If You could Change ONE thing in our field of Nursing WHAT would it be??

I would give Nurses more control of patient care and orders, what would YOU change??

Patient complaints dictating what order i do My job.

I would change 12 hour shifts.  With all the stress, it is hard to stay focused that last 3 hours of a 12 hour shift!  I would make them 9 hour shifts!

I have no idea how this could be fixed..............but what about nurses who are physically abused at work?    There is a difference between truly sick people...........maybe being temporarily totally out of their mind because of a blood sugar being over 700, and those who are in a crappy mood because they 'feel bad'.   I have been bit, kicked, punched, spit on.......the list goes on, and I'm sure there are many of you who feel this way too.  I would like there to be legal ramifications for patients who assault nurses if there is documentation that the patient is alert, oriented, no serious mental illness.............etc.    This is probably just a dream and there is no answer.  For those patients who are the truly sick like I mentioned before.............if they are dangerous to the staff, I feel it would be better for the patient and the staff who has to care for many people, they deserve to be safe..........maybe restraints.  Restrain with medication or wrist/vest restraints maybe.

sap says ...

If I could change just one thing in nursing I would have to say I'd like to see the instructors become a little more compassionate. It's almost like some of them want you to fail and keep you from living your dream. I feel that some want you to fail just so the school can make more money when you repeat.

I'm not bashing ALL nursing instructors. I have some great ones..and they inspire me so much.

There is a reason nursing school is so hard. They can't make it easy for us! What kind of nurses would we be if they handed out good grades? We have to develop the skills and really discipline ourselves to get through nursing school so we are more prepared for the real thing. Because we are holding lives in our hands, not just someones cheeseburger! I hope this makes you feel a little better about those instuctors. I know how you feel. I came to the conclusion that they only want us to be the best we can. I wonder if the guys and gals in boot camp feel the same way? I bet they do! LOL

I would change the nurse: patient ratio.. I feel that patients now need to have more time with their nurses and when you have a high patient load you can only do your basic med pass and prioritize.. Almost like a cattle call..

angienwgeorgia says ...

tanya......................nobody likes clinical calculations but you can kill a patient with a wrong calculation on a titrated iv drug.  Pharmacists do figure the drugs as well.............but I never give anything unless I check it myself.  Although a pharmacist has a much higher education than I do, if I give that drug and the patient is killed................its my butt in trouble first and foremost.   I hate the numbers, but I'm glad I check everything myself.  When you have med errors....................incident reports are a bad thing to have on your work profile.  Honestly with my classes, I had the big gun clinical calculations too, but I had this really cool hand-me-down paperback from a friend who went through the program a few years before me............I passed it on to an underclassman after I had been on the hospital floor for about a year with my license.   Sometimes I wish I still had that little book.............it was like one of those 'for idiots' books.   Like clinical calculations for idiots.  My pal aced the test as well with this ancient hand- me down.  Good luck in school. 

I aced the test the first time. I just felt bad for my classmates that struggled. Our instructors are working on their master degrees and teaching us too. I just kind of feel like they don't have as much time for us. I had a friend that finished the program a few years ago under the same instructors and she said that they devoted a lot of time to lab as well as lecture. I do really well as a  self learner. (Thank God) I know that they want us to become competent nurses and maybe it is good for us to self learn a lot. It does force a lot of reading and research. I learn a lot from this. I think I am stressed out a bit and ready for the semester to be over. My finals are tomorrow and Tuesday. I feel positive about the finals. Next semester is Med-Surg and I am going to make the most of my time off during the holidays. (Relaxation time!!!!) I just needed to vent. My family is sick of hearing me. lol Thanks for wishing me luck!!!

If I could only change one thing, I would insist on longer clinical rotations in each of the key areas.  I had a student with me recently who was there to "observe".  My patient had the loudest most perfect pericardial rub I had ever heard. I looked at the student and asked her if she wanted to listen.  She said no... not permitted to do anything but observe! I was stunned.  You can not "observe" the heart and lung sounds!

If there were one thing that I could change about nursing would be 'clinical training.'  Many new nurses don't even know how to clean a bed pan! These young pups have worked so hard to achieve their nursing degree yet fall short of doing the simple things for their patients that spread to the important things like pain management. I followed a new nurse and found sooo many things that had not been done, I had to take her aside and show her how to wipe out a bed pan and setting up an isolation linen cart so that I did not have to pick all the pile of dirty linen off the corner of the bathroom. Needless to say, she was not a happy camper but hopefully she won't do that again. When I was clinically training we had to mop up spills NOT call housekeeping! Nursing is the whole HOLISTIC part of caring for the patient,

It is sooooo hard to pick just one thing!  I see so many nurses burning out and it is sad to watch the caring and compassion that they once had die down.  Students often get the idea that nursing is GREAT money!  It is, but you definitely earn it!  We need to keep our focus as if we were the patient lying there in that room, what would we want done?  How would we want to be treated?

The 12 hour shifts and the pounding our bodies take can only last so long.

What about the economy?  So many people getting laid off, no medical/health insurance, yet they still need to get treated but have no way to pay the hospitals, the hospitals go down to a skeleton nursing crew because of the decrease in monies coming in....and the cycle begins again.....How do we stop that????

sap says ...

If I could change just one thing in nursing I would have to say I'd like to see the instructors become a little more compassionate. It's almost like some of them want you to fail and keep you from living your dream. I feel that some want you to fail just so the school can make more money when you repeat.

I'm not bashing ALL nursing instructors. I have some great ones..and they inspire me so much.

 

 

Nursing instructors have to be tough.  If you can't handle the nursing instructors being tough, then you aren't gonna handle the real world where it can be SCARY TOUGH.

Just an FYI.

I would definitely change 12 hours shifts.  It is so hard to work 3-7 days in a row.  That would be a total of 84 hours in seven days.   WAY to much for a nurse or med tech to work and keep focused on the job.  It is dangerous for Both the nurse and the patient.  I would change the shifts to 8 hours ONLY!!!

 Well I agree with the nurses getting the doctors salaries!

No more unions!!

Change comes about through people deciding that the status quo is not acceptable, then deciding what should be done, and sticking with each other to get the change made; nurses will continue to be abused until they decide that they won't be anymore.  No union is more important than the union of people that takes place during periods of shared adversity.  When nurses stop cutting each other to pieces and remembering that they are all in it together, change will come; not before.