Nurse Ratched’s Place

I confess, I procured the guy using this primitive hearing aid from Johnson and Johnson’s blog, JNJ BTW. I’ve always wondered how much you can hear by using one of these things. They look awkward and hard to use. I bet this guy is listening to the nurses over at Nursing Voices. Nurses from around the world are gathering at the Nursing Voices Forum. The conversations are insightful, as well as entertaining. No wonder the guy is listening in with his ear horn. He doesn’t want to miss anything that they are saying.

Kim from Emergiblog is hosting Change of Shift over at Nursing Voices. There are some really great posts up, and you should go check them out.

Meet Nurse Kit Jessop. She’s young and energetic, and she loves her job. Notice how she smiles as she walks the halls of her unit. She is holding her head up high because she has confidence in her nursing skills, and in her ability to make patient care decisions. Everyone, including the doctors and the hospital administrators, respect her as a health care professional. This book was written during a time when nurses were truly in charge of their units. We told hospital administrators what we needed to do our job, and it was the administrator’s job to meet our needs. Patient care was nurse driven, and the patients’ needs came before anything else.

Nurse Jessop wouldn’t be smiling today because, sadly, those days are gone forever. Nurses are marginalized, and are frequently ignored when they advocate for their patients’ needs. I admitted a patient last weekend that made me cringe. Due to HIPAA regulations, I can’t tell you the details, but let’s just say I wouldn’t want this individual hanging around a playground. I placed the patient on our highest observation level, and called in additional staff to watch the new patient’s every move. I was very concerned for the safety of the minors on our unit, so I called our medical director to tell him what was going on. Here’s a little bit of our conversation:

Doctor: (Yelling) Why did you place this patient on one-to-one observation? He hasn’t done anything while he has been on the unit. Take him off one-to-one observation.

Me: The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, and we have children on the unit.

Doctor: (Shrieking): Give me one good reason why we should keep the patient on one-to-one.

Me: So we don’t get sued.

That comment turned the tide. Screw patient safety, it costs too much to bring in an additional staff member to ensure the safety of the other patients, but god forbid we get sued. This is crazy. Hospitals are turning into asylums because nurses aren’t in charge anymore.

Did I mention that I’m still looking for my dream job? I’ll keep you posted.

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

Albert Einstein

Enjoy your weekend.

This is Maxine. She’s my role model. Just wait until my kids try sticking me into a nursing home. They’ll never see what hit them.

I found this yesterday while I was visiting my favorite blogging attorney at Second Effort. Scientists have proven that Middle Age makes us depressed. Well, duh! I’d like to know who was silly enough to fund that project. I guess that Thomas Tusser was right when he said that a fool and his money are soon parted.

Why can’t they fund studies like this one:

This study makes more sense. What do you think?

When you’re done scratching your head and trying to figure out how these scientists procured their research funding, check this post out. Amy Quinn from Live Smarter talks about the ten terrible patients you meet in a hospital, and how to deal with them. It’s good stuff, and she didn’t need a research grant to figure it out. Then go visit Kim at Emergiblog for Beatle’s Week at Grand Rounds. You’re going to love it! Yeah, yeah, yeah!!!

Poor Kate Mallory. She’s having man problems. Here’s her story:

Kate wore her nurse’s cap proudly. She was pretty and redheaded, but as old Dr. John said, “there was no nonsense about her.” That is why he chose her as the nurse for the Vincent case.

The Vincents were a powerful family, and Kate knew that caring for a crippled child in their isolated mansion would be demanding, but her job was not made easier by men involved in her life. After all, how long could a beautiful nurse stay in the same house with a handsome, moody young widower? And then, too, her employer’s cousin, a brash young doctor, had begun to show a disturbing interest in her. It would be best to go…and yet, when she held the tiny helpless baby, she knew that to leave world be to fail—as a nurse, and as a woman.

It sounds like Kate is going to have her heart broken before she figure things out. I’ve worked with a lot of nurses who are always suffering from a broken heart, so nurse recruiters, listen up! Here is a new recruiting tool that will lure more nurses into your place of employment. A Japanese marketing company is offering “heartache leave” to the their employees who are going through a bad breakup with their partner, and they are offered more leave days per breakup as they get older. This is a great perk for nurses because we aren’t getting any younger. This firm also offers leave during “shopping season.” I’m passing this along to you because, God knows, you need all the help that you can get to keep nurses from leaving the profession.

I’m still looking for my dream job. Last weekend turned into a pile of pooh from the moment that I stepped foot onto the unit. No staff, violent patients, and crazy family members who screamed at the nursing staff just because they can. Oh yeah, and let’s not forget about the guy who threatened to break my nose because we were out of ice cream. Sorry, I don’t work at a Baskin Robbins. Maybe I’ll dress up in a pink, pinstriped pinafore and put Haldol sprinkles on top of ice cream cones all day in an effort to keep the peace. Or better yet, I’ll find a new job that offers heartache benefits, and I’ll start breaking up with a new guy every week. I need the time off.

(If a nurse ever acted like this at work, he or she would be fired on the spot.)

See the woman standing by Steven Jobs? Her name is Katie Cotton. Katie is Apple’s Vice President of Worldwide Corporate Communications, and one of the dumbest people on the planet. She never learned the first rule about the blogosphere: Do not snort-laugh at a blogger, especially one who is a cult hero. It will come back to haunt you for the rest of your life.

