On account of not being a giant hypochondriac baby, I don’t usually come into contact with nurses too often — although now that I said that, I’m probably going to walk out the door and get my head chopped off by a helicopter. Who’s the tough guy now? Not me, that’s who.
Anyway, every time I do deal with a nurse, they’re usually pretty surly, exhausted broads who don’t act too excited about fingering my dirty bulbous hemorrhoids even though that’s probably the easiest thing they get to do all day and I paid good money for this shit, so come on just take a look and tell me what’s going on down there please.
My friend here is a nurse at a big city hospital where people catch death every day. It’s the type of place you hope you’ll never end up. She’s also really sweet and regularly beats me at poker.
Actually, screw her, now that I think of it.
SBTVC: OK, first of all, you’re a nurse? What kind? What sort of school do you have to go to to become a nurse?
NURSE: I am a registered nurse. There are a bunch of types, just depends on what kind of schooling you have or what type of field you go into. Nowadays, you typically have to get a Bachelor of Science in Nursing in order to become a nurse. There are some diploma schools still around, but most hospitals are trying to hire strictly BSNs.
What’s the hospital you work at like?
The hospital I work in is big. I work in the cardiovascular catheterization lab. It’s basically where you go when you are having a heart attack, or if you have a known blockage in your heart or leg that you want us to open up.
What’s the nastiest injury you’ve ever seen?
A girl was driving with her boyfriend in the car. I guess they got in the mood and he went down on her. It may have been the cocaine or it may have just been too good to handle, but she lost control of the car. It rolled over several times. His head was crushed between the steering wheel and her pelvis and he was thrown into the back seat. He needed emergency surgery in order to repair his aorta, but eventually ended up brain dead from the crushing injury. She survived and was in a full body cast because she broke almost every major bone in her body.
Oh my fucking god. I am never doing any of those things again anywhere. You know, just in case. (Apologies in advance to my girlfriend.) So what’s an average night like for you?
Thankfully, I don’t work nights anymore. I work four ten-hour days. I spend most of my time doing patient care and the rest of my time completing paperwork.
By paper work do you mean cleaning up other people’s shit?
If you want something done right, it’s best to do it yourself.
That’s very true, but I meant literally wiping other people’s asses.
Oh yeah, it’s an art form really. It’s always nice having to wipe some poor slob’s ass who is simply too lazy to do it themselves. And then there are the ones who have repeated, uncontrollable diarrhea where it overflows from the bed and rolls onto the floor, where you have to wear a mask in order to contain your nausea, and where no size rectal tube or properly placed rectal bag can hold it. It happens all the time.
That segues nicely into my next question: Have you ever broken down and cried on the job?
Once or twice. Sometimes you just can’t do it all and if you’re an obsessive compulsive, control-freak, like myself, it can be overwhelming. And often when one of my patients has died, I have cried with the family. You build such a bond with these people, it’s hard not to cry.
What’s a good day for a nurse like?
A good day is when someone doesn’t fall out of bed or when you aren’t stuck taking care of an elderly man withdrawing from his “one highball” a day habit. I think most people would agree that a good day is when the patients and doctors are nice, funny and appreciative, but that rarely happens. I personally like it when my patients are really sick. There is nothing more fun than being involved in a code. [Hospital slang that refers to a patient in cardiopulmonary arrest.]
What drug has the worst withdrawal symptoms? Is it alcohol? I’ve heard about people getting addicted to anesthesia a lot around hospitals. Is that a thing?
I spent most of my career in an intensive care unit where most of my patients were either still intubated and sedated, or receiving round-the-clock pain medicine. The only real withdrawal that I have dealt with is from alcohol. Whatever someone will admit to drinking, you can usually multiply by three. If someone was a “moderate” drinker prior to surgery, don’t be surprised to find them in four point restraints, in a diaper, sweating and swearing after surgery. And as for employees getting addicted to anesthesia, I may be naive, but I have not encountered it as far as I know.
Who are the biggest assholes in a hospital? Is it the doctors? The administrators I bet, right?
The administrators aren’t great but they have no interaction with the staff. The true gems are the doctors. Some are wonderful but others are the most arrogant, ill-mannered people I have ever met. Talk about God complexes. It always amazes me how entitled they are. If you leave anything delicious out, whether it’s for yourself or to share, they will eat it without so much as a “please” or “thank you.” For example, a nurse I worked with left a box of candy bars out as a fundraiser for her daughter’s cheer-leading squad. There was a sign and an envelope with the box clearly saying what they were for and that the cost was a $1 per bar. A group of medical residents passed through our unit and took every candy bar out of the box and didn’t leave any money. I didn’t go to medical school for 4 years, but I have the basic common sense that if I walked into a unit in the hospital where I didn’t work, I wouldn’t think that someone would leave out a complimentary candy box just for me.
