Nurse List
(Submitted by Nurse S)
1) Not allowed to give the secretary’s name to the confused patient(s) in the hall.
2) Not allowed to play with a bed alarm.
3) Not even if I’m just checking to make sure it works.
4) It’s bariatric equipment, not “big boy” or “big girl” (chair, bed etc.).
5) Not allowed to give telemetry patients sternal rubs if they are sedated. It causes the heart monitor to go crazy, and sometimes people run to the room.
6) Ok, I can give them sternal rubs, but make sure I answer when asked if I need any help.
7) Staff emergency buttons are not toys.
8) Not allowed to tell patients they are idiots.
9) Not allowed to tell patients they are drug seeking.
10) Not allowed to tell patients that they are a pain in the ass
11) Not even if 9-10 are true.
12) No mentioning the “Q word.”
13) If I mention the “Q word” I will get the next admit, and they WILL be a pain in the ass.
14) No talking about codes.
15) Because if I do, one is more likely to happen.
16) The floor is not the psych ward, even if it feels that way.
17) Not allowed to mutter curses when seeing who the new patient’s attending is.
18) Especially not if that attending is in earshot.
19) Residents are not baby doctors, and should not be referred to as such.
20) Not allowed to threaten patients with a straight cath if I don’t get a urine sample in a reasonable amount of time.
21) Not even if this method works very well.
22) Not allowed to use how annoying a patient is to determine the size of needle I’m using.
23) Not allowed to contribute to withdrawal patient’s hallucinations.
24) When making the night assignment, no giving myself an absolute cakewalk of an assignment while giving someone else 4 alcohol withdrawal patients who are 48 hours out.
25) Not allowed to flirt with the cute night float.
26) Not allowed to refer to the “Golden Girls” on nights as the “Golden Girls.”
27) Just because they are all older than I and have white/blond hair does not mean I can call them “Golden Girls.”
28) When reorienting the confused patient, I’m not allowed to give them the wrong date. Or location.
29) I’m not allowed to not give the doc fair warning if the patient/family is pissed off.
30) I shouldn’t just send the text page “Your pizza is here” without reminding the doc which unit ordered it.
31) If I talk about making brownies, I must make them and bring them in. To do otherwise is cruel and unusual punishment.
32) I’m not allowed to sit in the secretary’s chair when she is here.
33) Just because the patient is swinging at me and kicking at me (and spitting at me!) doesn’t mean I can just put the patient in restraints.
34) If I do put a patient in restraints, I must make the doc aware so that they can come and assess if the patient needs them.
35) I’m not allowed to laugh when the doc unties the restraint, having decided that they aren’t necessary and gets punched/kicked.
36) Nor am I allowed to tell them “I told you so!”
37) I’m not allowed to do a happy dance when the annoying patient who has been on the light every 30 seconds decides to complain of chest pain and we have no telemetry monitors left, meaning that they need to be transferred to another floor.
38) Ok, I can dance, but not where the patients can see me.
39) When giving report on above patient, it’s probably nice to give fair warning about call light abuse to the receiving unit.
40) When the above patient says “I hope I can still go home in the morning,” I’m not allowed to laugh. Not until they are out of earshot. Dude, you just bought yourself a few more days here because of your cardiac history.
41) When I float to the floor that received that patient a few days later, I’m not allowed to do the happy dance about not having him.
42) I’m not too sexy for my isolation gown, therefore I must wear it when going into an isolation room.
43) Ativan injections hurt like a sonofabitch, and if the person I’m giving it to is aware enough, I should warn them.
44) When the doc looks at me and tells me to get 2 mg of Ativan for the patient going crazy in the hall, I’m not allowed to look at him funny when he tells me PO. (by mouth)
45) Even if there is no way in hell the patient will take it that way.
46) Not allowed to curse out the outside hospital that is 1.5 hours away for calling with report 1 hour after the patient is en route.
47) Ok, I can curse, but not in earshot of patients and visitors. Especially if the patient sounds like they are not appropriate for this floor and/or are unstable.
48) Not allowed to tell pharmacy that they are idiots.
49) Not allowed to bitch about having to call the surgical resident.
