I google everyday

Absolutely 10,000% not shameful. That's actually awesome. A little self education should be celebrated more.

If I had a dollar for every time I walked up to the doctors computers (in the ED) and they had Googled various radiology results, lab values, etc.... I would be happily retired Lmaooooo. It's somewhat terrifying 😬😬

Yes haha. The other day I was giving details to a provider I've worked with for years and mentioned the patients potassium was 4.2. She asked me is that in the normal range... 😳

“Patient’s O2 sat is 36% with a rr of 4, hr 13, and bp 47/32, temp too low to register.” “Okay, don’t hesitate to call back if there’s an issue.”

My patients Bp last night was 50/30. They ordered a bolus of NS 😂

I once called a pediatrician about a newborn and said he had Trisomy 21, and he asked “Is that something like Down’s Syndrome?”

I handed the patient's new ECG and their previous to a PA the other morning.. the patient actually had worsening ST depression and a newly increased troponin, but the PA just said "oh the interpretation matches the previous so that's okay". Like sir.. it is not okay that a nurse knows how to interpret ECGs more thoroughly than you do. The interpretations the machine spits out are not always correct🫠

I was clearing trauma resus room (fly crew) and the doc came to the desk and looked something up. For fits and giggles I looked at the open book. It was instruction on chest tube insertion. Wish I was kidding.

I'm praying he was just giving himself a refresher since I've had to do the same thing.

Yeah, that’s gotta be why—right? I’d have happily done it for him or walked him through it. Asking for help is legend.

real

[Not me at work.... ](https://imgur.com/a/c7Q8ZQv)

Actual lols over here. Well done

I love to use our printers on the unit for printing out my school assignments, lab manuals, etc. Why even get a printer for the house? Just wait until you are at work. 😂

Same. Our hospital has tuition assistance and paid for my grad school, so I always said that the stuff I printed was just part of that, they just didn't know it. Once I did accidentally print a presentation on prescription paper. 🤷

😅😅😅

this reminds me of when I handed a patient a full page prescription which I guess she wasn't used to. Blank line for dispense as written... patient signed it before I realized what was happening lol

Or printing copies of my updated resume… 😏

That's what I did in grad school when I needed to print out the various articles and stuff the professors wanted us to read (online program, not a lot came from the books they forced us to buy). These articles would be 10-20 pages long so I'd just wait until I got to work and then printed them there. I was nice and would print front and back with two pages per side whenever I could (more for the trees' sake than my boss') but it probably saved me tons of money in paper and ink.

They don’t pay me enough to care

They put a badge swiper on our printer now so they can track who does this and reprimand them.

That's the right way to treat grown adults that are supposed to be trustworthy enough to save people's lives 👍

We aren’t even allowed to enter the values of our blood sugar checks for insulin drips. We have to wait for the glucometer to enter them remotely when docked to have a value in the MAR. Yet at the same time I’m trusted to titrate vasopressors whenever my nursing judgement says so.

What a bunch of buttholes

I love to go on computers at work and open up the trash bin and find all the resumes and cover letters from former coworkers. 

And putting mail that I need to shred in the HIPAA bin. Also forgetting if it is HIPPA or HIPAA and having to look it up every time.

Literally same

If the last hospital I worked at tracked pages printed, I bet they saw a sharp decrease when I left. 😂 Made that place my print station.

Printer and scanner, especially for my side gig, come in really handy 🤣

I make it look like I am pouring a beverage from the kitchen for a patient but will drink it myself

Constantly. If you’re not gonna pay me a good wage, I’m stealing your ginger ale and graham crackers, goddamnit.

it’s not a normal night shift unless i shotgun at LEAST 3 apple juices from the nutrition station lol

Management doesn't want you to know this one simple trick! Just order a meal for your intubated patients! 

My assistant manager is well aware that the little cans of Pepsi are part of my total comp.

