Sunday, June 24, 2007

battle ax.

Just to clarify the last post:

No nurse in his/her right mind wants to spend their precious time arguing pointlessly with an attending. Honest to God, we have better things to be doing with our allocated shift time, like, uh, helping our patients.

As a nurse, you learn to choose your battles wisely.

But, with this particular doc, everything, even routine care, is a battle. I let a lot of this attending's rudeness, temper tantrums, and frankly, odd reasons for things he orders sometimes, slide, but last night, ethically and from a nursing standpoint, I couldn't.

And unfortunately, sometimes as a nurse, you have quite literally have to fight for what you think is best for the patient.

The problem is, you don't always get what the patient needs, and that makes the job frustrating sometimes.

Most attendings have years and years of experience, and have skills and insights and specialized knowledge nurses don't. But, that's not the point. The point is, there is a better way to do things and we're supposed to cooperate to get those things done.

Calmly cooperate. Without the yelling and red-faced anger, please.

Then again, if cooperation always happened in a hospital, they probably wouldn't think nurses were necessary, and we'd all get fired. And, too, if they really wanted to simplify things and get rid of us pesky nurses, why doesn't someone just hurry up and invent those magical hand merchandise scanner-looking things you wave over people to diagnose, treat and cure people, like they do on Star Trek: The Next Generation?

I mean, come on, let's get cracking on those scanner-things! The future is now, people!








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