Greedy pricks. What’s the deal with doctors these days anyway? How many of them do you think are there because they want to help people and how many are just collecting a big pay check?
I do think that the majority of doctors are there because they really want to help people. It requires a lot of school, a lot of money and many years of abuse in order to become a doctor. You would have to be a glutton for punishment to go through all that unless you really wanted to do it.
Why would someone become a nurse? Seems like a hard, thankless job.
It can be fun and the pay is decent. It has a lot of flexibility with hours for mothers. And there is a lot of variety in career paths. You have to really like working with people or else all the crap you take isn’t worth it.
Pretty much everything I know about being a nurse is from TV, like ER or whatever. How much of the stuff we see about the job on TV is bullshit?
It’s pretty accurate, more so than the way the doctors are portrayed. The nurses come across as tough and cynical. They tend to order the residents around and are responsible for all the minutia. That’s about right. The doctors come across as bleeding-heart, overly devoted individuals with compassionate, bed-side manners. That may be embellishing it a bit.
You banging any of the doctors over there? What’s that scene like?
It’s not like TV where people are going at it in every available janitor’s closet and doctor’s call room. But it’s there. Some people want to marry a doctor, whether or not that doctor is married. People work together for such long hours in very stressful situations and often spend more time with co-workers than their families. In addition, unless you work in a hospital, it is hard to relate to what we really do. Not many people think dinner conversations should revolve around how you cracked open someone’s chest during a code and squeezed their heart back to life. Temptation is everywhere in a hospital and sometimes, hard to ignore.
Have you ever seen an insurance company deny someone coverage for something that they later went on to die from?
Yes, I have.
Those motherfuckers. I sincerely hope they all face the same predicament at some point in their shitty lives. So are you immune to suffering by this point?
Pretty much. You have to be really nice and/or have a really nice family, and be on death’s door for me to feel bad for you. No matter how unfair or tragic your circumstances are, if you are a whiner, then I probably won’t feel bad for you.
Originally posted at Street Boners and TV Carnage
Anyway, every time I do deal with a nurse, they’re usually pretty surly, exhausted broads who don’t act too excited about fingering my dirty bulbous hemorrhoids even though that’s probably the easiest thing they get to do all day and I paid good money for this shit, so come on just take a look and tell me what’s going on down there please.
My friend here is a nurse at a big city hospital where people catch death every day. It’s the type of place you hope you’ll never end up. She’s also really sweet and regularly beats me at poker.
Actually, screw her, now that I think of it.
SBTVC: OK, first of all, you’re a nurse? What kind? What sort of school do you have to go to to become a nurse?
NURSE: I am a registered nurse. There are a bunch of types, just depends on what kind of schooling you have or what type of field you go into. Nowadays, you typically have to get a Bachelor of Science in Nursing in order to become a nurse. There are some diploma schools still around, but most hospitals are trying to hire strictly BSNs.
What’s the hospital you work at like?
The hospital I work in is big. I work in the cardiovascular catheterization lab. It’s basically where you go when you are having a heart attack, or if you have a known blockage in your heart or leg that you want us to open up.
What’s the nastiest injury you’ve ever seen?
A girl was driving with her boyfriend in the car. I guess they got in the mood and he went down on her. It may have been the cocaine or it may have just been too good to handle, but she lost control of the car. It rolled over several times. His head was crushed between the steering wheel and her pelvis and he was thrown into the back seat. He needed emergency surgery in order to repair his aorta, but eventually ended up brain dead from the crushing injury. She survived and was in a full body cast because she broke almost every major bone in her body.
Oh my fucking god. I am never doing any of those things again anywhere. You know, just in case. (Apologies in advance to my girlfriend.) So what’s an average night like for you?
Thankfully, I don’t work nights anymore. I work four ten-hour days. I spend most of my time doing patient care and the rest of my time completing paperwork.
By paper work do you mean cleaning up other people’s shit?
If you want something done right, it’s best to do it yourself.
That’s very true, but I meant literally wiping other people’s asses.
