Not to be a grouch (because it’s the holiday season, after all!) but shopping while juggling a wacky nurse’s schedule can feel like merciless torture. Take the list below with a grain of salt (I’m mostly just venting) but you may notice a few nuggets of genuine advice. Here goes…

A nurse’s survival guide to holiday gift shopping

1. Shop online. BOOM.

2. If you must go out to the stores, do it on a Wednesday, at 2 p.m. Most likely the older folks are off to dinner and the parents are picking the kids up from school.

3. Delegate. As much as possible. Then, if it doesn’t get done, you get to blame the four-year-old to whom you delegated the Christmas shopping for tasks unfinished.

4. Get a prescription for Ativan just in case you have to go shopping on any other day and time than Wednesday at 2 pm.

5. Bring back the “Your present is in the mail” line. Then, when it doesn’t get there, blame it on the post office person. Blame it on the economy. Or like Milli Vanilli, blame it on the rain.

6. Give everyone you know a fruit cake. Tell them it’s really expensive, vintage fruit cake.

7. Carry a flask of something that can give you the tingles in your bag or pocket. Use if you have to go shopping on any other day and time than Wednesday at 2 p.m.

8. Get everyone on your list gift cards from the supermarket. Shopping can be done in less than twenty minutes.

9. Take an Ativan and a swig of your flask in case you have to go shopping on any other day and time than Wednesday at 2 p.m.

10. The best way to survive the holiday gift shopping is…schedule yourself to work. Depending on your family, 12 hours dealing with Code Browns and Hard Restraints may be the most relaxing thing you’ve done all year.

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Here are six invaluable lessons I’ve learned from my years of nursing. They’re simple, and no doubt you’ll thank yourself for memorizing them. Trust me.

Six tricks of the trade from a seasoned nurse

1. Always look up medications or diseases that you don’t know. This will probably happen to you at least once a week. None of us knows everything. Be wary of people who do — they’re probably full of you-know-what.

2. Trust your gut. If something feels wrong, it probably is. Don’t be afraid to say, “Hold on, let me think about this.” Don’t let yourself be bullied.

3. When in doubt, smile and take a deep breath. I have saved myself from “Dansko in mouth” syndrome many times by waiting to reply to an unusual situation.

4. If you can’t find a vein to start an IV, try putting warm packs on the entire extremities for a few minutes. It works wonders.

5. Always carry a marker, a pen, a watch and a stethoscope. Anything else you can borrow. And don’t let anyone borrow yours.

6. In your locker (or trunk of your car if you don’t have a locker), carry a spare set of scrubs, an energy bar, a bottle of water and an emergency $20. You never know when you’re going to need these things and when you do, you need them super fast!

Keith Brofsky | Photodisc | Thinkstock

Most nurses take assessing patients for granted. We think that if we just follow the PQRST, we will be good. Well, for the most part this may be correct but here are some tips to help you always perform your best, top notch assessments.

1. Begin with the basics and when trouble starts, always start with the ABC’s again. Airway, breathing, circulation.

2. If your patient is altered, check the oxygen and the glucose.

3. Always use a system when assessing your patients. Always. The day you deviate from your routine is the day you miss something really, really important.

4. As soon as you take report on a patient, check the ID band, the fluids, the IV, etc. When your name goes on the patient, now everything is your responsibility. When possible, give report at the bedside so you can avoid these things.

5. When at a loss for words, ask the patient, “Tell me more about that.” Open-ended questions are SO helpful in getting the most out of your patient.

What are some of your tips for assessing patients?

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I love anyone over the age of 60. I love how much life they have lived, how much wisdom they have to offer, and how spunky they can be!

One of my friends was telling me about a 102-year-old woman who broke her hip while playing tennis. The day after hip replacement surgery she was asking to go home because she had to get ready for a tennis tournament in a couple weeks. He told the patient that she had to wait for physical therapy to get there to help her get out of bed and walk for the first time. She said, “I can walk. I will walk right now.” And sure enough, she hopped out of bed and walked down the hallway and back. She was discharged home two days later and when that tennis tournament came around, she placed 2^nd!

Another friend told me about a 92-year-old patient who had fallen out of bed and broke his wrist. Everyone assumed that he had gotten up to go to the bathroom or something and had a syncopal episode. Turns out he got a little wild while having sex with his 70-ish wife and tumbled to the ground. At 92 years old!!! Best story ever!!!

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While my family is donning their Sunday best for church, eating delicious food, and scouring the grass for hidden Easter eggs, I will be absent.

For this Easter (like most of them) I will be at work. We usually try to make Easter fun at work just like other holidays. If you have to be at work you might as well try to be festive. Last year we hid plastic Easter eggs filled with candy and little toys around the department for staff to find. It was fun until six months later we found one of the eggs jammed behind a cardiac monitor where the chocolate melted everywhere because of the heat from the monitor! because I am not a

This year I wanted to dress up as the Easter bunny to take pictures with the staff but I couldn’t find a costume to rent.  I might just wear bunny ears and hand out easter candy. That might be as festive as we get this year.

