Without getting into details, I am currently being investigated at my workplace for an incident which absolutely did not happen in the manner alleged. I know that there is documentation in the chart that reflects my version of events because I charted it. Other coworkers that night also documented what they saw. This is going to ultimately save my ass, because the allegations are career-ending as presented.

Always CYA and document, y’all.

I hate it here. I'm about to go get my CDL and call it a day.

If a breastfeeding woman is in the icu intubated, does the nurse have ger pump so she doesn’t get engorged/lose supply/get mastitis? I’m assuming the milk would be unusable because of the meds but I’m curious how it’s handled.

Inhaled...not eaten.

Why It Matters:

The rule would have let the Education Secretary disqualify employers found to engage in activities with a "substantial illegal purpose". One of the big focuses of the lawsuits was that the language was based on the administration's policy priorities about immigration, gender-affirming care, and DEl programs rather than settled criminal law. Teachers, nurses, and nonprofit workers faced losing credit toward forgiveness if their employer was cut from the program. This would include major non-profit University Medical Centers, and end contracts many Nurses entered into to reach PSLF after 10 years of payments while working for a qualifying facility. How day they target Nurses who have worked for years to achieve this changed employers to achieve this. Earned this benefit. Yet wealthy people qualified for PPP loans they didn’t have to pay back? No I’m sorry, this is political and they’re weaponizing the DOE against us. This is unacceptable.

So I’m not sure how the culture got started that every piece of communication needs to go through the bedside nurse, but it needs to stop.

The other day I get a patient up from the ED. The first thing she does is hand me her insurance card and tells me the registration lady couldn’t figure out how to upload it into the computer so she told the patient to give it to the nurse when she got upstairs and have us handle it.

Like, are you fucking kidding me? My job is to care for people from a medical standpoint, not spend my very limited time troubleshooting computer issues that are in no way affiliated with my role. Just because I CAN figure things out, does not mean I’m Mr. Fix It every time an issue arises in the hospital.

And this type of offloading of work exists has wormed its way into every discipline in healthcare. Doctors messaging me things to message other doctors instead of just doing it themselves. Kitchen staff calling because a diabetic patient wants an extra piece of cake. PT calling me to tell me the critical information that the patient refused therapy for the 5th day in a row. I could go on and on.

We as nurses HAVE to start telling people no and speaking frankly about what is a good use of time and what is not. I cannot control every situation on the hospital and constantly bombarding me with problems that are literally irrelevant to my role is asinine.

Anyone else with me here?

three years of nights and i still have not figured this out. like i meal prep on my day off with the best intentions. little containers. protein. whatever. and then 3am hits and i am standing in the break room eating a string cheese and half a granola bar that was in my pocket since tuesday.

the cafeteria is closed obviously. vending machine options are depressing. i brought a real meal tonight and somehow left it in my car.

everyone talks about sleep hygiene and circadian rhythm stuff but nobody talks about how genuinely hard it is to eat like a normal human being when your body has no idea what time zone it lives in. hunger cues are completely broken. i am never hungry at the right time and then suddenly starving at 5am when i am also trying to finish charting and give report.

i have tried the big meal before shift thing. i have tried smaller snacks throughout. i have tried just not thinking about it and that was the worst one.

night shift nurses specifically. what actually works for you. not the theoretical stuff. what you are actually doing at 3am in that break room when you have eleven minutes.

Just got off a 12 hour shift and my mom (retired doctor) told me she’s starting to get annoyed with the nursing strikes and that it’s “too much.” A little context, she used to work for Kaiser and she’s specifically referring to the Kaiser strikes.
I snapped a bit, told her “what do you want me to do about it? Maybe you guys should unionize too!” (But I know that it’s more complicated for doctors to strike and unionize).
I understand that doctors are also overworked, have their struggles, and deserve better work conditions but dang Mom sounds like you’re resentful (is that the correct word I’m looking for…?). Anyways, direct your anger towards admin! I wish we can all team up and fight for better workplace conditions for everyone in healthcare. It sucks that healthcare is pretty much all about business :/

Guess the patient?

There’s a lot of talk in here lately about correct charting and what that means. We’re taught this is nursing school but when you work in a hospital sometimes you’re taught incorrect charting habits.

For example, in my ICU they encourage that you chart your assessments at 0800, 1200, and 1600 even when if you have two patients. I tend to chart in real time (0800 assessment for pt 1, 0845 assessment for pt 2) because I want my charting to tell a story if I were to be disposed (I saw pt 1 first and pt 2 second, clearly due my charting instead of charting both at 0800).

I’m looking for good rules that help us discern bad habits being taught at hospitals vs what actually serves us in court. I’m not looking for “chart as much as possible” here because sometimes my shifts can be insane. Insights from nurses who have been deposed or from legal nurse consultants are ideal. Thank you!

