Required Reading

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

How to Make Your Life Miserable in the Hospital--Guar-OWN-teed: A Ten Step Guide

Mad Nurses = Miserable existence in Hospital


Aww, HELLS no! Did that 4-day-old intern just roll her eyes at me?



Ten Ways to Make the Nurses Hate (or at least Really Not Like) You:

1. Write all of your orders one at a time and twenty minutes apart. All. Day. Long.

2. Get an attitude and say some kind of condescending remark under your breath. (They can hear everything.) If that's not sufficient, roll your eyes behind their back. (They can see everything.)

3. Act like you are the only one who knows anything about the patient and his or her problem. Oh yeah. And refuse to listen to them or factor their opinion into anything whatsoever.

4. Sit in the Nurses' Lounge writing your notes when they are trying to give report or write new orders at change of shift.

5. Forget the fact that the nurse has been nursing since before you were born. Have the nerve to say something insulting like, "I'm not sure if you realize this, but in heart failure, we have to watch the salt and fluid intake."

6. Bark out orders like a drill sergeant. The say something crazy like what my dear friend, R.C., said to a nurse during our internship: "That's an order, not a suggestion!" (Not good.)

7. Work with the same nurses every day and refuse to learn their names. But expect them to know yours. Oh. And eat the snacks provided by the same nameless nurses every day.

8. Blame an adverse outcome on them when it was your fault. Or worse, get your ass saved by a nurse and take the credit for it on rounds. In front of the nurses.

9. Call in verbal orders when a patient is sick and needs your personal attention.

10. Start a medication that induces diarrhea two hours before change of shift. And then don't answer your pages.

2 comments:

  1. Omg I was laughing through every single one of these! 1, 3, 4 & 8 are my faves though... definitely you hit the nail right on the head.

    Another one to add to this is... Right when the nurse is giving the change of shift report to the nurse about to take over... interrupt her and ask her a MILLION questions about the patient and how they did overnight... even though ALL of that info can be found on the computer in my notes and charting. Seriously y'all? Don't interrupt me.. it's rude and I just want to go home!
    For your next post:
    hmm, on my unit if the nurses don't like a resident it usually is shown by us not going out of our way to help them. i.e if you leave a mess in my room... I'm gonna hunt you down and tell you to clean it up..or on rounds instead of us giving you hints on how to impress your attending, when you say something incorrect, you will be corrected by the nurse of that patient (nurses are apart of rounds in my unit) and it will be in front of your attending... yeah, no shame.
    OR... my fave night shift move. we will page you constantly... if you treat us like we are stupid and don't know what we're doing... well then I guess we'll just have to get your help a lot, right? :)
    oh this post really makes smile. thanks for that!

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  2. Shared this one on FB for my very cool nurse friends. I told them how smart you are (to know all this lol).

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