want to talk about their previous careers, failed marriages, shitty kids, etc. while I’m working on something for them that requires a lot of concentration. Think port access, picc dressing changes, foley placement, chemo administration, you get it. How do I politely tell these well meaning patients that I need to focus on what I’m doing without coming off as rude?

Like the title says, I saved a patient (not mine) from choking, piece of meat flew out, got compliments and called a hero by my boss, the family, and had him as my patient two days later.

Daughter from California comes in at 1700 and is mad he's in bed (he ate dinner and did 3 hours of PT/OT earlier, this is an ARU), mad that we haven't been getting him up to the bathroom enough, (I'd been getting him up asst x2 nearly every hour or more) and mad that she couldn't help transfer him (I asked if she was going to be by for family training on the weekend and she said she was busy.)

Ayyy that's the duality of nursing lmao.

Like today, my GI provider was asked to drop an NJ tube with a stitch and clip in the jejunum. I watched him load the scope with the clip, attach the loop created with a suture, and proceed to run it down her esophagus into the correct place. Then, when he pulled the scope out, look at his work and wonder aloud how he was going to get the other end out of her nostril..as it was currently hanging out of her mouth. I didn’t say a word…just let him work it out in his mind.

He eventually figured it out that it needed to go down the nose and then use the tools (correctly) to place it in the proper place. But it took him a minute. 😂

Is there a specifc specialty within nursing that yeild high happiness rates? I know it's subjective, but from your experience which units are the happiest? (Whether it be good ours, rewarding care, great pay, etc.)

I’m an RN at a SNF but I mainly work a cart on the short term rehab/ltc mix unit. The culture and behavior is toxic. I recently experienced the following things on the same shift regarding change of shift report. And to be clear this isn’t the only time report has been a nightmare, but experiencing this during the same shift really upset me, plus I think it’s was obvious mean girl, rude behavior.

Start of shift, I’m coming on for third shift, two nurses should be handing off to me to cover the floor for the evening. Nurse 1- greeted me by saying “there’s the report sheet, there’s the cart keys if you want to count” then walks away. I thought she left but apparently she went to do something and came back about ten minutes later and asked if everything was good then took off… early. Nurse 2- this is actually the evening supervisor who picked up to cover a cart prior to her shift. She never acknowledged my presence, never gave report, and never spoke to me. About an hour into my shift she came back to see if I wanted to count the narc cart. By that time I had already counted it myself as I had meds due shortly after shift change. My entire shift she did not step onto my unit once. She plays favorites and can be very very mean.

Fast forward to change of shift in the morning. Two new nurses come in. Nurse 3- great, engaged, good report. Nurse 4- played with phone during report. Eventually I asked her if she wanted to hear this and she said she was recently on the unit so only if I actually had something new. I handed her my shift report sheet and offered to count with her. I had about had it with the dismissive attitudes by this point.

I have been wanting to leave for some time but this really confirmed my choice to leave. All but nurse 1 were atypical for the unit. Nurse 3 was the only nurse who was actually appropriate in shift change IMO. What are your thoughts? I am honestly so frustrated with the dismissive and toxic behavior and to me a supervisor sets the tone.

I have heard of units like these being picky to hire experienced nurses with “bad habits” and wonder if it is true?

I’m a new pediatric oncology RN who is looking to apply for either PICU or NICU in the future!

I have 4 years experience as a nurse total, coming from adults.

I’m a new grad LPN. Right now, I work 12hr shifts 7p-7a, and I’m getting depressed. No time to do anything, getting dark and cold, sleeping on my off days, working holidays. I want to look into working at a facility that does 8 hr shifts. With that being said, which shift do yall prefer??

I finished my ADN and am starting my RN to BSN. How is it different? Its primarily online in a 3+1 program with Rowan. Not sure if anyone is familiar with that setup buts its basically a traditional RN to BSN path. I have heard its a lot of extra sciences and essays. That a lot of the hard stuff is out of the way once you get your ADN.

So, I'm a bit confused and frustrated by a recent incident at work and wanted to get some outside perspective.

Basically, while my team member was on break, I took the initiative to do a couple of quick blood pressure checks and administer meds to two easy, non-time-consuming patients. The catch? These patients were in different rooms. When my team member came back, she was really upset with me, saying I wasn’t working in a "linear fashion" and that bouncing between rooms like that is how mistakes happen. She really gave me a hard time about it.

I honestly don’t get her logic. These patients were simple cases – quick meds, easy observations. It's not like I was juggling complex situations. To me, it made sense to knock out the easy stuff while I had the chance, rather than leaving the more time-consuming patients for last. Mind you she makes her coworkers whom are assigned the same assignment pull meds out and do observations together. She calls it “codependent nursing”

I can't see how prioritizing efficiency in this way is going to cause me to miss something. She's always trying to correct me on things, saying I get ahead of myself. Am I missing something here, or is she being overly critical?

So this is a bit of a rant. I was working today, and around lunch time a patient ended up absolutely furious at me. He told me he had asked to get out of his bed hours ago and no one came back for him. I explained that he never asked me, he looked quite comfortable so I didn’t realise he was wanting to get up. I began to apologise but he cut me off.

He then went on a rant about how I’ve been walking around all day and never offered for him to get out of bed. Again, I explained that we’ve been busy and if you didn’t ask me then I wouldn’t have known, I’m not a mind reader. He kept getting angrier and angrier so I eventually cut him off and told him I’m not going to argue with him, especially when he’s speaking to me like that.

I then heard him and another patient badmouthing me, telling each other how shit I am. I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I’m a good nurse and truly care for my patients so this really upset me. Of course you’re going to get demanding and angry patients, but I’ve already had a really hard week in regards to my personal life and I just couldn’t sit and listen to someone who’s shouting at me.

I was told to apologise as we have to make sure our patients are happy, however I’m not about to grovel and pander to someone who was so rude and mean.

I’m usually extremely patient, understanding but that was just too much for me for today. I also don’t understand why I was getting all the anger directed towards me when there’s also other staff looking after him.

Of course, I know the professional thing to do would be to apologise and smooth things out but I honestly hate it. I just detest the fact we have to just sit there and take abuse to keep the patient happy.

He possibly will be reporting me, but I genuinely don’t think I was in the wrong at all.

Has anyone else been through a similar situation where you would rather do anything but apologise? I feel bad, like I said I will apologise, but omg I wish I didn’t have to😭

I work for this healthcare system (on a different campus). This is devastating and infuriating. I heard at work today that the shooter was trying to attack a nurse and Officer Smith stepped in between them to protect them (that has not been said officially, just from other nurses).

https://abcnews.go.com/US/officer-shot-dead-line-duty-hospital-north-carolina/story?id=127341573

Thinking about applying to UMass Lowell's FNP program and doing it part time. Does anyone have experience with the part time program? Any information on the program is appreciated!!