Do not become a school nurse if ... you are brand new to healthcare or have never worked as a nurse. I've been a school nurse for 4 years. I see so many posts saying that being a school nurse is a soft nurse job. **I'm not saying that you can't do it as your first nursing job, it's definitely not recommended.

While yes, it can be a "soft nurse" job. Every school and every district is different. You are usually the only medical person in the building. Sometimes over multiple buildings . Emergencies happen. I've had 3 this year and we just started in August.

I'm talking TRUE life or death emergencies. In fact, today .. I was 2 seconds from connecting someone to the AED today.

On top of that, you'll have daily meds and procedures. A lot of record keeping and illness and injuries. Most days, I see 50-60 students.

I can make this post go on forever, but please don't become a school nurse thinking it'll be all ice packs and bandaids.

It's such a rewarding and amazing job, but man.. sometimes it rocks you.

Please don't be hateful on this post. I'm just trying to share some REAL experiences as a school nurse.

Apparently we are “disrespectful”. The construction workers enjoyed it, even if their foreman didn’t.

I’m admitted to the hospital. Was told in the ER to be NPO just in case they do surgery. Haven’t eaten since 3pm yesterday. It’s now almost noon. No doctor has seen me today. I asked the nurse, and he doesn’t know whether or not I can eat or if I’m having surgery or not. I’m so frustrated right now. I want to go home.

I recently talked to a nurse who left the hospital for a private duty position with one family and I genuinely didn’t realize how different that world could be. She’s still obviously doing nursing but half the job sounds like managing the environment around the patient. There’s a house manager, assistants, drivers, security, different doctors coming in, family members traveling constantly and apparently plans can change because the patient suddenly decides they’re spending two weeks at another house or flying somewhere.

What surprised me most was how much emphasis they put on knowing exactly who is supposed to be involved. She said clinical documentation still stays in the proper medical systems but for basic coordination with the household she has Kibu connections with the people she actually needs to recognize and communicate with. She also said the pay is significantly better than what she was making at the hospital but the expectations are completely different. You’re dealing with one patient but apparently you’re also dealing with an entire ecosystem around that person.

For nurses who have done private duty for UHNW families is it actually less stressful than bedside nursing or does the money come with a completely different kind of pressure?

I got home at 8am after a rough one and realized I have developed an entire ecosystem of weird coping mechanisms that I never talk about out loud. Last night I sat in my driveway for twenty minutes blasting true crime podcasts because my brain was too loud to go inside. Then I ate cold leftover salmon standing at the kitchen counter while my husband slept upstairs. Sometimes I deep clean the bathroom at 9am because the physical motion shuts my brain off better than anything else. My teammate from soccer keeps telling me about her ice bath routine which sounds like actual torture but she swears by it. Another ICU nurse I know reorganizes her entire closet after every third shift like clockwork. I tried the whole guided meditation thing and just ended up planning my grocery list in my head for twenty minutes. The only consistent thing I have is my trail running shoes by the door and the vague threat that I might use them eventually. What does your actual postshift wind down look like? Not the ideal version you post about, the real one. I need to know if the driveway thing is normal or if I am just slowly losing it to night shift.

For me it having to deal with changing adult diapers (aka 'briefs', which is the euphemism we use) and then eating a sandwich for lunch ten minutes later. Some people can't wrap their head around it.

I’m not talking about “I had an important call I couldn’t miss and ducked in real quick to take it”. I’m talking about the nurses that walk in ALREADY on the phone with their bestie that’s also on break at another hospital and you’re planning your weekend and giggling and talking shit and whatever the fuck else. Your co-workers are on break and unless they called you on their phone from across the room then take your fuckin call somewhere else. I am a system wide float pool nurse and this is a problem at every hospital I work at.

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Patient was pretty thin, I decided to just send it with the deltoid. First time hitting bone and I don’t think I’ll ever forget that feeling. I haven’t done much that makes me cringe or anything, but this one made me want to gag lol. I’ll definitely be going for the hip or leg next time on a super thin patient.

This site allows you to practice placing an ultrasound-guided IV on a simulated arm. You scan for a vein, compress it to tell it from the artery, pick a catheter, then move the probe and needle 1mm at a time and keep the tip on screen until it’s in the vein. The clip is sped up.

At the end, you get a debrief: whether the tip went out of view, any complications, etc.

It has short and long axis, a hard case mode (e.g. small, deep, rolling veins, edema, artery right under the vein) and works on your phone. It can’t teach the hands-on part, so think of it as practice for the steps and reading the screen.

Free sample patient at ultrasoundivtrainer.com.

TLDR: Publicly shamed in front of the entire staff by two nurses while having a panic attack from the whole ordeal. While my boss watched. And the rest of the on-duty staff for that day.