During Macworld 2008, Violet Blue saw Steven Jobs on the show floor and decided to go talk to him. According to her website, Ms. Blue is pro blogger, podcaster, vlogger and femmebot at Metblogs SF, Geek Entertainment TV, and Gawker Media’s Fleshbot. She is also a sex columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, the author of almost two dozen books, an 11-year SRL member, and a Forbes Web Celeb. In other words, Ms. Blue is well connected. This is what she wrote on her blog:

So, I saw that Steve Jobs was just hanging out on the Macworld expo floor, not in conversation, not talking to anyone, and poking at his phone in the middle of the public so I walked over. Thinking a girl — in this case, a fangirl, me — will never get anything if she doesn’t ask for it, I lightly touched his arm and said “hi”. He looked at me, and I blushingly asked if it would be okay for me to ask if I could take a picture with him. I didn’t say my name or anything else, I was just a girl. He told me curtly, flatly that I was rude. And turned his back to me. The small circle of people around him sniggered. That woman you see actually snort-laughed at me, and rolled her eyes.

Ms. Blue snapped the picture (above) of Steven and his posse. Moments later, technical evangelist, Robert Scoble, caught up with Ms. Blue. He filmed and livestreamed her reaction to the snubbing. See below:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought that people in public relations specialized in public relations. Apparently Ms. Cotton missed that lecture in class, or maybe she is just stupid. Whatever happened, the story about her rude behavior is going to be out on the Internet forever. I bet that Marc Monseau from JNJ BTW could teach Ms. Cotton a thing or two about public relations. Marc does his job well, and he is a gentleman.

As for you, Steven, I think that you’re stupid, too. What’s wrong with you? You were rude to a young, hot, sexy girl who is one of your biggest fans. You have demonstrated something that I figured out a long time ago. Money can buy you power, but it can’t buy you good manners or common sense.

There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.
-Ben Williams

Enjoy your weekend.

Now this guy looks like he’s having a lot of fun. That or he’s had too many double espressos from Starbucks. Don’t you wish you had his energy? Personally, I think he looks a little manic. Maybe someone should slip a mood stabilizer into his next cup of Joe.

There’s a lot of things going on in the blogosphere, so here are the announcements. Hear ye, hear ye, Change of Shift is up over at Pixel RN. There are a lot of great posts over there, so go check it out.

Nurse Connect , a proud sponsor of Nurse Ratched’s Place, has recently launched some new updates to their site. Great new chat features have been added to the site, and visitors can now take a 60- second tour before joining this unique online community. I’m going to join their community, how about you? I’ll see you at Nurse Connect.

I love red dresses, especially red dresses that promote health care. The Heart Truth campaign, with it’s Red Dress symbol, is working to raise awareness among Americans that heart disease is the #1 killer of women. To help promote this initiative, the campaign is teaming up with fashion designers and celebrities around the nation to showcase the Red Dress Collection 2008 during Fashion Week, starting February 1, 2008. Did you know that 1 in 4 women dies of heart disease? People, this is important, so please pass on this information about the campaign. Click here to get a widget about this event for your blog.

I remember watching the Art Linkletter Show when I was a little girl. His show came on in the afternoon, and I was allowed to watch it after I ate my lunch. My favorite part of the show was “Kids Say the Darndest Things.” I’m sure that some of their comments and observations embarrassed the heck out of their parents. I remember my mom laughing at what the kids said, and then warning me not to say things like that about her out in public. Over the years, I’ve heard patients say the darndest things. Here are some of the most memorable quotes I’ve heard during my years as a nurse.

A woman gives birth to a baby girl. The doctor tells her that he is about to deliver the placenta. The woman names her baby girl Placenta because, “It’s a pretty word.”

A drug addict argues with a nurse because he wants his pain meds NOW! She wants to know why he thinks that he deserves free drugs and services just for being a bum. He said, “I’m on welfare. Welfare is an entitlement. That means I’m entitled to get whatever I want.”

A patient arrives on a psychiatric unit wearing a tinfoil hat during an election year. He tells his nurse that he is talking to his Space Brothers. The nurse asks the patient what he and the Space Brothers are talking about. He said, “I’m telling the Space Brothers that one of them needs to run for President. The Earth Candidates are fuckups, and we are going to get screwed over again if one of those idiots gets into the White House.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

(My apologies to Hillary Clinton and to all of her supporters who read my blog. Sorry, everyone. I just had to use this picture.)

This is Damien Thorn. He is a charter from the movie, Omen II. It’s a horror classic. Many of the teenagers on our unit remind me of Damien. They are evil children. I took care of my first Damien-like patient about twenty years ago, and I was shocked when I found out that the boy had hit his parents and destroyed their home. I couldn’t believe it. My parents would have knocked me into the next state if I had raised a hand to them, and this kid was still walking around making demands of the nursing staff, and of his parents. Feeling like I was living in the Twilight Zone, I went home and talked to my children after work. I asked them, “What would happen to you if you hit Mommy?” My three year old just stared at me, and my five year old laughed nervously while she sat on the couch. They asked me if I was asking a trick question. I told them about what I saw at work, and then repeated my question. My five year old finally answered, “You’d kill us.” Then I asked them, “When did you first know that you aren’t allowed to hit me?” My daughters thought a moment, and then the youngest said in a tiny little voice, “Forever.”

My mother sent me this. It’s an ad from the Des Moines Register. I bet this kid doesn’t hit his parents. People, you have to teach your children that you are the boss, and they need to start learning that lesson shortly after leaving the womb. Please, don’t come to me whining that your kid is out of control when you let them get that way in the first place. Children seek limits, and they will act out until you finally have to put your foot down, or until the police come to your house and drag your kid off to jail.