caring

Nursing Motto: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.

Nursing Motto: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.

“With great power, comes great responsibility”. As cliché as that phrase may seem, I feel it lends itself quite well to the nursing field. In fact, if I were going to pick one nursing motto to live my career by, it would probably be this phrase. Sure, “Do no harm” is nice, but it’s not nearly as thorough, plus the doctors already have that mantra. In Nursing, there is Always Something to Learn Early in my nursing career, I grew to understand just how much power nurses hold in their hands. No matter how many years you spend at the […]

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6 Characteristics of Fantastic Nurses

6 Characteristics of Fantastic Nurses

What does it take to be a fantastic nurse? Many wonder if they have what it takes to excel in the nursing profession. There are some key differences between an average nurse and a fantastic nurse. If you’re smart enough and dedicated enough, nearly anyone can become an average nurse. But it takes a certain something to elevate yourself to the fantastic level.

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High Fives in Healthcare: Taking Time to Celebrate Your Victories

I sincerely hope you still feel the rush of endorphins when you get a successful IV stick. I encourage you to smile, be proud, and ask your co-worker for a high five (after a good hand washing of course) the next time you change a particularly challenging dressing. Turn to the side and tell the nurse beside you how excited you are that your patient made the transfer from the bed to the chair successfully. Heck, share with your patient how excited you are that their kidneys produced an adequate amount of volume of the shift. I can’t tell you how happy I’ve had patients get when I complement their kidneys and acknowledge their bodies success and our collective success of a productive and healing shift.

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Integrity & Clinical Judgement: You Can’t Buy it at Walmart

You expect a nurse to have integrity and use good clinical judgement, but not every one does. It’s even possible that not everyone can. Judgement is subjective, and even though the it is the goal for any prudent nurse to give the same level of care as another, it just doesn’t always happen that way.

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How Many People Are Involved in Patient Care?

Today when my preceptor was showing me a report for infection control, it made me realize just how many people are involved in the care of every patient that walks through the doors of a hospital. We know that as nurses on the that we can’t take care of our patients all by ourselves. We need the help of doctors, aids, other nurses, and other departments. What I don’t think most nurses think about is just how much goes on behind the scenes to make sure that the patient care a reality.

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When a Nurse Says: I Don't Care - nurse phone

When a Nurse Says: I Don’t Care

“I don’t care. “ Those aren’t the words you want to hear coming from the mouth of a nurse. Now, true, nurses are human, and there are things that we don’t care about, but the phrase itself, while on the job,  just sounds so …. unprofessional. As nurses, we encounter so many challenges every day. Often we have to wait on other departments, facilities, or patients. If we are not waiting on something (a lab, a transporter, a phone call), we rush to do or get something done ourselves. It’s very much a feast or famine profession. Things rarely progress

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Things They Don’t Tell you When You’re In Nursing School: Advice for New Grads

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not one of these people who grew up being a nurse. It would be nice to say that I put bandages on my dolls, and had dreams of nursing since I was a child. But I just can’t say it. It’s not true. I came to the realization that wanted to be a nurse 6 months after passing my NCLEX and working as a nurse. Before then, I knew I could be a nurse, but I didn’t really know I wanted to. I did well in school. I found the best places

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Shocking Truth – Nurses Depend Too Much On Charting

A very real conversation – when nurses chart their medical care, are they depending too much on charting and not enough on connecting with the people they care for? Nurses Chart Too Much & Don’t Think For Themselves Teresa Brown, R.N. wrote an article, featured in the New York Times, recently Caring for the Chart of the Patient, in which she discusses the very real challenge we face as nurses to document our care. She speaks about the mandates, and standards that we are forced to document on in order to satisfy one agency, insurance company, regulation, or another. What she mentions that

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They made me put my socks on with a stick

They Made Me Put My Socks On With a Stick

I find it interesting how the most grumpy, disgruntled people react to kind gestures. It’s been my experience that usually someone with an attitude has a pretty good reason for it. There are the occasional crapheads who are just crappy for no reason, but usually there is some sort root cause for most meaness I experience in my nursing practice.

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