Edit: I appreciate the answers so far, thank you. I particularly appreciate all of the conflicting advice. I think that’s part of the problem too. Many of us may think we’re charting correctly but in court it may be a different story. Having extreme clarity of what is and isn’t okay in real situations (we’re busy AF, hospital pressures, etc) is my goal here.

Hi. I’m a new grad and I recently got trained on inserting IVs. I find myself kind of panicking when starting on people with barely visible and barely palpable veins. Like genuinely no matter how much I readjust the tourniquet there’s no fkn way I’m feeling anything still. I get really discouraged because I eventually want to move to a unit that regularly starts IVs, I work with generally stable pts, so it’s not often we get to start IVs. I know the arm anatomy and I somehow still miss often when it’s the forearm, have missed in the hand a few times.

I have been an ICU nurse for about 3 years. In that time, I have worked hard to get trained on every machine available at our hospital. I became a charge nurse, completed my CCRN and my CSC certifications, finished my BSN and have a list of positive patient reviews that look like a CVS receipt... Despite all of this, I am treated like absolute dirt by many Doctors. I stay late when patients are unstable and try my hardest to abide by the patients wishes and keep them safe and no matter how many positive outcomes come from my efforts, no matter how many times I catch problems and am able to get orders to fix it... no matter how many times I protect a doctor when they do something or order something incorrectly that could hurt a patient.... those doctors still talk terribly about me behind my back to other providers, call me stupid both directly and indirectly, and act as though I might as well be crap on their shoe... it is exhausting. It makes me feel like leaving the profession. There is 0 mutual respect. I cant comprehend how people so smart can have such a hard time with kindergarten levels of behavioral expectations. It's not only them either. Management absolutely loves and fosters drama and has said things to my face that I would be absolutely fired for. Does anyone else have this experience? Is it just the specific place I work? I can't understand why I am treated so terribly that it makes me hate coming to work... I chose this career because I love people and want to help them. Because I know how it feels to be hurt and scared and in pain in the hospital. I never in a million years expected it to be such a self depreciating experience. I am the most successful and stable I have ever been in my life and am trying to be proud of the goals I have reached, yet I have never in my life been more anxious and self conscious. I feel like a masochist every time I enter the building.

I was told this was the perfect work/life balance.

It. Is. NOT!!

There are 3 nurses for this specific company. One of those nurses is out for a month so it’s 2 of us left. We have to take their caseload. On top of that we’ve had at LEAST 5 admissions within 7 days. I have a patient who’s on ACT so there’s a daily visit on top of my caseload and NEW admissions. I had to work on an admission last night until 7pm!! That’s 4hrs of work. Admissions are NOT short. On top of that I have IDG notes to complete on 11 patients, 6 of which are recerts. Those are ALSO not short narratives. Not to mention I’m on call tonight. Then it’s constant admissions with no help. My manager told me “it’s all about time management” EXCUSE ME?! How about we stop admitting all of these people with 2 nurses on board. That’s almost 35 patients divided between 2 and more to come. Then manager says “our sales team is doing a great job”. By burning everyone else out. We have no help!! I hate it here so much.

There is NO such thing as work life balance with this job and i cannot WAIT to quit. I’ve tried my best but this is the worst. I hate it for the current nurse but I’m placing my notice in as soon as I have a line up. I’m miserably here. This is awful.

Edit. I see 6ppl per day. So 35 is a guesstimate

I'm a 37 year old male in my second year of an ADN program. Last week during clinical I was able to be a part of a C-section. I was completely blown away by watching a baby being born and had such a strong emotional response to it that I wasn't expecting. I don't have any of my own children yet. I had no idea I was going to have that type of emotional response to it. It was such a beautiful experience and doing an assessment on a newborn, seeing their eyes lock with mine while they grasped my fingers made me realize how precious a new life is and how lucky I felt to be there that day to help care for them in the first few hours of life. Today I was paired up with a labor and delivery nurse who has been graduated from the same program I am in for about a year and half now. We had a G2P0 in labor. She was 6/70/-2 when I came on at 7am.

She had no problem with me being there and had an epidural before I came on this morning. Her husband was there as well and I was kind of surprised because they were both Chaldean and I was expecting pushback with me being involved but there was none the entire day. The nurse that I was paired up with was amazing even though she's only been working for a year I thought she was incredible in how she coached our patient through everything and how much time she spent to teach me things like reading the EFM, labs, protocols, pushing positions, ect. I was able to be a part of all of it and I even stayed way later past my go home time to see this baby be born. I helped hold this woman's legs and coach her along with my nurse that I was shadowing and help support her and her husband for hours today. My patient's sister was there as well as her mother. I quickly built a rapport with them and felt very comfortable, we all laughed a lot and tried to help support mom as much as possible They trusted me, they didn't treat me differently than anyone else on the team.

