image: © istockphoto.com/Tomasz Wojnarowicz

Have you ever uttered one of these phrases to a female nurse before? I’m not going to say I did…but you won’t be hearing me say them any time in the future. This is all fun and games, of course (except for maybe #1, let’s be honest)!

1. Bad hair day today?

This is not just because yours truly has no hair (although it doesn’t help). It’s all fun and games until the ‘hair’ card is pulled – then it’s a no-holds-barred war over why you think their hair looks bad. Did it always look bad? Is it the color? Is it too short? Is it too long? Should it be pulled up?… (this list is endless)

2. Is it that time of the month?

This should only be said from afar. If you’re close enough to be hit- you will be. ‘Nuff said.

3. Oh! Hey? Do you have makeup on?

This comment ranks up there with the hair comment. The fact that you have noticed something about their complexion will start a river of questions concerning whether or not they have always looked bad and why haven’t you said something before.

4. Do those match?

I always love the ‘void of knowledge’ most male nurses – heck, most men – have when it comes to matching. Oh – wait, maybe this is just me?

5. There’s no crying in nursing.

Yes this is stolen – have you seen the movie “A League of Their Own?” You gotta love Tom Hanks. And this can be quite debilitating. Be careful.

Of course this is all in fun. Don’t take any of this seriously, nor think for one second I or other male nurses would actually these mean and horrible things. It’s just fun knowing that we men working in an obviously female-dominated profession have a good grasp on our co-workers sensitivities.

It’s kind of like a married man knowing what to say and what NOT to say to his loving wife.

Right?

Mehmet Can | Veer

I have one more year left of being a student, and still have a ton of knowledge to consume. But one thing I know for sure: Being a nurse practitioner student is equal parts excitement and aggravation.

The excitement is seeded in the information-laden state I’m in. Every day I learn something new and cutting edge, and yet so basic and simple to advanced practice. I’m a nurse learning to dip my feet in the deep, deep waters of medicine.

Just when I think I’ve got a hold on a subject, I get that slap in the face from reality. It’s tough being the new kid on the block sometimes.

The aggravation stems from the resistance nurse practitioners have been fighting for years. Being mid-level providers, the world of medicine seems to have drawn a line between support and rejection. To them, we are either here to help them deliver the very best evidenced-base care, or we are here to step on their toes.

I’m not sure why. I’m guessing some of the states that are lobbying for independent practice have struck a nerve in some areas. But once again, I’m still a student, I’m still learning.

Then there’s the offensive and degrading position some physicians have taken. I’m wondering if it’s a defense mechanism?

Today I was told by a physician that NPs are simply hired to do all the “scut-work” that physicians don’t want or like to do. In the physician’s words, “You guys do all the crap/garbage stuff we don’t like or have time for. Is that what you really want to do?”

It took everything I had to not resort to physical violence and/or verbal rampage. (Sorry, folks.)

No doctor, my career and my (soon-to-be) position in the healthcare system is not as your receptionist or your transcriptionist. I actually DO have a set of skills that can not only help you, but may, in fact, elevate the delivery of care to your patients. I am here to help you, not replace you or fill your shoes. I know my limitations.

Today’s healthcare team is supposed to be filled with forward thinkers. Unfortunately, this physician wasn’t one. It may be presumptuous of me to say this, but I think it had something to do with an “old dog learning a new trick.”

Am I wrong to think this way? I know that NPs and their function are gaining popularity and are becoming more widely acknowledged, but we aren’t that new to the block. In fact, NPs have been around for just shy of half a century. I suppose I shouldn’t be too upset by my experience, since it’s the first one of its kind. I guess the edge of the blade was just sharper than I expected.

Robert Kneschke | Veer

I’m not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions, but this is the time of the year I wish we could openly call out our coworkers for their habits and idiosyncrasies that tend to drive us all up the proverbial wall.

I thought I might send an open letter to all “those” coworkers out there and address just a few of these occurrences that can get under our skin.