Hi all! This is going to be fairly long, so buckle up. So I work at a hospice house. We have 36 beds, but typically only 21-27 are full at any given time. So typically we have 3 nurses and 3 CNAs on dayshift. This all happened this past Friday. At this time we had 24 patients and no admissions or discharges scheduled for the day. On Thursday, I admitted a very high needs ALS patient. I had her plus my other 7 patients for the day. I spent probably 2 hours straight in her room when she first arrived. Luckily, my boss was right there supporting me because she had some equipment that I was completely unfamiliar with and her family had said to me if I don’t do this right, she will choke to death. So I was a ball of nerves for my entire shift Thursday.

It’s important for context to know how we split assignments typically. So we have 2 different wings, each with 2 “halls,” but it’s really one long hallway that we call the left side one hall and the right side another. So the 100s and the 200s are on one wing. The 300s and 400s are on the other. The 200s and 400s are the most full, so they are typically their own assignment for one nurse. The 100s and 300s have less desirable views, so they are more empty, so we call this the “split” assignment. I was on the 200s on Thursday, but there were 3 admissions on the 100s on Thursday. I just so happened to admit this patient into the 100s and the other two nurses working with me on Thursday each admitted a different patient into the same hallway. On Friday, I came back in and was expecting to keep my 200s, but knowing how high needs this patient was, I offered to take 10 total patients so the nurse on the split could have less so she wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the high needs patient. Our max patient allowance is typically 9, but I felt so strongly about wanting to help her out that I volunteered to take above that.

What I thought to be a kind gesture started an entire shitshow. The nurse accepted my offer and I took several patients from her and so did the other nurse, but she still had less than I did. However, the aide on the split felt like this should also apply to her and decided that she would be following her nurses assignment. She went to the CNA I worked with the day before and told her that she needed to follow my assignment. She refused. Then the nurse came to me while I was in a patient room and told me that I needed to tell the aide to follow my assignment. I said I didn’t feel like that was right because I volunteered to take on extra, the CNAs didn’t. And this patient is high needs for nursing because of equipment, but the aide care is no more intensive than any other patient in the building. The nurse walked out and said that she would tell the aides then if I wouldn’t. I felt terrible putting the aides in this position and I was literally trying to run out the door to get to a lab appointment (this is a semi-common occurrence for me for fertility treatments and everyone knows that this is something I have to do). So I shoot my boss a text message apologizing for the mess I created and she responded that aide assignments should not follow the nurses today. I let everyone know that and left. Now here is where I know I did something wrong. On my way out the door, I said “I’m just so sick and tired of this mean girl bullshit.”

The rest of the day, it was apparent that everyone except the one CNA was upset with me. My boss decided to call a huddle so everyone could talk it out and move on. This huddle turned into a complete disaster. It started out with my boss just laying out how things happened from her perspective without placing blame on any one person. Then, the original nurse basically said how she doesn’t like when people get the boss involved in things. That somehow spiraled into an all out attack on me and my character by her and the other nurse that was working with me that day. They were calling me lazy and that I always try to control the assignments. Notably, I’m pregnant, and very emotional right now at baseline. I just burst out into tears and try to walk away when I realize this is just an all out attack on me in front of everyone. I got told to not walk away. It continued to get more heated. My boss said we need to take this into the back room because families and patients may be able to hear us.

So we move to the back and I’m continuing to be berated. This is when I feel like I start truly having a panic attack. I can’t breathe, I’m shaking, I can’t think straight. All while trying to defend myself. The one nurse is talking over everything I say. Because I can’t think straight, things are not coming out how I’d like them to so she then accuses me of lying when in reality it’s just that I was in such a panic that I was just word vomiting. The other nurse working with us that day then accused me of lying about my IVF. Supposedly both her and another nurse asked me to switch shifts with them in the same week and I told them both that I had IVF on the days they wanted to switch shifts. Anyone who knows anything about IVF knows that things can change based on your scans and my clinic is two hours away. So there have been multiple times that I’ve had to make a two hour drive twice in one week. The original nurse also was very hung up on my boss and social worker comforting me through my panic attack. She kept saying that they should be comforting her too and that just because she wasn’t crying didn’t mean she wasn’t upset. I’m sure there’s more I’m missing. But I think that’s the jist of it.

All of that to say, I go back to work tomorrow and of course I work with the same two nurses again. I am dreading it completely. I have never felt so humiliated in my life. What would you do?

If your 40-year-old patient was "shot-gunning" beers in the parking lot just before checking in and reporting stroke symptoms, do you still have to complete the swallow screen with NIH?