50) Not allowed to bitch about having to try to figure out exactly which call OB-GYN pager to page. (There are 1st call-4th call, meaning 4 different people to page)
51) I should ask the OB-GYN doc I just called which call to page so I don’t page everyone on the list.
52) If a patient is wandering around naked, I am to encourage the patient to return to his room, not bring him to the nurses station where everyone else is and ask who he belongs to.
53) When told that my male patient has pulled out his Foley cath with the balloon intact, I’m not allowed to curse.
54) (after seeing lapfull of blood) Ok, I can curse.
55) When seeing the male doc wearing the shower cap surgical hat, I’m not allowed to laugh. Even if he does look damn funny.
56) When pulled to assist above doc with inserting the central line, I am to wear gown, gloves, mask and above shower cap.
57) I’m not to curse when cracking the crash cart.
58) The proper response to cracking the drug drawer and finding that it hasn’t been replaced from it’s last use isn’t to drop an f-bomb. It’s to call pharmacy stat for a new one.
59) Pulling up drugs in a code is fun.
60) When pulling up drugs I should label/tell the person pushing them how much of what is in the syringe, including the ratio.
61) When administering PO meds to my sickle cell patient on the PCA, I shouldn’t threaten them with Narcan if they don’t wake up and take them.
62) Even if it does snap them back to reality from their dilaudid/morphine and/or phenergan/benadryl daze.
63) I’m not to refer to security as rent-a-cops.
64) Not allowed to insult the ED for not doing their jobs.
65) Even if it’s true.
66) Even if the admitter is complaining about the ED too.
67) Not allowed to flirt with the cute respiratory therapist.
68) Even if he started it.
69) I really shouldn’t be pulled to the med room on a rolley-chair
70) I shouldn’t be pulled around the whole nurses station on a rolley-chair.
71) Even if the above weren’t my ideas.
72) Even if everyone is cracking up.
73) Because the patients are trying to sleep.
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May 25th, 2009 at 12:16 am
beautiful.
what is 43 exactly?
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Squid Vicious reply on May 25th, 2009 1:59 am:
Ativan is a fairly strong sedative. You might know it as its generic name, Lorazepam? It’s also used as an anticonvulsant. In 43 though, I’m pretty sure she’s talking about knocking someone out who’s agitated.
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Nurse S reply on May 25th, 2009 6:35 am:
Yup. We use it with our alcohol withdrawl patients to keep them from going crazy from detox.
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May 25th, 2009 at 5:38 am
My mother, the now retired RN who worked baby delievery for many years, was heard to mutter, more than once, “OB GYNs should be gay or women by law.”
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May 25th, 2009 at 5:46 am
#33. Say what? Why not?
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May 25th, 2009 at 6:30 am
Not a single dig at the medical records department. Looks like my branch at least knows how to do its job.
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Nurse S reply on May 25th, 2009 6:36 am:
Nah, I just don’t have to deal with them- I mostly work nights, I think the medical records department is closed then.
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May 25th, 2009 at 6:33 am
Because I’m supposed to used medication and non-medication interventions first.
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May 25th, 2009 at 7:25 am
I work in a childrens hospital, so a few don’t apply to me. But several of them really did.
Especially the ‘Q’ word. I was in Parklands’ ER several years back. I had just brought in a patient and they had something over a dozen empty beds. I’d never seen three empty beds in their ER before that.
I didn’t think about what I was saying and just blurted “Wow. It’s quiet in here.”
The charge nurse snapped his head around at me and said “You son of a bitch.”
The radio immediately announced a mass casualty traffic incident on I35 with the first fourteen patients (or whatever the exact number of empty beds was) inbound for Parkland and two minutes out.
Several nurses ‘bumped’ into while I was finishing my run sheet. They all said things like “Thanks BUNCHES, asshole.”
I didn’t feel popular that day.
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Nurse S reply on May 25th, 2009 9:48 am:
See? The q-word is evil! So is the C-word. Any word regarding how calm, quiet etc. it is should be banned.
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ashley reply on May 25th, 2009 5:48 pm:
For me its always either the “B” word or the “S” word.. as in.. If it doesnt get to Busy… or Wow its slow today..
