Hey nurses!! What's your card game tonight?

[indimom]

It's hard to hear the card playing thing without thinking of all the times I've had loved ones in the hospital and watched the nurses busy going from room to room working their tails off. I will say though, that I went and read the statements and I do feel like this whole thing might have been sort of misrepresented since she was apparently talking about people who work in very rural settings with few patients. There could be down time if you only have a few patients and they are sleeping. I can see how different break rules might apply there. In any career there is a variance based on the specific job assignment that needs to be taken into account, so I can see that one size doesn't fit all. The card thing just seemed so callous because even if there is down time while allowing a single or very few patients to rest, just their presence at the ready is so very important.

In general, I feel any working person deserves breaks. I know I always wished for them when I was teaching! In my current job (not teaching) I feel kind of silly taking breaks because I have freedom built into the position.

Let's face it, that state politician really put her foot in it and the backlash is to be expected.

I work for a small rural critical access hospital. We have 15 private rooms on med-surg and 3 beds in "special care" (our version of an ICU). OB has 8 or 10 beds. I don't actually work on the med-surg floor, but I'm aware of how staffing works. There may be "quiet nights" on occasion, but what fewer patients typically means is fewer nurses and no aides. It often means combining the staffing needs within the three areas (which are located adjacent to each other). It means nurses can be called off work due to low census, or walk into a full floor and the need to locate a nurse willing to take an extra shift because they did not anticipate the sudden surge in patients. It also means they are not provided with additional staff like respiratory therapists, nursing aides, phlebots, transporters, even pharmacists to prepare iv meds - but are required to perform those tasks on night shifts.
When I worked nights at a larger rural hospital years ago, it was really only "slow" between 2-4 a.m. Beyond that, nights were crazy busy because we did not have most of the assisting staff members I mentioned above... and patients are almost always more confused at night. With IVs beeping, bed alarms going off, required hourly rounding, lab draws, pain, nausea, fever, IV fluids increasing trips to the bathroom for patients who are unsteady on their feet or are unable to get out of bed at all, very few patients slept all night and we were kept hopping.

I think breaks need to be protected. There may be nights when the nurses can get a break easily. But, there are many MORE nights when breaks are hard to come by and those breaks should be protected.

 

[china mom]

OK, this meme showed up on my facebook feed and I just had to post it. The funniest part of this one is that it is my DH. His picture was swiped off our department website about 15 years ago and he has become a popular international Meme. I just had to share o this thread.

 

[Boardwalk Jedi]

Solitaire...I'm lonely.

Anyway, I'm amazed that people think continual mandatory overtime is acceptable any job.

 

[Erzengel]

My wife rarely has time to sit down and eat when she works. She usually has to stay later to finish her charting. She works in the Adult ICU.

If I asked her what was her favorite card game at work, she'd laugh hysterically.

 

[WDWJDS]

Working nights is usually quieter and slower, which is why many nurses choose that shift. It’s worth the miserable sleep schedule to avoid the craziness that is day shift!

I work nights on the maternity floor of a very busy hospital. Around here many, if not most nurses work night shift in order to share child care duties with their spouse. Yes the shift is quieter due to the decrease in excess activity (visitors, food workers, physician rounds, etc) but it’s quite busy, especially since there’s usually less staff, so each nurse has more patients. That being said, there are nights that are slower and in between patient care, the staff is able to actually have some down time to eat, pee and yes “play cards” or surf online.

I’m sure there are differences everywhere. Heck, even stay at home parents may have days where they can actually sit down for a half an hour in the midst of the flurry of activities. But I would never say “Yeah, those SAHPs be chillin!”

 

[Pea-n-Me]

For reasons others have already outlined, things like nights and small hospitals can still be quite busy. People get sick round the clock. They can't sleep, they vomit, they're worried, they have pain, they bleed, they fall out of bed, they want to call home, they have an arrythmia, their blood pressure or heart rate drops, they were incontinent or spilled their urinal in the bed, they heard a noise outside and want to know what it was, they hear overhead announcements, it's too hot, it's too cold, their bloodwork comes back and something has to be corrected, the doctor orders a new med and it needs to start NOW at 3am, their roommate or someone screaming down the hall woke them up, they have a question about something, they're hungry or thirsty, they dont know how to work the TV, admissions still roll in, they need an XRay or CT scan, you name it! Some patients are almost always awake at night and keep staff busy. And yes, there are less staff and less resources around, so almost everything falls to the nurse. When you greet people in the morning and ask how they slept, they say, "Pretty good, how did you sleep?", which is hysterical! I would say that most nights can have a steady clip, with some being insanely busy, and once in a great while, some being more quiet.

 

[awalker1015]

Yeah they really don’t though... I see nurses trying to eat in the cafeteria and patients’ families or coworkers are on them... They really have little to no free time.

Indeed. When i was a floor nurse at the hospital, it would take me hours to eat dinner. A bite here, one there. We weren’t staffed enough for another nurse to safely cover you for breaks. Even though our time card was automatically adjusted to include a lunch or dinner break. And the legislation up for a vote this moronic politician was commenting on passed. So yes, it’s a big deal.

 

[FlightlessDuck]

My favorite meme of the weeknd:

And there I though it was going to be signed "Teachers"