When she finally gave birth several hours later I had an even bigger emotional response to seeing this child being born. I spent most of my day invested in her health and the baby's health and skipped through a full lunch (crammed a pb sandwich and went pee real quick) just so I could be there to help whenever it was needed. The payoff was so worth it to see a beautiful baby girl being brought into the world, to watch a family grow. I was tearing up and when they went to take a picture with the nurse that I was shadowing they called me over to make sure that I was in the picture with them specifically. One of the senior nurses on the unit caught me before I was getting ready to leave and she said make sure you go back and ask for their family member to see if they're okay with sending you that picture because you will never forget this the rest of your life and you'll want to remember this. So I did and they were very happy to send it to me.

I can't explain how I feel right now even hours later I'm still processing everything but I am just so happy and grateful that I was allowed to be a part of this experience. I realized walking around that I was the only male on the unit unless a physician was there or a CRNA. I asked the nurse I was shadowing if there were any male nurses that she's ever seen work on Labor and Delivery and she said "Never" but did say she's only worked there for a full year.

I kind of feel sad because I am so interested now in working in this specialty and I loved the amount of attention to detail that goes into it and the science behind a lot of it. I loved figuring out what was going on with the contractions and problem solving how to get a baby that was originally sunny side up to flip to the correct OA presentation to make it better for delivery. The journey was just incredible and I wish that I could be a part of something special like that for more people.

I've been working in healthcare for 10 years at this point doing occupational therapy as a COTA and have worked with many people in very intimate or vulnerable situations involving ADLs. I'm not Cocky by any means but I do feel very confident my ability to build a therapeutic rapport with my patients relatively quickly and it's something that I think has helped me be successful in OT and I am hoping that it will be very consistent like this with nursing. I never thought that I would be interested in the birth process or even enjoy doing this clinical. I know more males are becoming nurses than ever before and I honestly think that we have our own value that we can bring to this profession but understand this has been dominated by women, rightfully so.

I do wonder if I would ever have a shot in this area. I am supposed to be going to work on the NICU in a couple of weeks on the 21st of September so I will get some more experience in that area as well but there was just something so special about being there for a live birth. I would be very happy to be a part of that again in the future. I guess I would like to ask people that work in labor and delivery how you would feel with a man on your team or what your experience has been working with men in labor and delivery. Any male L&D nurses? Should I even bother trying to look into doing this?

Different floor from last time. Same situation. 🤣

So we had an incident in the ER, pt got super combative and security didn’t show up for about 30-45 minutes because they were already upstairs dealing with a separate issue. I understand they were busy, but is it normal for hospital security to only be able to handle one situation at a time? Or send every single security member to a single incident for almost an hour while they are aware of a potential combative patient in the ER??

I work 6:30p-7a on acuity adaptable and just got bumped up to 4 patients (our ratio is 1:4). Im in my 5th week of orientation. My preceptor comes in at 6 every shift to look through everyone’s H&P/orders and write down everything she needs before report. She’s been telling me I should come in early too so I can have all of that done and be in my patients rooms by 7.
The problem is we don’t get paid for that 30 minutes and I genuinely do not want to start coming into work at 6 every single shift just so I can stay ahead. I want to be able to get into a routine where I’m able to get report, see my patients and review H&P/orders without coming in early. I just don’t know how to get that time management down since my preceptor does it differently.
Am I being stubborn about this? Do you guys actually come in 30 mins early to look through charts or do you just get report and figure everything out from there?

Early career RN here (3 years in at a major trauma hospital) and wondering if anyone has experienced this and may have some advice:

I've done a few courses now regarding deterioration/arrest management (ALS etc) and have found I completely freeze in the simulation environment. I go TOTALLY blank. It is particularly frustrating and humiliating as in real-life emergencies I feel calm, focused and able to summon my training and knowledge. In the simulation environment I feel really distracted by the stilted nature of the simulation, and overwhelmingly self-conscious. I panic internally and I go blank; in the moment it feels like a bad dream where you're naked in front of the school or something!

Does anyone else struggle in the simulation environment? And how to you combat these struggles? I feel so humiliated and ashamed so very much appreciate the advice!

Soooooooo I have had three separate instances with the MAs at the clinic, and it's not for "small snd silly" reasons, like clinically these MAs need more training. The first time I don't exactly remember what she did, but it was somrthing with vitals and her not having any clinical understanding of what those vitals mean. So I immediately told my PCP who said she would take care of it when she came in. That same MA in a separate visit was asking me what I do, I said I was doing some travel nursing. The MA said, "Oh, I did travel nursing as well!" I kept my mouth shut, and have been sitting on telling the clinic until the newest problem.