Oh yeah, it’s an art form really. It’s always nice having to wipe some poor slob’s ass who is simply too lazy to do it themselves. And then there are the ones who have repeated, uncontrollable diarrhea where it overflows from the bed and rolls onto the floor, where you have to wear a mask in order to contain your nausea, and where no size rectal tube or properly placed rectal bag can hold it. It happens all the time.
That segues nicely into my next question: Have you ever broken down and cried on the job?
Once or twice. Sometimes you just can’t do it all and if you’re an obsessive compulsive, control-freak, like myself, it can be overwhelming. And often when one of my patients has died, I have cried with the family. You build such a bond with these people, it’s hard not to cry.
What’s a good day for a nurse like?
A good day is when someone doesn’t fall out of bed or when you aren’t stuck taking care of an elderly man withdrawing from his “one highball” a day habit. I think most people would agree that a good day is when the patients and doctors are nice, funny and appreciative, but that rarely happens. I personally like it when my patients are really sick. There is nothing more fun than being involved in a code. [Hospital slang that refers to a patient in cardiopulmonary arrest.]
What drug has the worst withdrawal symptoms? Is it alcohol? I’ve heard about people getting addicted to anesthesia a lot around hospitals. Is that a thing?
I spent most of my career in an intensive care unit where most of my patients were either still intubated and sedated, or receiving round-the-clock pain medicine. The only real withdrawal that I have dealt with is from alcohol. Whatever someone will admit to drinking, you can usually multiply by three. If someone was a “moderate” drinker prior to surgery, don’t be surprised to find them in four point restraints, in a diaper, sweating and swearing after surgery. And as for employees getting addicted to anesthesia, I may be naive, but I have not encountered it as far as I know.
Who are the biggest assholes in a hospital? Is it the doctors? The administrators I bet, right?
The administrators aren’t great but they have no interaction with the staff. The true gems are the doctors. Some are wonderful but others are the most arrogant, ill-mannered people I have ever met. Talk about God complexes. It always amazes me how entitled they are. If you leave anything delicious out, whether it’s for yourself or to share, they will eat it without so much as a “please” or “thank you.” For example, a nurse I worked with left a box of candy bars out as a fundraiser for her daughter’s cheer-leading squad. There was a sign and an envelope with the box clearly saying what they were for and that the cost was a $1 per bar. A group of medical residents passed through our unit and took every candy bar out of the box and didn’t leave any money. I didn’t go to medical school for 4 years, but I have the basic common sense that if I walked into a unit in the hospital where I didn’t work, I wouldn’t think that someone would leave out a complimentary candy box just for me.
Greedy pricks. What’s the deal with doctors these days anyway? How many of them do you think are there because they want to help people and how many are just collecting a big pay check?
I do think that the majority of doctors are there because they really want to help people. It requires a lot of school, a lot of money and many years of abuse in order to become a doctor. You would have to be a glutton for punishment to go through all that unless you really wanted to do it.
Why would someone become a nurse? Seems like a hard, thankless job.
It can be fun and the pay is decent. It has a lot of flexibility with hours for mothers. And there is a lot of variety in career paths. You have to really like working with people or else all the crap you take isn’t worth it.
Pretty much everything I know about being a nurse is from TV, like ER or whatever. How much of the stuff we see about the job on TV is bullshit?
It’s pretty accurate, more so than the way the doctors are portrayed. The nurses come across as tough and cynical. They tend to order the residents around and are responsible for all the minutia. That’s about right. The doctors come across as bleeding-heart, overly devoted individuals with compassionate, bed-side manners. That may be embellishing it a bit.
You banging any of the doctors over there? What’s that scene like?
It’s not like TV where people are going at it in every available janitor’s closet and doctor’s call room. But it’s there. Some people want to marry a doctor, whether or not that doctor is married. People work together for such long hours in very stressful situations and often spend more time with co-workers than their families. In addition, unless you work in a hospital, it is hard to relate to what we really do. Not many people think dinner conversations should revolve around how you cracked open someone’s chest during a code and squeezed their heart back to life. Temptation is everywhere in a hospital and sometimes, hard to ignore.
Have you ever seen an insurance company deny someone coverage for something that they later went on to die from?
Yes, I have.
Those motherfuckers. I sincerely hope they all face the same predicament at some point in their shitty lives. So are you immune to suffering by this point?
Pretty much. You have to be really nice and/or have a really nice family, and be on death’s door for me to feel bad for you. No matter how unfair or tragic your circumstances are, if you are a whiner, then I probably won’t feel bad for you.
Originally posted at Street Boners and TV Carnage
brought to you by
No comments:
Post a Comment