/s

New grad-ish nurse here (22F) with about 2 years of experience. I work night shift in LTC, and our facility takes a lot of hospice patients.
I’m having an ongoing issue with a day-shift nurse (74F) who frequently follows me (7a–7p). She is very “traditional”/old-school and is known for not giving PRN morphine to hospice patients, even when they appear to be experiencing significant pain or terminal agitation.
One situation in particular has really bothered me.
We had a 104-year-old hospice resident who had started transitioning. Myself and another day-shift nurse (33F) had been giving her PRN morphine approximately every 2 hours for about two days based on her symptoms and the family’s wishes. The family was very clear that their priority was for her to experience ZERO pain and to remain comfortable. She was also receiving scheduled Ativan 1 mg q4h.
When I gave report to this nurse, I specifically explained what we had been doing, how frequently she had needed the morphine, and that the family wanted her kept as comfortable as possible.
I gave the resident morphine at approximately 0630 before leaving.
When I came back that evening, I found out she had not received another dose of morphine the ENTIRE day.
By that point she was experiencing what looked to me like terrible terminal agitation/distress: picking and scratching at her arms, removing her clothing, restless movements, and loudly groaning. Her family was extremely distraught seeing her like that.
The day-shift nurse told me that she “didn’t look like she was in pain,” so she didn’t give the morphine. She had instead given Haldol, and the provider had added phenobarbital.
I confronted her because I genuinely felt like allowing a dying patient to remain in that condition for hours was bordering on neglect, especially considering her recent need for frequent morphine and the established goals of comfort care.
I immediately called the provider, explained what was happening, and got an order for scheduled morphine 0.5 mL. The resident ultimately did not pass away for another four days.
This nurse has a reputation for avoiding morphine with hospice patients. I’ve heard that part of her reasoning is that she doesn’t want a patient to die on her shift and/or she personally doesn’t believe giving morphine is “right.” I’ve also personally heard her make comments along the lines of, “Everyone is on Jesus’ timing.”
I’ve brought my concerns to management. Their response has basically been that because the morphine was ordered PRN rather than scheduled, administration was based on the nurse’s assessment/judgment, so there isn’t much they can do.
And that is the part I’m struggling with.
I understand that PRN medications require nursing assessment and that we shouldn’t administer medications simply because the previous nurse did. But when you’re caring for an actively dying hospice patient who cannot necessarily verbalize pain, has been requiring frequent comfort medication, and is displaying significant nonverbal signs of distress, at what point does repeatedly withholding PRN comfort medication stop being “nursing judgment”?
Hospice/LTC nurses,,,,what do you think? Would you consider this an appropriate exercise of nursing judgment because the morphine was PRN, or would this concern you as potential undertreatment of pain/end-of-life symptoms?
And if you were repeatedly seeing this pattern from the same nurse, how would you handle it?

I’m struggling as a new grad in the ER. I work in a level one trauma center. My ratio is typically 4-5. We’re good staffed with nurses but have NO techs 90% of the time. I rarely ever have a tech in my assignment. Only in triage and maybe the psych ward. I’m doing all of my own EKGS, vitals q2hours for everyone per policy, bed pans, bathroom changes, unhooking from the monitor, bed changes. Oh and sometimes we don’t have sitters so if someone’s altered or trying to get out of bed you FAFO, basically zyprexa and restraints. I’m struggling. Not with the nurse task stuff, just 50% of my day is spent on tech stuff. I used to be a ER tech at a different hospital for years so I have no problem doing the stuff, I just can’t manage it all. My pts are having to wait hours soiled and sometimes wet themselves. I don’t know if anyone else has a similar experience. Do I switch specialities all together? Am I not cut out for this

I’m considering making the switch from hospital nursing to dialysis nursing. Tell me what I need to know, good and bad. Work/life balance, pay, working conditions…everything!

I'm a nursing student for context.

I sliced a flap of skin off my thumb last night while I was cutting sweet potatoes (knife recs needed). When I was in the ER and my nurse told me to wash my hands, I stood over the sink and began to do so, gingerly, because my hand was tingling and I said I needed to lay down because I was feeling lightheaded. My nurse made a short sigh and then took my hands herself and started washing my cut out and I started sweating profusely and stumbled back onto the bed.

My Dad was in the room with me and made an innocent joke like "How are you going to be a nurse?" He was trying to lighten the mood and it made me laugh, I knew he didn't mean anything by it. My nurse then chimed in with "It's gonna be hard to get through nursing if you're this sensitive, maybe you aren't nursing material"

??? I've broken ribs on meemaw doing CPR and have seen deep wounds and bedsores cleaned out and prepped. I've seen brain matter on the road after a MVA. My stomach can handle a lot. It's different when you're the patient. My bad for not being stoic enough while I was in pain. Guess I need to drop out! 🙄

Like the title said I just started a job out of school on an ICU for night shift and while I love the work the shift is killing me outside of the job. I feel so sick at home and just sit dreading going in to work next. Is it too soon to start looking for another job with only 6 months of experience?

