Celebrating Nurses with the Top 10 Nurse Phrases

Top 10 phrases that nurses say most

by JournalofNursingJocularity • July 25, 2015

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We’ve conducted the World’s Most Unscientific Survey! It’s amazing: Our methodology was completely arbitrary. Little, if any, effort went into ensuring rigid scientific standards were observed. In fact, we thought, “Hmmm…isn’t there supposed to be a control group for this type of thing?”
No matter!
We’ve talked to approximately 37,034,686 nurses, give or take a few million, and we asked them: What is the single phrase you say most during the day? Now, some of the nurses gave us practical, useful answers, and we didn’t like those, so we threw those right out, as clear outliers.
Examining the remaining answers (approximately 65,023), we discovered that the following phrases cross nurses’ lips more frequently than any others:
10. “No problem! I’d be happy to change your TV station again. What else would I do with all of my free time?”
9. “Sorry, your insurance doesn’t cover the good Tylenol.”
8. “You won’t feel a thing.”
7. “You’ll have to ask your doctor that. And after he answers, could you clue me in?”
6. “This won’t hurt a bit. Trust me, all the times I’ve attended this procedure, I’ve never felt a thing!”
5. “Ring that call bell one more time and just see what happens.” (Generally not said very loudly.)
4. “No, I will not give you a sponge bath.”
3. “And how do you wipe your butt at home?”
2. “You’re going to feel a little prick…unless you don’t settle down, in which case it’s square needle time…those suckers hurt!”
And number one, always said with a big smile:
1. “I’m sorry to wake you, Doctor…”

Celebrating Nurses with a Little Bit of Poetry

IF MY STETHOSCOPE COULD TALK

by Kimberley Ensor, MSN, RN

If my stethoscope could talk what would it say about me today?

Would it say that I rushed through my assessment so I could scope out a place at the nurses’ station?

Would it say that I was thorough or going through the motions?

Did I just kill time until break? Lunch? End of my shift?

What would my stethoscope say?

If my stethoscope could talk how would my listening skills be evaluated?

Did I actually hear my patient?  When medications were refused or when the patient expressed they had enough, would I actually listen?

As my stethoscope moved across their body, did I notice a change that needed to be addressed in the plan of care or did I just do business as usual?

Was I listening to my patient and their family members’ concerns or did I just perform lip service as from a script.

What would my stethoscope say?

If my stethoscope could talk would it say that I had my eyes open as I took care of my patient?

Did I completely understand the physician’s orders?  When my patient addressed me did I provide eye contact or was I too busy looking at monitors and equipment?

Did I notice something and speak up as an advocate for my patient or did I leave it for the next shift to handle?

What would my stethoscope say?

If my stethoscope could talk would it say I half-heartedly gave education and explanations about medications?

Would what I speak actually come from a desire to be a help to my patient or just to look good as an authority figure?

Did I form my words to be culturally sensitive or did I disregard my patient’s views, beliefs and preferences?

When I spoke to colleagues or interacted with the multi-disciplinary staff was I a source of encouragement.

Did I include my unit assistants in the plan of care for the patient?  Did I recognize my charge nurse as a valuable resource?  Did I appreciate my unit clerk for their invaluable help?

What would my stethoscope say?

If my stethoscope could talk, would it say that I am an example of patient centered care?

Did my care come from my passion to be a nurse or am I just hanging around for a paycheck?

Did my body language speak I care about you or was I stand offish and couldn’t be bothered?

Was I first to the room when an IV or bed alarm sounded or did I say ‘that’s not my patient and turn a deaf ear and go about my day?

Did I make myself available to my colleagues, to my patient or was I nowhere to be found during busy periods?

Did I take a moment to step outside and let the sun touch my skin, reminding me of why I wanted to be a nurse in the first place?

What would my stethoscope say?

My stethoscope would say,

I bring my joy and positive spirit with me each time I step on the unit.

It would say I strive to listen with open ears and see with both eyes.

It would say I try to be an asset to my unit and an instrument of excellent care.

It would say I utilize evidence based practices when answering patient questions and use simple languages.

It would say I work daily to be an advocate, a hand to hold, and an empathetic ear.

My stethoscope would say I am a nurse and I put my heart into everything I do.

I wear my stethoscope with pride.

Celebrate Nurses by Mentoring

Follow These 10 Tips To Be A Great Mentor To Student Nurses

by Scrubs Staff • March 24, 2016

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Despite years of classes and studying, new nurses really have no idea what they are up against until they finally hit the floor on their own. That’s when reality strikes, and they realize exactly how much responsibility they really have.
You may have already forgotten those days, when you second-guessed every decision and feared the wrath of the more experienced nurses coming down on you. Now that you are in the more experienced pack, you have a great opportunity to mentor new nurses, show them the ropes, and set them on a course towards nursing excellence.
To be a good nurse mentor you need to be willing to work closely with new nurses. This is a time and energy investment that not only benefits the nurse you have under your wings, it will benefit the entire industry in the long run. If you are willing to take on that challenge, maximize the experience for both you and your student nurses by following these tips:

1. Be Willing to Share Your Expertise – A good nurse mentor cannot be greedy with the expertise they have obtained by their time in the field. Share the knowledge and skills that you have gained over the years freely, providing them with valuable information that will not only help them in their career, but that could help improve their quality of patient care.