Dear fellow coworker,

It’s about time you started carrying your weight. Innocence and forgetfulness are one thing, but blatant disregard for your fellow nurse is starting to wear on us. Here are just a few things we’d like you to think about in 2012:

1. Be on time. No, that does not reflect the time you swipe your badge. If you’re going to spend 15 minutes gossiping and another 15 getting your gear and preparing your coffee, be sure to arrive ahead of time so that when you DO clock in, you’re ready to roll.
2. Lay off the cologne/perfume. We’re not out clubbin’. If I’m gagging in your presence, how do you think the patients who require oxygen are going to feel?
3. Look in the mirror before you leave for work. Wrinkled, mismatched and faded scrubs do not scream professionalism. Nor do white pants with colored undergarments. I’m jus’ sayin’.
4. If you must smoke, figure out a way not to take 30 minute smoke breaks four times per shift. You disappearing for who knows how long gets quite taxing. I may take up the darn habit just so I can take those long breaks.
5. Answer the damn phone when it rings. Really? You’re telling me you don’t hear it ringing right next to you?
6. While we’re on the subject of your hearing, maybe you could find some time to answer a couple of call bells while you’re at it. Yes, I see you over there making every attempt to look busy when the call bell goes off. Sorry, it’s not working.
7. Leave the darn magazines at home. Please. How do you find the time to read a magazine during your shift? What am I missing?
8. Figure out a way not to yawn in my ear when giving report. Please.
9. Oh, and while we’re talking about report, could you PLEASE be more concise and on target. While I can appreciate attention to detail, does it really take you that long to convey your findings?
10. By the way, thank you oh-so-much for repeatedly leaving me dry and empty IV bags!

And a bonus one!

If you have a patient who has a suppository order at the beginning of your shift–could you find way to give it so that I’m not ALWAYS cleaning up the mess (literally!). Once or twice maybe, but every time? C’mon?!

In my book, this list is actually short. I could go on and on about the “little” things that always become big in our nursing world. I think the golden rule applies here, gang.

Anyone care to add to the list?

P.S. These suggestions were compiled from more than one source.

James Peragine | Veer

Some things just get under your skin. Call them habits, quirks, idiosyncrasies, or just plain annoyances–we all have them. Better yet, our coworkers have them!

It doesn’t matter which floor or unit you work on, it doesn’t matter how many years of experience you have, and it doesn’t matter what shift you are working. There is at least one coworker we all have worked with or crossed paths with that possess some of these.

Nothing breaks down a team quicker than passive aggressive “quirks.” Here are some things your coworkers are dying to tell you:

There is a difference between delegation and flat-out shirking your duties 

Ever have that coworker who just doesn’t posses any time management skills? Or one who decides he or she doesn’t want to do something? So he or she polishes it up to look like great team work dynamics. “Let’s delegate to the unlicensed professional all the duties I don’t like to do. Better yet, since I’m bad at starting IVs, how about I just wait to the last minute and beg for help, instead of just trying myself!”

Stop pawning off the “dirty” duties 

When you ask for assistance in a room and your patient just exercised his or her bathroom privileges, STOP passively getting us to do the dirty work. No, no, no, I’ll be more than happy to hold during the turn. Besides, the last time I checked, this is your patient, and part of our responsibility is to assess and reassess. Can’t do a whole lot of assessing from the wrong side. Grr.

Taking the wheel is okay, but it’s not a permanent job 

Transporting patients is no easy task, ever. Whether it’s in a cart or a bed, pushing and pulling it is tough enough. Now add some transfusing IVs, multiple drains, tube feedings and possibly mechanical ventilation and you have an entirely different animal. Navigating down halls, in the elevator and through doorways requires a great deal of ingenuity, but it also requires a great deal of physical labor. The steering portion of this entourage is usually the least taxing. Do us a favor and be sure to have your hands full and take on the brunt of the labor some of the time.

In the end there are a TON of things that we do and see that irk us. For the most part, we can brush them off and keep moving forward, but every once in a while we need that give-and-take. Be sure to put yourself in your coworkers’ shoes the next time you need your team. You’ll be thankful you did!

Image: Jen Bennett for Scrubs

It’s that time of year again – specifically, it’s the day before Christmas and you realize you forgot to put a special someone on your shopping list!

Let us guess – it’s your coworker?

