- I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news but: nobody, literally nobody cares about your work-life balance but you. Remember that.
- Don’t sign any contracts to be hired. Just don’t. Sign on bonus with no contract? That’s nice but make sure you actually want to work there. Despite the way its worded they never just cut you a check your first day for $10,000, they will spread that out over months a few hundred at a time.
- Just because you just graduated doesn’t mean you have to be a bedside nurse as your first job.
- Management doesn’t care about you. The hospital doesn’t care about you. The Doctor doesn’t care about you.
- Friendly reminder that the nurse coming off shift, really wants to go home. Is the patient alive? Are they stable? Did they bleed out overnight? Will they physically attack me? No? Okay, fantastic great work, go home. We are all in the same sinking dinghy my friend.
- Don’t tell anyone your bilingual unless you literally get paid more for it. But you probably won’t. So, I’d advise against that.
- It’s not your job to be physically assaulted.
- You don’t get paid more for not using gloves.
- Remember that hearing is typically one of the last things to go (story for another time).
- Not my Circus, not my Monkeys. Exempt this is your circus, and those are in fact your monkeys.
- You’re not better than anyone, stop acting like the new grad that doesn’t know how to start an IV wasn’t you.
- It’s hard to ask for help when you feel stupid doing it, never leave another nurse hanging when you know you can help.
- I don’t care if your 20 years old and deadlift twice your body weight, don’t move your 400lb patient alone. Save your back.
- On that note^ don’t let any patient use you as a human Hoyer lift or bedside rail.
- You have the right to tell anyone *cough* Doctors *cough* that they can come back and talk to you when they understand basic human respect.
- Starting the 1st of 4 blood transfusions 15 minutes before the next shift comes on makes you a piece of work. Treat other nurses the way you want to be treated and it’s usually returned.
- If something goes wrong with a patient always do some kind of intervention to attempt to correct it, and document. If you don’t know what to do, speak to your preceptor or charge nurse, document that too.
- Learn from techs, know how to change and clean up your own patient, call for assistance if needed for moving/turning etc. If you can do it yourself, do it. It’s your patient and your license at the end of the day. You might have 6 patients, but they might be sponge bathing and cleaning up 36 patients.
- Patients with a history of substance abuse aren’t hospitalized for you to judge them, their hospitalized because they broke their leg. On the other hand, you still can’t give them Dilaudid q2 no matter how many times they ask.
- If you can’t memorize the entire flow chart for ACLS to save your own life, get really good at compressions.
- Sometimes happy hour starts at 8am, it’s called being nightshift.
- Feel free to cry, we all have.
- No matter how many other salty nurses tell you “pregnancy isn’t a disease” don’t do anything that is physically uncomfortable for you to do while pregnant.
- Management doesn’t care you’re pregnant, patient assignments and floats will reflect that. Advocate for yourself.
- Speak up and ask for help if you feel like a situation, assignment, or patient is unsafe.
- Unless both their arms are broken, male patients don’t need your help using the Urinal or otherwise “holding it”. The best thing to do in this situation is tell them you need to grab some things and you’ll be right back, then send in the male nurse or tech. Bet they won’t ask again. Bless you, male health care workers.
- I use to accidentally pop the battery out of the phone when the day-shift nurse was still getting report. Do with that information as you will.
- Encourage your patients. I had a patient cry once because she was post op day 0 from an open Hysterectomy and she needed help walking to the bathroom. Nobody had told her that she was a badass for already walking and that it gets better soon.
- Sometimes the best thing to say is nothing.
- Have a heart, sometimes you have to pull down the mask so a deaf patient can read your lips. Sometimes you compulsively wear two masks because a patient is disgusting. It’s a tradeoff really.
- Patient’s sometimes need tough love.
- Like any relationship: it’s all about the details.
- Don’t leave the one 22g IV leaking for the oncoming shift.
- If you work on an immunocompromised floor, put the friggin green caps on the IV tubing hubs. You lunatic.
- Sometimes, calling out is definitely okay.
- Expect the unexpected. Listen, sometimes it’s 2am and the night is quie-…and then your buddy’s patient runs out into the hallway screaming in tongues and pulls out both their IVs during a blood transfusion, lays on the floor in a pool of their own blood, and has to be drug back into their room by 4 nurses. That’s a true story, by the way.
- If you walk into a patient’s room and it appears they’ve fallen, that’s documented as “patient found on the floor”. If the patient falls while you’re in the room and you’re there trying to help them, but they hit the ground anyways, that’s documented as “nurse assisted patient to the ground”. You’re welcome.
- Have respect for anyone that is in your care, and other nurses.
- Remind yourself that those with dementia and sun downing syndrome may often times not know what they are saying, and the character of those that have a mental illnesses doesn’t need to be degraded or slandered.
- Get where you’re wanting to go in your nursing career ASAP, and take anything else along the way as a learning opportunity, and a hell of a lot of good story time content. Keep it HIPPA friendly of course.