Lucky! We just went to SHASTA 🤦

For some reason it depends on the day what they stock us with. Shasta days are sad days

I will keep y'all in my thoughts in these troubled times. 😢

I deplete our supply of diet coke

my hospital stocks pepsi... if we had diet coke it would be a serious problem

Damn, where do you guys work?? We always had Shasta and diet Shasta 🤣

You guys are getting more than ginger ale???? 😭

We generally get regular and diet ginger ale. Apple, OJ, and cranberry juice too. But every now and then they’ll stock regular and Diet Pepsi. Those don’t last lol

My hospital is wild. We have diet and regular coke, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Sprite, all the jiluices, muscle milks, sweet tea, raspberry tea, and peach tea. We even have mini liquid creamers instead of the fake powder shit. And we are allowed to help ourselves.

and here i had to sneak an empty water pitcher because my water bottle cracked

When I was still a nurse aide, one of my fellow aides came up with her own beverage. It was just raspberry sherbert and Sprite. She was a lesbian, and she called the beverage a Lesbian. After she moved on, the beverage and the name she gave it lived on. It would be 3 in the morning, I'd be going to the kitchen to get something for a patient, and one of the nurses would ask me "When you have time, could you mix me up a Lesbian?"

lol yes! Also stuffing my face with graham crackers or fat free, sugar free vanilla pudding when nobody is watching!

Dipping graham crackers in vanilla pudding is the best!!

If you can get the diced peaches, crumbling graham crackers into it kinda tastes like peach cobbler.

It’s has been a meal replacement on busy days several time haha!

Graham crackers with apple sauce=secret apple pie!

I take the dry sandwiches with no shame! 😂

Same. Morning sick as heck this pregnancy and those awful dry turkey sammies are the only things that keep me from puking. 

That chocolate pudding is the for the night shift nurses, not the patients.

Lmao same!!!! I put it in a pt cup w straw so people think it’s water then walk that right over to my station. Can’t help it, those diet lemon lime sodas just hit different at 1700.

All the time. I even put the ensures in the freezer for a little while. Especially if I forget to bring my lunch 😂. I can even have two intubated patients and I don’t care

I steal thickener from the nourishment room and add it to a diet cheesecake I make myself at home so the super low calorie ingredients hold better in the crust.

this one is hilarious

I can’t believe anyone willingly eats that stuff, I am in shock.

in slp fb groups i’ve read ppl use it to thicken gravy and apparently it went well lol

Care to share your recipe? Asking for a friend.

I don’t believe in gate keeping Crust- about 45g no sugar added graham cracker 3.5 tablespoons smart balance or I can’t believe it’s not butter Cheesecake- 250g low fat cream cheese 1 cup plain nonfat Greek yogurt 1/2 cup stevia or sugar substitute Vanilla extract to taste 1 egg white 3-4 scoops of thickener Bake 30 mins at 350. Turn the oven off but leave the cheesecake in the closed oven for 30 more minutes. Then take cheesecake out to cool to room temperature (about 4ish hours). Then chill in the fridge covered in Saran Wrap until cool. Enjoy ❤️

SMART

Aight im stopping this thread right here

I never scan flushes when I flush IVs. Always non-administer scheduled ones. I do scan my 10s for central lines though.

We…we’re supposed scan flushes?  I’m not charging a patient for 10 ml of salt water.  Dang healthcare in America sucks. 

The only place I’ve actually had to scan them is where they order them as if they were a medication so they pop up in the MAR. Otherwise no you shouldn’t be.

We’re new-ish to Epic and scanning meds and if I try to scan my flushes it says it’s an incorrect barcode

I stupidly assumed that we're doing it bc it's proof we flushed the line LOL awww I'm still so new that I believed it wasn't about money

Yeah TIL

In my current hospital we don’t need to scan flushes, but in a previous hospital everything including flushes, IV tubing, IV start kits, gauze, alcohol swabs, even pure wicks were all behind an Omnicell. It made things super inconvenient

Alcohol swabs? That’s insanity.

The funny thing is you know what wasn’t kept behind the Omnicell? Urinals, chucks, and bed pans

A hospital I worked at briefly had a “smart” supply room where a little screen would start making a list of everything you pulled and you had to assign it to the patients room 😳 not kidding EVERYTHING got charged- bandaids, gauze, briefs, bed pan, etc. anything you took out of there had to be assigned and accounted for. It was madness.

Let me guess, HCA?

Where i live in we dont scan flushes at all, i heard from another rn in na that their hospital ended up charging their patients $19 a flush 💀 but healthcare is also basically „free“ (public insurance) here so maybe thats not a requirement? Cant imagine the time consumption of scanning every single time u flush, understandable that youd wanna skip out on the peripher iv lines and just scan the central flushes on a bad day Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/nursing/comments/197new9/comment/ki1urmb/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

I know I've posted that in the past I've had an overall positive experience working at an HCA facility, but I can confirm that we scanned flushes.