2. Stay Positive – No one wants to be trained by someone who clearly is not happy in that role. Maintain a positive attitude with your mentee, even when they mess up a little. A good training rule to follow when you have to offer criticism is to cushion one negative remark with three positive. This type of feedback lets the new nurse know that you are just as aware of the good things you do as you are of the bad.

3. Hear What They Have to Say – When your mentee is talking, listen carefully. Not only to the words, but to how they are saying them. Read their body language for signs of nervousness or apprehension and gauge the tone of their voice. A new nurse may try and put up a brave front when faced with having to do something new, but if you can get a sense of how they really feel, you will be in a better position to guide them.

4. Make it Personal – The more you know about your nursing mentee, the easier it will be to instruct them. Don’t be shy about sharing personal anecdotes, and encourage them to do the same. This opens up the lines of communication to make them feel at ease in asking you anything. Have your lunch with them, or just share a cup of coffee at the start of the shift. You will learn a lot about the nursing student during these casual encounters that can help you to better instruct them.

5. Lighten Up – Yes, being a nurse is serious business, but try and lighten the mood when you can. Show your enthusiasm for the position and laugh during your shifts with your student nurse and they will soon learn to love working alongside you.

6. Accept That You Might Not Know Everything – While you have the experience under your belt, a newly graduated nurse has the book smarts at the forefront of her mind. Since it may have been a (long) while since you’ve picked up a nursing text book, accept that they may have learned a new trick or two that you don’t know.

7. Keep it Confidential – Practice the same privacy policies you have with your patients with a nurse in training. As much as you may want to share with your peers the mistakes of the day, remember, you at one point were making those same errors. If you lose the trust of your student nurse by sharing their trials and tribulations, you lose the chance to help make them a valuable member of our industry.

8. Walk the Walk – Nurses interact with dozens of people during one shift. From patients and family members to doctors and radiologists. Set a good example by consistently being respectful with everyone you come into contact with. You don’t want a new nurse to believe that it is acceptable to ridicule a patient behind their back or talk down to another staff member. Set the right tone now to avoid any problems in the future.

9. Be Available – Not on your off days of course, but when you are on shift, make sure that you are always accessible and responsive to your student nurses. Your experience has likely taught you that it only takes a split second for disaster to strike. To avoid having your mentee stuck in the middle of one alone, never let them go too far out of your reach.

10. Take a Break – Mentoring student nurses can be mentally exhausting, so if you feel like you need a break, ask for one. No one will blame you for wanting to work a shift once in a while without having to be responsible for teaching at the same time. Mentoring burn-out will only lead to bad mentoring, which will result in a negative experience for the student nurse.

If you are willing to invest the time it takes to mentor a student nurse, don’t take the role lightly. Make your expectations clear, yet attainable, while being a good role model and the student nurses under your charge will grow to become professionals that you will be proud to work with.

Celebrating Nurses with a Travel Through History

Historical Moments For African American Nurses

by Scrubs Editor • February 25, 2016

As a African-American registered nurse, I find it important to pay homage to those who paved the way by breaking down barriers and forcing out inequality. I attended the historically black college, Hampton University, formerly the Hampton Institute. This  college experience provided me with  a great education in nursing science and a rich education in African American History. I have the honor of being a part of an influential nursing magazine, so it is incumbent upon me  that I share some of the history that allowed me to work in the capacity that I do today..
                               African American Nursing History Timeline
1855-1856: Mary Grant Seacole is denied the opportunity to enlist Crimean War . She travels to Crimea herself and establishes  boarding houses where sick and wounded soldiers from both sides of the war can be treated.
1861 – 1865 Harriet Tubman served as a nurse during the American Civil War and used her knowledge of herbal medicine to treat wounded soldiers on the island of Port Royal off the coast of South Carolina. After the Civil War, Tubman helped found a home for the elderly.
1879: Mary Eliza Mahoney becomes the first black to graduate from an American nursing school. She is known as the first professional black nurse in America.
1881: The first school of record for black student nurses is established at Spelman Seminary (renamed Spelman College) in Atlanta, Georgia.
1891: The Kings Chapel Hospital for Colored and Indian Boys, Abbey Mae Infirmary, and the Hampton Training School for Nurses were started on the campus of Hampton Institute. Alice Bacon was instrumental in starting the Hampton Training School for Nurses. The school was commonly called Dixie Hospital, and its first graduate was Anna DeCosta Banks.
1891: Dr. Daniel Hale Williams establishes the Provident Hospital and Training School for Nurses, the first black-owned and first interracial hospital in the United States.
1908: The National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN) is established.
1918: Eighteen black nurses admitted to the Army Nurse Corps after the armistice of World War I and assigned to Camp Sherman, Ohio, and Camp Grant, Illinois.
1932 : Chi Eta Phi Sorority, Inc (ΧΗΦ) is a professional association for registered professional nurses and student nurses. Chi Eta Phin is a sorority that both women and men may join. Chi was founded due to concerns of the  founder about the restrictions in employment of black nurses to segregated facilities and to positions where there was little or no chance of advancement
1941: Lieutenant Della Raney Jackson becomes the first black nurse to enter the military service during World War II.
1951 :NACGN- National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses  was dissolved when it’s members voted to merge with the American Nurses Association.
1967: Lawrence Washington became the first male ever to receive a regular commission in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps.
1971: National Black Nurses Association was founded by Lauranne Sams, former dean and professor of nursing at Tuskegee University
1979: Brig. Gen. Hazel W. Johnson-Brown becomes the first black woman in the Department of Defense to become a brigadier general and the first black to be chief of the Army Nurse Corps.
1991: Brig. Gen. Clara Adams-Ender becomes the first black woman and nurse to be appointed commander general of an Army post. As the highest-ranking woman in the Army, she commanded more than 20,000 nurses serving in the Persian Gulf War.
1992: State Senator Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives—the first nurse, black or white, elected to Congress.