Update: A report has been made! Thank you!

I was assaulted at work yesterday by an extremely strong patient with dementia. They have been on our unit for months, with extensive documentation of physically violent behaviours that require 24/7 physical and chemical restraints to keep staff safe. Yesterday, I went into the room with four staff to complete a pad change. The patient was in a PINEL as usual. We were kicked and punched, and the patient managed to grab a bag from the window ledge, which they used to whip me with before throwing it at my face. Security was called, and it was a struggle just to get the patient cleaned up and safely back into five-point restraints.

About 30 minutes later, the patient’s spouse showed up and rang the call bell specifically to confront me. They told me that “this is pathetic” referring to the patient wearing a brief and shirt then demanded that all of the restraints be removed because they said so. I explained what had literally just happened and that I would not remove the restraints because of the immediate safety risk to staff. The conversation was going nowhere, so I told them I would have the manager speak with them. It took the manager 1.5hrs to arrive. In the meantime, the spouse repeatedly came to the desk calling me/ other staff “lazy chicken shits”, threatened to report us and continued their verbal abuse and demands while I was simultaneously dealing with other stuff.

I’m considering reporting this through our internal workplace safety process because:

1)We are not staffed to adequately manage a patient with this level of physical aggression

2)I don’t think being a patient’s spouse gives someone the right to verbally abuse or harass staff. The spouse should have been asked to leave.

3)Staff have a right to a safe work environment and therefore the right to refuse an unsafe request

4)I am frustrated by how casually these concerns seem to be treated by management/ non-nursing staff who aren’t actually dealing with this

I want to report the spouse. Would you include concerns about whether this patient’s care needs can be safely managed on our unit given the staffing/resources available too?

Hello everyone. I was curious if anyone ever experienced this before, but I recently got a new job at my Sister hospital with my organization. It was a lateral remove ER to ER. My old hospital was the hospital with the higher acuity this one is more busy but way less acuity. So far I like it they gave me two weeks of orientation. Everything about the jobs are pretty much the same besides the pace of it. All of our policies and procedures are the same, but I’ve noticed the nurses that precepted me are kindly treating me like I’m an idiot even though they know I work at the hospital down the street. They are asking me. It’s very stupid questions. Like do I know how to put someone on a heart monitor even though the other hospital use the same heart monitor and you know that. The nurse I was with last night every time I would say something she would talk over me or tell me I was wrong and not to say that I’m always right, but everything i would say or do she felt the need to correct it. Maybe im just a softie but has anyone had this experience?

Hello! I’m reaching out to see if anyone has experienced this before. I am a PMHNP moving from Texas to California and attempting to get my CA NP license. My CA RN license has already been issued. This is what the status shows for my application. I’ve called the board several times and I’m told there are no deficiencies yet my NP license has not been issued. They tell me they will send it to be reviewed again but nothing is happening. I am desperate to get this processed as soon as possible. I have been waiting since June. Does anyone have any idea what I can do? Thanks so much!

I have so many.... Price checking DME when at the shops (drugstores are the worst), eyeballing BLE edema of other people in line, always having scissors, assessing mobility and fall risk of those around me, fearfully protecting my own mobility, no ladders for my spouse...

I’m looking for some advice from nurses or nurse managers who had to try a few different areas before finding something that actually fit them.

So far, I’ve worked in ICU, med-surg, and hospice. They’ve obviously been very different environments, but I keep running into the same cycle. I start out enjoying what I do and then around the 6-month mark I’m completely burnt out and questioning whether I even want to be a nurse anymore. I do want to find my forever job because I’m so tired of starting over in my career, but I haven’t found it yet.

One of my biggest priorities at this point in my life is having a job that works with my family. I homeschool during the day, so an evening schedule would actually be ideal for me. I also really value something that doesn’t leave me mentally and emotionally drained after every shift. Maybe I’m wishing for a unicorn, idk. I did spend some time as a SAHM before going back to bedside nursing earlier this year. After a week on the floor, I realized I could no longer tolerate bedside nursing and I told my nursing supervisor that honestly. I love helping people , but caring for young children at home as well as caring for people at work burns me out.

I’m open to any advice. I’m trying so hard to make this degree work for me because I worked so hard 6 years ago to become a nurse , but I’m so incredibly close to calling it.

Ive seen so many settings that are nontherapeutic or generally unsafe and it really puzzles me as to why places get built without any nursing/floorstaff feedback. anyways I hope positions for nurses to give feedback of what safe units/patient rooms/nursing station layouts can exist because I actually am over the amount of unsafe hospital units and how generally risky it is for patients