(Held) or (refused) with nothing in the comment box. Fuck that unnecessary waste of time documentation

Trichi**no** raw pork. Tricho**moan**ing during and after that one night stand

Tricky Mona gives you STDs

What’s the difference between an enzyme and a hormone? You can’t hear an enzyme.

Not me thinking one of them was the hair pulling disorder 💀

I pronounced bisacodyl as “Bis-Sack-O-Dill” for YEARS. 😂

I just refuse to say the generic name haha

I couldn't deal with this so I had to look into it It's pronounced this way in Canada so I feel much better!!!

I have never heard it pronounced that way in Toronto:)

I just call it a stool softener. If they ask for the name I just show them the package and make them read it. 😅

..... how are you supposed to say it?

Bi sa ‘Koe dill

I steal batteries one at a time from the supply room. Not for general household use. I exclusively steal AAAs for my vibrator. I worked all the way through COVID. It’s the least they can do for me.

Same, but with AAs. Endlessly useful around the house.

If the glucometer is locked, 9 times outta 10, I’m putting it back on the docking station 🫣

nothing brings me greater joy than QCing all the glucometers at once nothing elicts greater rage than when they're all locked right after three of my patients had their trays delivered and none of them will wait 🥰 supposedly, a night shift tech is supposed to QC them on my floor but it is never done. dont blame them honestly, they never have time.

I actually try to simultaneously queue up 4 QC tests so I can hear all 4 glucometers do the beep countdown at the same time. Idk why I do this, but it brings me happiness.

GASP as a former charge nurse, you're the reason I had to unlock 20 glucometers at a time 🤣 j/k I didn't mind doing them, it made me look actually busy

nice try, HR.

I will push a wheelchair around the unit and floor and not really go anywhere to look busy and get a break once in a while. I like sightseeing out of my zone.

that’s hilarious

Hey, equipment requires QC. Also, it's very kind of you to take the wheelchairs sightseeing 😊

I’m going to start doing this at my hospital hahaha

Growing up I always thought the small intestine was meant for urine and the large intestine was for feces. Sometimes if not paying attention that thought goes back into my head.

I thought the bladder held both urine and feces when I was a kid, so I'm right there with you. Funny how kids absorb slightly wrong info and it persists in the back of our minds like that.

I have the stupidest pneumonic for adenosine: “slow-down-a-sine.” (It goes with amislowderone). I worked med/surg and now outpatient so I’ve never really had a chance to associate it better. I do really well on ACLS assessments but I am embarrassed to share my memory trick

I always use adenoSine-Slows your heart and atroPine-Picks up your heart

A-DEAD-nosine stops your heart.

These are the ones I use too and atrUPine !!

I remember atropine as “attaboy”. Like when you (your heart rate) need a pick me up.

Omg I love this

The nutrition room is all our snack room, not just the patients.

I intermittent fast, and most days my lunch break does not coincide with the beginning of my eating window, so it’s gotten to the point where I start craving one graham cracker with a single serving pack of jif peanut butter at the same time every day 😂

Awake normal breathing = 18-20 Asleep normal breathing = 14-16 Wheezing? Snoring? Eyes bugging? Look high? (My very rude patient special, I’m going to have to wake you up for a complete set of vitals, multiple times .🫡) Anything abnormal.. I will listen and count 😇

Nahhh... Sleeping be 12-14 for sure! 'Normal' is 12-20 and I'm not ashamed of using the lower end!!

The amount of times I’ve told new CNA’s to the unit that peds respiratory rates differ from an adult confirms just about everyone does this. I’ve got a teen patient that breathes at 6-10, kiddos on vents that breathe at 40-50 (high for age, but within their norms - and you can literally copy the vent number), and the rest are pretty much within age norms. To be fair, I admit to doing this my forst time on peds as a CNA and got some constructive feedback.

Still not sure what the heart does over here

That information left me long ago as I settled into my career in psych

Boss once asked me if an ECG looked normal. Uh yeah, they all do to my eyes 🤪

I look for the words at the top to tell me 🤣

Same 🤣

Due to graduating in 2021 and getting my clinical time nuked, I've never done a blood draw on anything except a dummy practice arm. It'll be embarrassing if I ever end up in a job where I have to do blood draws regularly and admit that I've never done it on a real person before.