Don’t sweat it. All nurses “get” the busy thing.

Send them one of these witty “I forgot your gift” apology cards below and you’ll both chalk up the temporary amnesia as a side effect of being an amazing nurse!

Sending an e-card is easy!

Option 1: Click on the image. Copy the url in the browser and paste it into your holiday email.

Option 2. Click on the image. Then right click on the image to save to your computer. Attach to your holiday email!

Option 3: Send your coworker all 8 cards! Forward this article in an email by clicking on the email icon in our share bar above.

1. THE “OOPS I TAKE IT BACK” CARD

Next: The Patient-Inspired Card

Kirill Smirnov | Veer

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be one of Those Nurses?

You’ve seen them: the ones who cause heads to turn and voices to drop to a whisper as they pass, and not in a good way.

Here are five surefire ways to lose your coworkers’ respect.

1. Show up late and leave early. Be one of those folks who skids in just before—or just after—report starts, then leaves as soon as the clock ticks over to legal gettin’-out time, leaving things undone. By this I mean leaving patients dirty, not giving a decent report or leaving labs and such undone that were due at the end of your shift.

2. Sleep with other nurses, doctors, residents or students. I wish I could say I haven’t seen a lot of this, but there are some folks out there who seem determined to make life one big Grey’s Anatomy episode. Don’t do it. If you have to do it, make sure it never, ever gets out at work. Otherwise, we’ll be calling that one physician “The Silver Fox” and making jokes until the end of time.

3. Bully the people who rank lower than you, be they students, new nurses or the housekeeping staff. Do I really need to say this? I guess I do: DON’T BE A JERK. You were learning stuff once, too, and you might have even scrubbed a floor in your time. If you haven’t, acting like a twit will guarantee your chance to learn the finer points of mopping.

4. Always be disorganized. For some people, not opening a chart until halfway through the shift is a sign that they’ve had a bad day. For others, it’s an unwitting admission—when it’s done habitually—that their time-management skills stink. If you’re chronically disorganized and always forgetting stuff, make it a mission to imitate the most organized person on your unit. Not only is it bad for your blood pressure to feel constantly out of control, but it makes everybody else’s day harder, too.

5. Be an Eeyore. That’s the term for a person who’s never, ever able to see the brighter side of things and always has something depressing to contribute. If a coworker is pregnant, the Eeyore is the one who regales her with tales of her own nine-month bout with morning sickness. If somebody in the lab is getting married, the Eeyore will tell him about her messy divorce. If I bring something particularly scrumptious to a potluck, my own personal Eeyore will speculate on the calories/carcinogenic nature of the dish.

Do Not Be That Person. Please. We spend 13 hours a day together most days of the week—wouldn’t it be nice if we were all glad to see you?

Ocean Photography | Veer

Every office has politics. Some workplaces are worse for this than others.

I’ve known nurses to say that the combination of a lot of women in one spot and the long hours that our jobs demand makes for the worst office politics ever. I challenge them to do one summer of repertory theater in a small college town.

So how do you survive? By doing three very simple things:

1. Keep your ears open and your mouth shut. This is also known as “don’t gossip,” but I like to refer to it as “information gathering.” Smiling and looking receptive to what people say, especially if you’re new to the place, is a great way to figure out who to trust and who to avoid.

2. Never respond to a bully. There’s one—or two—in every batch. The best thing to do if that nutjob in Cardiology goes off on you is to respond as professionally and calmly as if you were in a movie and all your lines were scripted. It might take some doing; Frog knows I’ve been guilty of delivering some retaliatory snark in my time, but it really is the best policy. Eventually you’ll become known as the person who never loses his temper. If ever you do lose your temper, your previous behavior will make it that much more likely that people will pay attention and take you seriously.

3. Cultivate good working relationships with everybody—from nurses to phlebotomists to the housekeeping staff to the guy who brings the trays at mealtime. Be polite and interested, say please and thank you, and sign the birthday and congratulations cards. A few months of consistently decent behavior, especially to people who are rarely noticed or thanked, will gain you tons of goodwill. More importantly, it’ll make you a nicer person in the process. If you ever have to call favors in, it’s better to be known as the person who remembers birthdays than the one who’s always rude or dismissive.