Celebrating Nurses with a little Blast from the Past!

10 Old-School Nursing Skills You Don’t See Anymore

by Scrubs Staff • March 23, 2016

Nursing, along with the rest of the medical field, is constantly evolving to ensure better patient outcomes. Nursing skills, in particular, have changed quite a bit over the last several decades. Some skills have even been discarded completely for the sake of safety or efficiency. Here are 10 interesting examples of old-school nursing skills that have either drastically changed or are no longer practiced:

1. Reusing syringes and urinary catheters

Believe it or not, new nurses, many of today’s disposable medical items, like urinary catheters and syringes, were made to be reused in the not-too-distant past. These items were sterilized between uses, a process that was eventually deemed too costly as disposable items became more common.

2. Charting patient care on paper

While it’s still possible to find rural and small-scale clinics that utilize paper charting, the majority of health-care facilities these days chart electronically. In addition to providing all members of the health-care team with easier access to patients’ charts, electronic charting is typically more efficient and more accurate.

3. Using urine dipsticks with sliding-scale insulin

Sliding-scale insulin has been in use longer than glucose meters. Before these meters were used to determine how much, if any, insulin to administer to a diabetic patient, nurses had to rely on urine dipsticks. Urine-dipstick results aren’t as accurate as those provided by glucose meters, so it’s no surprise that they aren’t used in this manner anymore.

4. Regulating IV fluids manually

Before infusion pumps were invented, it was necessary to manually regulate IV fluids. To do this, nurses had to count drops and calculate drip rates for each and every patient receiving IV fluids. Now, thanks to infusion pumps, administering IV fluids is easier, more accurate, and much faster.

5. Palpating for blood pressure

The vast majority of health-care facilities throughout the United States take patients’ blood-pressure measurements automatically, but this wasn’t always the case. Nurses used to rely on palpation to obtain blood-pressure measurements. To obtain a patient’s blood pressure in this manner, nurses would inflate and deflate a compression cuff while feeling for the disappearance and reemergence of the radial pulse.

6. Shaving patients prior to surgery

Up until fairly recently, hairy patients had their incision sites shaved prior to surgery. New evidence suggests that this leads to an increased risk of infection, and many hospitals have eliminated this practice. Now, instead of using a razor, nurses use clippers to cut away excessive hair as a part of their preoperative preparations.

7. Shaking mercury thermometers

Now that digital thermometers are used to obtain patients’ temperatures, the sight of a nurse shaking a mercury thermometer is extremely rare. In the past, however, nurses could be seen shaking mercury thermometers in hospitals on a daily basis. The reason that these old-school thermometers were shaken is that the mercury would often cling to the inner sides of the thermometer. Prior to taking a new temperature reading, bringing the majority of the mercury back down into the bulb by shaking the thermometer was the best way to ensure accuracy.

8. Cutting urinary catheters during removal

While cutting urinary catheters during removal is not recommended, some nurses and doctors still utilize this practice. It’s considered unsafe for two reasons primarily. Firstly, traction on the catheter could cause it to retract into the bladder if it’s cut. Secondly, the balloon might not deflate, which turns a simple catheter removal into something much more difficult and costly.

9. Irrigating NG tubes with Coca-Cola

Many old-school nurses swear by Coca-Cola for NG tube flushing. In theory, this is due to the coke’s acidity. Regardless of the reason behind this method’s supposed effectiveness, it’s not recommended as it can affect the plastic tubing. Before using coke, juice, or something similar to flush an NG tube, refer to your facility’s guidelines. More likely than not, using water when flushing an NG tube will be the preferred method.

10. Treating congestive heart failure (CHF) with rotating tourniquets

CHF patients used to be treated with rotating tourniquets. Essentially, these tourniquets were applied to the lower limbs to diminish venous return. These days, however, we have a wide variety of effective diuretics that can be used to help decrease the strain that excess fluid volume puts on the heart. Not only is this treatment more comfortable for patients than applying tourniquets, it’s much more effective.
Are there any old-school nurses working with you on your unit? If so, do they still practice a few of the skills mentioned in this article? Leave a comment below and let us know!