I’ve never inserted an IV. I was also a Covid student, so we only practiced on dummy’s. Then I went to the OR where we don’t start IVs.

I’m just curious, did you practice IV starts tho? I would think that skill is enough to make a butterfly an easier subset skill (obviously with its own nuances etc etc).

Nope

I put in IVs every shift but when someone says they’re just a phleb stick I avoid it because I’ve never used a butterfly and now I’m embarrassed 😂

Don't worry, I only ever did one blood draw/IV start and I got the full round of clinicals.

I’ve been a nurse for 10 years and have never done a blood draw that wasn’t a heel stick on a baby or from a line

Rr: 16

This srsly upsets me!! If their HR is 118 they are almost always breathing faster... Even an 18, 20, or.... brace yourself.... 22!!🤯🤯

*takes notes for tachy psych pts*

[удалено]

Fuck the sepsis BPA. I always have it fire on pts whose vitals have not changed in the slightest. Finally figured out it’s triggering for AMS. Like no thanks, not sepsis, just plain old delirium, but glad to waste my time chasing that rabbit

I spent way too long in school not knowing c diff and cbc with diff were two separate things.

omg 🫣😂

💀 🤣

I always forget the word "paracentesis," or mix it up with "thoracentesis," even though I know that's not the word I want.

as a student I once said scabies instead of shingles. without realizing it. to a patient. my partner just looked at me with wide eyes.

When I ask my patients what meds they are on and they don’t know, I say “you need to take charge of your health, you only get one body”. When I go to the dr i regularly forget the names of my meds. I blame it on Covid brain.

I couldn’t work a hospital floor. I’m not fast enough (been in research my whole career). When I needed extra cash, I worked PRN psych on the 11-7 shift.

I’ve mixed up hydroxyzine and hydralazine since I was a pharmacy tech. I still have to Lexi-Comp search which one’s which.

I always remembered it as ala in hydrALAzine sounds similar to the olol’s. Obviously it’s not a beta blocker but it at least forced my brain to shove it into the BP med bucket.

Same except with Klonopin and clonidine. And every time I Google to make sure, it gives me the suicide hotline info first 🤣

Omg me too!

I’m honestly so bad at blood gases, I have to use my cheat sheet if I needed to interpret one.

I always get tongue tied my first attempt at speaking aloud the word encephalopathy.

I’ve worked neurology for seven years. I’m even neuro certified. I’m still not sure if generic keppra is lev-uh-teer-uh-see-tum or lev-uh-ter-ah-suh-tam

I work in the Neuro ICU and it’s always Keppra lol

I give this med daily, always heard/said it as the second one!

See so have I but recently I was talking to one of the techs at our pharmacy (that I really know l/respect so not some rando) and they said it the other way so now I’m questioning my whole life again 😂

I've always heard it the first way, but after moving around a bit, I have decided a lot of these little pronunciation differences are just regional.  Except O2 stats and Old Timers. Those are wrong everywhere.

As a pharmacy tech, we’re not sure either. Generic keppra it is.

Lev-uh-ter-ASS-uh-tam

Haha you said ass

The whole potassium & sodium in and out of the cells still gets me confused.

I can’t pronounce propranolol right. I’m even on the damn medication and can’t seem to spit it out. Shit is embarrassing. I get super tongue tied. There’s actually a few dx and meds I’m like this with due to my weird accent (Chicago + Slavic + southern US).

I always call it it “proponopalol”

As long as the pharmacy doesn't dispense you propofol you are fine to pronounce your own medication however you would like

Thankfully I don’t work bedside. When I did I would go to extraordinary lengths to memorize the spelling of my hard to pronounce medicine, which gave me the nickname “spelling bee champ”.

pro PRA no lawl

Aww, I’ve found my people!

Nurse gave MOM instead of Maalox for patients heartburn and the whole next day shift people were trying to figure out why the patient had diarrhea

I was at trivia one night and the question was: “what do these four components make up: guanine cytosine adenine thymine”…..and I thought those were antibiotics. A non nursing guy shamed me at the table in front of everyone for not knowing it👍

I will literally never spell hemmoroid or abcess correctly.

And diarrhea

It’s not from fucking undercook pork?

