Well, I can finally bump this up...I'm in month 2 of my internship and I've run the gamut of emotions from panic "wtf is going on" to ragey "wtf is up with the nurses." Some of the nurses drive me nuts...because of their "we treat the patient, not the disease (unlike you awful unfeeling doctors)" position they will sometimes question the need for medications, labs, etc..."Oh can we save the patient from a poke?" STOP CALLING IT A POKE you're not a 12-year-old and hello, the patient is in the hospital because they are SICK so YES, they do need to get "poked" so we can figure out what's going on and give them their meds! Geezus. And you have to suck up to them or they will make your life miserable at night, paging you over stupid things to keep you from getting any sleep...and even when they're not pissed at you, you still get the dumbest pages at night...
"patient's urine output is 150 over the last shift, bladder scan shows 200cc - should we give her a bolus?"
"No, if she has urine in her bladder she's not actually dry...straight cath her and if it's not adequate for this shift, let me know."
"Ok on straight cath she put out another 400 cc...can we give her a bolus now??"
I don't know what nursing school is like, but they must have at least discussed adequate urine output...now when it comes to vital signs I'd rather be over-paged than under-paged, but it's hard to feel understanding and tolerant when it's 3 am!
