As a nurse, there are a billion and one things we have to do during our shift. Things we should be doing, could be doing, things we could have done better. To put it simply, there’s just no time to whine in nursing!
- Communicate.
Nurses have to be good communicators. We have to learn how to communicate with the physicians we work with, our coworkers, management, and of course, our patients. More importantly, we have to know how to be good communicators. How we say something is usually more important that what we’re actually saying! - Be polite.
Even if something, or someone, is irritating the s*** out of us, we have to always be polite. Being a nurse is a privilege, but it definitely has a good, a bad, and an ugly side! - Smile.
Nurses sometimes have to fake it until they make it. Even if we’re having a bad day, we can’t let on that everything around us is going to hell in a handbasket. We always have to put on a smile, even if we’re silently screaming to ourselves in our head. - Bite our tongue.
Ohhhhh if we could only say everything we really wanted to say! Sometimes we would give anything to blurt out what we’re really thinking, but more often than not, we have to bite our tongue and just keep our little thoughts to ourselves. - Comfort.
Many times throughout the day we spend comforting people, or wishing we could spend more time comforting people. We comfort people when they’re sick, when they get bad news, when they’re afraid, or when they’re stressed out. - Address pain.
Most hospitals have guidelines on how many hours can go by before we MUST address a patient’s pain. Even if a person is in labor, and pain is an expectation, it’s something we have to assess and address. - Readdress pain.
And once we address their pain, we have to remember to readdress it an hour later. It’s a vicious cycle. We’re always chasing zero! - Assess.
Foundations of nursing, anyone? As a nurse, we assess our patients and our surroundings every.single.minute.of every.single.shift. - Plan.
Once we assess, we have to figure out what we’re going to do about it. We’re either going to do something, or nothing. And then we have to chart who, what, when, where, and why. - Implement.
If we decide to do something about what we’ve assessed, then we have to figure out a way to implement the plan we devise. - Reassess.
And then we reassess. And it.never.stops. Like ever. - Navigate.
As nurses, we have to navigate our way through all sorts of crazy, complex relationships. We have to navigate our way to answers. We navigate our way to ensure we’re providing the most up-to-date care possible. We are basically professional seekers. - Decipher.
Have you ever tried to read a physician’s handwriting? Enough said. - Try not to piss anyone off.
And by anyone, I mean we interact with a lot of people who we could easily irritate. We are constantly trying not to upset our patients, or their family. We don’t want to anger our boss, or worse yet, their boss. We don’t want to make our coworkers angry, or the physicians that we work next to. We are constantly trying to dance around everyone’s mood and everyone’s personality. - Chart.
You didn’t think I’d forget this one, did you? It’s like a nurse’s version of a A Never Ending Story. - SBAR.
At least, we’re supposed to be doing this 🙁 - Review orders.
Or we risk the danger of being yelled at for not implementing an order before the ink was even dry. - Take care of our patient’s family.
Our assignment doesn’t just include the patient, our assignment includes the patient and their family. Here’s hoping their family is nice and supportive and thinks about their nurse when they go to the cafeteria for coffee. - Monitor intake and output.
This is harder than it sounds. This is often a task that’s delegated, but then we have to remember to look at what someone else is measuring.