Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Forty and fabulous

Musing on 40 years since I graduated from nursing school.

What a different world that was.

Nurses caps required at my first job. It sailed off my head when the day supervisor left for the day.
Also a white dress, white stockings, ugly Clinic shoes. Hair up and off neck.  Just like nursing school, only without the striped pinafore.
Metal bedpans and urinals.  Bedpan washer.
Glass IV bottles.
Smoking allowed in patient's rooms.  Emptying the ashtrays part of PM care routine, along with back rubs and changing pillow cases.
Smoking allowed at the nurses station (at night)
No wearing gloves except for sterile procedures, or possibly for a gone-by-the-wayside iced saline lavage for  a GI bleed.
Stryker frames.
Paper documentation.
Med carts and bottles of pills.
Narcotic count.
3 bottle chest tube drainage system
Setting up a science experiment to determine glucose levels in the urine on the ward.
clinitest tabs would turn 10 drops of pee blue, for no sugar or on the normal side.  I loved doing those.
Eyeballing the number of drops per 15 second for a 100 ml per hour IV drip rate. (6, for a 15 gtt tubing by the way).  No pumps.
Patients needing post op narcotic pain meds were given IM injections.  Think about that and the current opioid crises.
Admitting next-day pre-ops between 3 and 5 PM (for cholecystectomy, hyst,  or TURP,  for example), then pre-op teaching, prepping (enemas, shaving nipple to knees on abdominals)
Waking surgicals at 5:30 AM for IV starts.  Or more enemas.  Good morning!
Verbal report from charge nurse.  Led to taped report, and you had to listen to the report on all patients. In a smoke filled room, everyone smoked.
Being forced to take a 30 minute meal break AND a 15 minute coffee break.  Actually go to a cafe or sit down in a nurses lounge and have a break.
The night supervisor was a battle axe.
Being a brand new nurse and in charge of a 40 bed floor 3 months after getting a license.  Because I could.  And I was incredibly lucky.
Being a new ER nurse with 18 months of nursing experience, 8 hours of orientation,  alone on 11-7 with a doctor who was allowed to sleep.  And expected to register patient's to boot.

No wonder I'm tired.








4 comments:

Aesop said...

I still eyeball the drips, not least of which because those g**d*** pumps fail, or are broken, or too finicky, and you can always set a drip rate.

Courtesy of my Surgical rotation nursing instructor (the battleaxe everyone hated because she was a Vietnam combat Army nurse hardass) who I thrived under, because Marine Corps:

You want to deliver 100 mls in 60 minutes with 15 gt tubing:

tubing gtt rate/minutes X mls to deliver = gtts per minute
e.g. 15gtt tubing/60 minutes X 100mls =
1/4 X 100 =
25 a minute, or 6¼ in 15 seconds.
(Or, exactly 5 gtts in 12 seconds).

Bam.

Now you can calculate anything, and set your drips, with no pump, no power, just two eyeballs and sweep second hand watch.

Like when you're in a tent in Vietnam in 1968.

Or after a hurricane or tornado or earthquake knocks out your hospital's power.

My class had five different nursing instructors attempt to teach dosage calculations and such (they all sucked, BTW, because nurses teaching math is like garbagemen teaching physics).

One surg instructor covered that lesson better in one minute than five nursing professors who couldn't teach math.

Proof being I remember the formula twenty-five years later.
I doubt I'll survive to 40 years in nursing, but I got a late start in life.

Thanks for the memories.

One of my co-workers retired after 52(holy crap!) years in nursing, still doing ER triage 3 shifts/week in a 400 patients/day ER.
She started when Kennedy was president, and nursing uniforms came in any color you liked, as long as it was white, including the same cap, stocking, and shoes you started out in.

EDNurseasauras said...

Just had an interesting visit with one of my mom's friends age 86, which prompted this post. Retired ER nurse at age 69, graduated in the 50's. Loved hearing about her experiences

Mortisha said...

I must have graduated the same year you did. I remember all that stuff. Don't forget the all-important Kardex with actual patient info that you needed to know, but no Nursing Diagnosis or Nursing Care plan. The Kardex WAS the care plan. Nursing was more fun then and I learned so much from the docs I worked with. Once I got off the main wards and into ICU/CCU and ER nursing I was also out of the white costume and into comfy scrubs. Times were simpler then but you had to know your stuff. Gomco machines for suction in the rooms without suction. Knowing how to set up a 3 bottle suction for chest tubes, rotating tourniquets for congestive heart failure and doing iced lavage for most of a shift to control esophageal bleeds. Fun times!

EDNurseasauras said...

Oh yes, the Kardex. I recall the day charge doing nothing but sitting at the desk and updating the Kardex. It was good times!