#1 Most trusted profession? According to Gallup’s annual poll, nurses have ranked highest in honesty and ethical standards for 15 consecutive years. Today is National Nurses Day and this is what it feel like to be a nurse.
You work 3 days a week (unless you feel guilty that everyone is working short-staffed and you pick up an extra shift) but during those three days you see only your co- workers and your bed. Everything and everyone else cease to exist.
Returning home after a 13+ hour day, you have learned to ignore piles of dishes and laundry and force yourself to get to bed ASAP because in a few hours, you will do it all over again.
Friends and family say to you, “wow, you have a lot of time off!”
Your first day off after two or three shifts in a row is a day of catching up on laundry, not on sleep.
At any given moment at work, your feet hurt, your back or neck hurts, you are probably hungry, and you may or may not have had a chance to go to the bathroom since you got there.
You optimistically bring a lunch everyday but sometimes don’t have time to eat it.
You are really good at nodding and smiling, but your nurse friends know the truth. Sometimes, you only have time to exchange glances, but that’s all you need to feel better.
Your long hours make you depend on co-workers to switch shifts or come in early for you so you can rush to your child’s basketball game or concert in your scrubs.
Saltines and graham crackers? Yes at work. Never, ever at home.
Someone else’s bowel movements; Cheered, charted, reported and discussed. Weird? Not to us.
Same with urine, sputum and vomit.
Walks, talks and pees in the toilet is a wonderful phrase to hear during report.
Ditto with alert and oriented.
Speaking of report, giving to and getting from the same person a few days in a row can make your whole day.
Admission is a dirty word.
So is quiet.
Holidays and weekends and nights. Enough said.
Donuts from Drs, chocolates from patients and cakes for birthdays can cause a stampede in the break room.
When you are off, random medical emergencies in which you must take action, seem to happen frequently around you, although you try to avoid these situations like the plague.
Regarding the health of your children, you are one of two ways: certain that every headache is brain tumor and every stomach ache is appendicitis or shrug off every complaint with a “you’ll be fine.”
Among your coworkers, you know who is the best at different tasks like a difficult IV start or putting in an NG tube so you trade tasks or beg them to come along for “moral support.”
You have uttered the phrase, “I absolutely HAVE to get out on time today because I have to do X, Y and Z.” It doesn’t happen.
After a long day, when your spouse says, “how was your day?”, you say “fine” because to even begin to tell a non medical person everything you did and saw seems exhausting.
When you do feel like talking, usually when eating, your spouse abruptly ends the conversation with a hand up and a “please!”, when the word diarrhea makes its appearance.
No subject is off-limits with your co-workers and they know everything about you.
Wolfing down a meal with another nurse is the perfect time to discuss bodily functions. or lack thereof.
You think maybe you have seen it all, until the next strange things comes along.
You learn to accept anything, odd requests from patients, OCD behavior from other nurses, mood swings of physicians, and try to accomadate them all, as they also accept your quirks.
You live in fear that you will accidentally cause a HIPPA violation.
Because of HIPPA, your spouse has probably said to you, “xxxx said they saw you at work. Why didn’t you tell me?!?”
As a nurse, you have been punched, kicked, sworn and spit at. You have also held hands, cried with, hugged and even kissed strangers. You have been called a bi*%# and an angel in the same day. You have truly loved and disliked certain patients but have treated both the same way. You have loved and hated your job. You have cried and laughed. You have seen births and deaths. You have seen tragedy and triumph. You have seen people at their worst and their best. You have been at your worst and at your best. Your co-workers are like siblings. You are proud to be a nurse.
Happy Nurses Day.