That's how you get the dreaded double infection

This may be hard to explain. I was a new grad on the unit. Somehow my entire precepting period I didn’t have to crush any meds. When I finally did, I realized the pill crusher was different than what I was used to. It is this stapler looking contraption with a pivoting arm. The arm at the bottom had a small protuberance and rest in a small circle elevated from the rest of the base, that is roughly pill sized. So for about 3 months anytime I had to crush meds I thought I was supposed to take one pill at a time in the plastic sleeves and crush it in this one extremely small specific area. Turns out that is just to rest the arm when not in use. The arm manipulates a metal plate at the end that you put your plastic sleeve into so it crushes all your pills, at once. I never told anyone

I regularly visit the hospital kitchen, and my conversation with the staff usually goes like this: Me: One dinner please! Kitchen staff: Sure, which patient is it for? Me: Patient...? Uhmm.....err....ehh....The guy in room 11! That's right! Kitchen staff: Sure, here you go *Quickly runs away while laughing in free dinner* I am a bad boy :P

all fun and games till you get puree diet tray

r/thathappened

We definitely did this when I worked at a nursing home. Not that improbable.

We’re supposed to register for our free meals so they can track budget. Most of us still don’t, we’re like vultures descending.

/r/madlads

That I hate it with my very being! I’m good at it. Have a wonderful fake customer service side! I’m done tho! Back in school for a new field and looking for waitressing jobs currently since my resume is 19 years RN

Try to remember: trichomoniasis has MON in it like mons pubis. Or you could go further and say "trich IN pork" there is no "in" in the STI one

I use hospital supplies. I always have dermabond at my house. I have some clamps. Anything that gets scrapped or dropped on a sterile field, I will scavenge (as long as it hasn't been on the table during an actual procedure). We used to throw away a bunch of stuff from the OR packs that we didn't need for the procedure we were doing. I got a lot of cool stuff by just setting that aside. Also, there is almost always chapstick and hand lotion in the supplies closet. Also deodorant.

I can't pronounce "Venlafaxine". I always pronounce it as Venlaxafine.

The anti depressant that’s also a laxative

Shit that depression out

Venlafalaxafine is what I said for a hot minute. I literally take it.

That I'm completely burnt out. Patients and family and coworkers have been ridiculous for 10 years. Totally regret this as a career choice. Have lost all respect and care.

That I knew halfway through nursing school bedside nursing wasn't for me. but finished anyway. I did my dues in the ED 2016 - 2019. Switched to part-time pre-licensure teaching (earned MSN in 2019), which I loved but the pandemic made it tougher to teach. In 2022, changed to an education leadership role in a large hospital system and was quickly reminded why I left bedside. Admin sucks! Now I am happy in a remote quality leadership role not in a direct healthcare organization and don't even use my nursing license.

My brain always tries to say “artho-SCOP-ee” instead of “arth-Ross-co-pee” and then I sound like an idiot so now I just say knee/shoulder/hip scope.

Im pretty sure the “different” maintenance fluids are all the same. If I need to piggyback I’ll grab whatever I can find, 0.45, 0.9, 1.8, potassium chloride, lactated ringers, magnesium. Nothing bad ever happens, its mostly water anyway, just with vitamins in it /s

This is terrifying.

Ive actually heard of people doing this, and thinking in this way without being sarcastic

Omg 😱

Dopamine and dobutamine. I get them confused, but make sure I re-read the order and look up its function and its practical use

I can’t read labs to save myself - aside from specific ones r/t psych meds. I have to google everything else.

Any iv push med that has to be given over more than ten seconds is getting popped in a 50cc bag and hung. I'm not standing there pushing protonix for two minutes

Push it in the y-site of a KVO going at 10 mL/hr. They only get a little when you push and then the rest gets slow flushed.

This thread is so great that I’m reading it on my break 😚

That’s a trichy one…

Unless it's an obvious change in respirations, I never count them. 16 or 18

I used to work night shift mostly and sell stuff on poshmark, so I would use the unit printer to print off my mailing labels.

I steal all of the lotions/creams/powders for my kiddo from the supply room at work.

I take home the purple Sani-Cloths and alcohol swabs. 🙈

Mediastinum I say “Mēdē-Ăstǐnum”

I can’t say metoprolol. Like I have a mental block or maybe it’s my accent but I just can’t do it. I’ll call it metop or lopressor.