I do know one thing for sure though, I am NOT cleaning up melted chocolate from behind a monitor again!!!

What are you missing? What could you do in the next year? The next three years? The next five? I think a lot of nurses fail to acknowledge that they might not want to do the type of nursing they are currently in forever.

Take advantage of any educational classes that your institution might offer. For example, if your institution offers free ACLS for everyone, don’t ignore that just because you work in a Pediatric unit. Take the class–you never know when you might want to hop on over to the adult ortho unit!

I tell nurses to ensure that they have their own five-year plan. That way, no one else tries to make it up for you!

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I hesitate to say I never get sick because whenever you say never, it is the equivalent to shouting out, “Here I am infectious world! Come and get me!”

It is the horror movie equivalent to saying, “I’m going to go check this out alone. I’ll be right back.”

It is the … well, you get the idea. Never say never.

I would say, however, that I rarely get sick. I think part of this is because I spent most of my first year of nursing sick all the time. After a year of coughs, colds, vomiting, and the like, my immune system just got better at the whole immunity thing. But I also think that the following tips may have helped:

1) I am crazy about washing my hands. I carry antimicrobial hand sanitizer everywhere. In every purse, in every gym bag, in every nook and cranny of my house. I even carry it in my car and I sanitize when I get in the car from anything…the grocery store, the gas station, ALL THE TIME!

2) I don’t wear my work shoes in the car or in the house. They stay in the garage, on the front porch, or in the trunk of my car.

3) I try to be SUPER aware of touching my face. Before I do touch my face, eat, put on lipstick or anything I…yes, you guessed it, sanitize.

4) I take a multi-vitamin every day and try to drink at least one liter of water. I know what you don’t use you pee out, but it just makes me feel better.

5) I exercise at least three times per week. It is good for the mind and body. And, I think, for the immune system!!

Galina Barskaya | Veer

Triage is one of the funniest places to work–people tell you things that are usually reserved for therapists and intimate partners.

My friend used to work in an ED in the South and encountered a woman who wrote on her triage intake sheet: “I got sprouts coming out of my juju bean.”

Apparently she wasn’t embarrassed about the sprout part, but couldn’t bring the proper southern belle in her to call her “juju bean” its proper name—vagina.

This woman suffered from a common malady of a prolapsed uterus and had placed a potato in her vaginal canal as a sort of organic pessary. In such a dark and moist place, the potato did what it was meant to do and “sprouted.”

I applaud her not only for being creative but also for being super green. Environmentalists unite!

Got a funny story to share? Submit it here!

Siri Stafford | Photodisc | Thinkstock + Scrubs

I know that many of us hate working on the holidays. Chances are, if you are or ever have been a floor nurse, you have worked at least one holiday in your career.

One of my favorite “holiday at work” stories took place on Thanksgiving a few years ago. We were all grumbling about working on Turkey Day instead of being at home with our friends and families. Then a patient came in who trumped us all.

Not only was he admitted to the hospital on Thanksgiving, but it was his BIRTHDAY as well! As if that wasn’t enough, his entire family was going to be at his house, so his wife had to go home to finish cooking. There he was, all alone, on Thanksgiving and his birthday.

One of the nurses went across the street to the cafeteria and bought him a muffin. We found a candle and all went in to sing him “Happy Birthday.” The surprise in his eyes was awesome. Then we realized that we all could watch the parade in his room, and we had our very own Happy Birth-Thanksgiving-Day Celebration—nursing style!

Whenever I am annoyed about working on a holiday, I remember that patient. Obviously, we were all supposed to be at work on that day so that we could make his day a little brighter and make him a little bit better. And maybe he will always save a tiny piece of cake for us nurses!

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“Mikey will eat it.” Isn’t that how the Life cereal commercial went?

Well, the ER staff are the Mikeys of the hospital. I swear, anytime someone has a meeting and there is food left over it somehow always ends up in the ER break room. It is strange how the hospital always thinks about the ER when it comes to leftover food and not leftover beds!

If they truly felt sorry for us it would be the other way around…

The strangest food combinations can be brought down and within an hour ALL of it will be consumed. Once, sandwich meat, rice, fruit, and meatballs ended up in the break room. Yep, all gone almost instantly. The presence of food in the break room travels as fast as word of a natural disaster. It is almost as if there is a secret flashing light that goes off to let everyone know “Hey! Free weird food in the break room!”

I have even had parties at home and brought the mounds of leftover food or cake to work the next day and sure enough, gone! Even at nine in the morning, somehow cake will go missing. Every once in awhile I partake in the free food but those of you who have read my blog before know I have a thing with potlucks and unknown food origins so usually the food ‘donated’ to us grosses me out.

However, if there is ever a chocolate chip cookie that makes its way down to our group lounge area, I will scoop it up every single time!

Does your department get the leftovers like ours does?