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StoneWolf reply on May 27th, 2009 9:12 am:
On my list of “Thowe Shalt Not Say” are “What could possibly happen?”, “This can’t be happening/This is impossible!”, and especially “How could it get any worse?”. Trust me, it can always get worse, starting with me wanging you on the head for saying that.
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Cathaine reply on August 15th, 2009 1:16 am:
Also should be banned: Standing with hands on hips, glaring skyward and snarking “Is there anything ELSE you’d like to tell me?”
I swear on my life, lightning flashed and it started HAILING.
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May 25th, 2009 at 9:22 am
Both my parents and my aunt are nurses. They’ll get a charge out of this!
captcha: finished Private…way too easy
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May 25th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
God bless all Registered Nurses who know how to get away with ignoring dumbass rules…because they are the ones who teach doctors how to not get hurt on the job.
You’ll see this material again.
By the way, I have an addition: Not allowed to borrow the security guard’s Mag-Lite flashlight to “deal with” a violent patient – even if the ward has run out of sedatives.
Also: Not allowed to put “Black And Decker” stickers on the large hypodermic syringes and then threaten to use them on the really nasty patients…even if said patients shut up and RUN back to bed.
Yes, the above actually occured – I was a witness.
No, I will not testify in court – RNs deserve better than that.
Capcha: 10 fetich – no, I don’t have that many fetiches, but the ones I do have are pretty good.
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May 25th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Question–what’s wrong with #29? Not that some doctors don’t deserve family wrath, but surely not all of them.
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Nurse S reply on May 25th, 2009 8:06 pm:
We have awesome admitters on nights, and usually the resident night float and resident admitter are pretty good too. So the good/nice ones get fair warning. The others….*innocent look*
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May 26th, 2009 at 6:57 am
Wait, you said this isn’t the psych ward?
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Nurse S reply on May 26th, 2009 3:11 pm:
Well, when I came in one night to work, there were 4 patients in the hall outside the nurse’s station in geri-chairs, where we move them when they aren’t safe to stay in their rooms (risk of falling). All four of them were mine. And I had another patient that was confused out of her gourd, but on isolation, an admission that was essentailly unresponsive, and who only spoke Russian, and one patient who was completely alert and oriented. So one oriented patient out of 7. Fun night.
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May 27th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
And that’s why I work on children now. MUCH less dementia.
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Nurse S reply on May 27th, 2009 7:40 pm:
Who said they were all demented? Only 3 were, lol. I think I’ll keep with my demented patients for now. Not sure if I have the patience for kids. Or their families.
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May 29th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
I have one.
I will not assign an Orderly to a room full of excape risk patients. Even if they all have dementia. I will not yell at said Orderly when he chases after one patient to bring him back to the room, only to have the other three leave.
I will not put off prepping a patient to be sent to the morgue for 7 hours, only to yell and scream at the Orderly whose job it is to take him, when the 8 hour deadline is coming up. Especially when said person had been ringing you up every half an hour to check if you were ready.
I will not file an complaint when said orderly couldn’t make it until the 8 hour mark was complete. The orderly was giving CPR to a patient while a surgical team was getting prepped.
I will not complain when I get fired because every Orderly in the hospital refuses to work with me because I got the orderly from before fired.
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July 26th, 2009 at 2:02 am
I worked in stroke for years and I saw a hell of a lot of #53. My god does that make me wince! I’m a chick and I still guard my crotch at the sight of a splayed penis.
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AFP reply on August 3rd, 2009 11:23 am:
Wait, that’s what that means? Aiiiiiii.
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Stitch reply on August 4th, 2009 5:19 am:
There’s a balloon the size of a large marble holding the end of a catheter in the bladder. Imagine tugging that through your urethra while it’s still inflated…
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March 21st, 2014 at 2:25 pm
23. How exactly do you feed the hallucinations?
30. What happened, doctor fight?
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Sion reply on September 23rd, 2014 10:54 pm:
23. Quite easily — when someone is in a psychologically “fragile” state, telling them that they are e.g. covered in spiders can convince them that they are.
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