I had to get a skin TB test and she first of all freaked out about my tattoos and she didn't know where to place it. I disclosed to her I am a RN and she can place it on a spot on my arm. She decided to ask the clinic RN (I'm not judging this part, like I actually want someone to verify placement if she isn't sure!) Who came in, checked my arm, touched the two spots and said those were good and left. The MA started getting the test set up, I'm sitting there with my arm out chatting and she touches my arm again and next thing I know the needle is in my arm. She's not wearing gloves, I now have my skin germs, her skin germs, and the nurse's skin germs on me. No alcohol swab, and I am immunosuppressed.

I ended up calling the clinic like 30 minutes after I left, but wtf? This isn't a down and dirty crash resuscitation in the ER, there's no rush, no go go go for her to have missed this. Like I was afraid of reporting her because I don't want to get them in trouble, but this is two times potential medical harm was directed towards me, and someone lying that they are a RN.

Hi all, I (29F) am an RN with 2.5yrs of ED experience and 1.5yrs of clinical trials experience, 3 total years of RN experience but almost 10yrs in health care in different roles (mostly in ED). I have been so terribly bored at my job (working in a clinic role in clinical trials, almost no critical thinking, very slow) so I have been applying to lots and lots of places. I have gotten a lot of job rejections even after completing shadowing on the units. I am really struggling trying to find a position.

I finally received some feedback from nursing managers in one of my last interview/shadows which stated, "Their level of engagement throughout the interview seemed low, and they did not convey strong enthusiasm or interest in the role. As a result, it was challenging to evaluate both their qualifications and motivation for the position".

See, the issue is not a problem with my genuine interest. Until I get to know someone and/or get comfortable, I have a flat affect, am reserved, and a little quiet. I know a lot of people say this, but it has legitimately been an issue for me. I once had a medic bring in a choking patient; the pt was alert, oriented with a muffled voice on arrival. i wasn't going to be the primary RN because the primary RN was with someone else, so I decided to be nice and arrive/settle the pt. At some point, the medic wrote an email to the director of critical care at my hospital to complain that I didn't seem impressed with his work and that I said something about not being the primary RN for the room. Also had other RNs from a different department complain to my manager about a quite literal 30 second interaction. Heres the thing; I am never rude. I am straight to the point, clear in my communication, and ask clarifying questions. My tone is never loud, accusatory and I am never short with people.

So why am I having such an issue? I quite literally have no idea how to start working on this. I don't want to act and present a false image of myself during interviews, but this is legitimately becoming a barrier. The only offer I received from all my interviews was from a nurse manager who asked what a misconception of me was (in which I talked about this very issue). I didn't accept this offer because it didn't seem to be something I actually wanted to do after I shadowed, but yeah.

Any nurse managers or recruiters want to offer advice? Or anyone really? I think I am going to switch my answer to "What is your weakness" to this; that I can come off as flat, disengaged, or disinterested. What else can I do?

I love my job, but only sometimes. I love the smile someone gives me when they finally feel a little more comfortable in a cold hospital room. But then I think about their roommate. I think about the confused man wandering the hallway looking for his mother, even though she died 30 years ago. I think about the family member sobbing at the sight of her sick mother in the room across the hall. I think about the code blue alarm going off for the third time that day.

How am I supposed to make all of them feel okay?

I get assigned a certain number of patients to care for, but what if, in my mind, I care about all of them.

Sometimes I barely have time to hold onto the smile I managed to bring out of one person before the next patients medications are due. I don’t even have enough time to make all of my own patients smile, let alone everyone else filling the halls, calling out for help.

So I spend my shift hoping I can squeeze in one more smile one more moment of comfort, even just one small sigh of relief.

But there is only one of me, and there are so many people hurting.

And God, am I tired.

How do I care less and not let things affect me? Most things at my job don’t affect me, but lately I feel like they are. I am freshly back from maternity leave, but not a new mother. In the past month I’ve had a couple incidents where I just can’t get over them. Essentially I was gas lit by the doctor, I was catching all of the signs for my pt declining as soon as I got them, they would not order anything, tried to tell me the pt was previously like that when they were not, and he ended up dying overnight. I can’t even look at that doctor without feeling anger. My coworkers bring it up and I can’t even talk about the situation without feeling emotional. I then admitted a patient that was a huge safety risk, I brought it up to the higher ups, nobody did anything and an extremely traumatizing code white happened days later. The higher ups claimed they were unaware of the patients history, despite me bringing it up to their faces.

I don’t know why I am feeling things so deeply lately and it’s affecting my life. I know the health care system is fucked, and I can usually just get over this stuff. I am going to ask my doctor for a different anxiety med. I am unable to fall asleep at night, despite not physically feeling anxious. I lie awake with my eyes closed for hours and I have started to get migraines when I’ve never had them before. I don’t have pre shift anxiety either, I just feel emotional. I don’t really know if that makes any sense.

I am seeing my doctor tomorrow, but I can’t get in to see my therapist until the end of the month and I just feel like I am spiralling right now.