Remember: If things are really, really bad, there’s always another place to work. If you’re the target of organized bullying, the best place to start is with your boss, provided she’s not in on it. If she is, head up the ladder the way you were taught to do in orientation. If all else fails, go and work summer stock for a while. I guarantee you’ll feel so much better about your life that you won’t even notice that can of paint on top of the half-open door to the breakroom.

Alloy Photography | Veer

It’s always nice to be appreciated, but some gifts are more strange than sweet!

We asked nurses to tell us about the funniest gift they had ever received at work—read on for their hilarious answers!

1. A love poem from a smitten elderly resident. He tapped me on the elbow and handed it to me without a word, then spun away from me in his wheelchair at 45 mph.

—Holly Tyler Juneau

2. I was upset over something that happened at work, so a few of my favorite coworkers made me a “fully equipped” man out of a tongue depressor, bits of a glove blown up and cotton balls. LOL, I still have it to cheer me up on bad days, even though he’s a bit deflated now!

—Sarah MacCawesum

3. A patient’s husband once gave me written instructions on how to fireproof a Christmas tree.

—Janice Gibilisco

4. A canister of sugar cookies at Christmas with a few missing out of a couple different slots. I think they wanted to taste and make sure they weren’t stale….

—Andrea Michelle Graham

5. An extra nightgown from a patient that still had c.diff stains on it. The thought was cherished; the nightgown was taken straight to the trash can.

—Audrey Dickerson

6. Good ole fruitcake…I sure was re-gifted three times over! The tin had rust on the bottom!

—Tina Lucky

7. For nursing graduation, my boyfriend gave me a .22 rifle…not sure why.

—Robyn Allum

8. A Christmas-themed bedpan.

—Kim Bubs Main

9. Blue eye shadow from a patient (male). This was in the early ’80s. I guess I wasn’t wearing enough makeup!

—Janet Rolf

10. When I worked physical rehab, one of my very shy, elderly male patients gave me a Finnish/American flag pin as a courting gift. Oh, those shy Finns! Too bad I was already married….

—Shelly Allen Grimes

What’s the funniest gift you ever received at work? Share it with us and we might publish it in a future article!

Image Source Photography | Veer

The other night my husband told me that he has a new dream for our lives: that I would get a day job.

I had to laugh a little, because as we nurses know, switching from days to NOC or vice versa is a difficult task. Having all the pros on the night shift in mind (it works well with my kid’s schedule, the money is better, I love my night team and the night environ), I also had to sit back and count the cost of nights at my husband’s urging.

A coworker told me recently, “So what if NOC takes 7 years off my life–working with the day crew would probably take off ten!” I laughed and laughed, but the fact remains: NOC is really hard on the body. Scientific research aside, I can personally attest to the fact that nights has completely jacked up my sleep cycles (I take Unisom with a vengence).

Another issue I can attribute to working the night shift are my weird midnight eating habits, which I am convinced has messed up my metabolism. And dieting is almost impossible for me: if the schedule doesn’t throw me off, the stress does! I wonder if statistically speaking, night nurses are fatter than day nurses? Hm?

And then there are my emotions: only nurses that work 3 and 4 night stretches know how crazy they can feel after such a run. I usually have a crying jag when I try to turn myself around, and am somewhat irrational, plus I laze around in my PJ’s and have trouble feeling really awake on my days off! And just when I get turned around and feel human again, I have to go right back to a night regime.

The solution is to switch to a day job. Yeah, not so easy! Day jobs are the last to open up–and working days brings with it it’s own nightmares (think waking at 5AM, morning traffic, management on the floor, and visiting hours with consequent family members everywhere).

So yeah, my body is feeling it and is telling me to do something. In the next year I see myself making the change and going to days. That should be fun to blog about!

Hemera | Ablestock.com | Getty Images

If someone were to ask me (and someone obviously has) which of my coworkers I’d have a hard time living without, it would take me some thought to answer.

Is it Martinez, the resident who always has time to answer questions and brainstorm? Is it Kristen, another nurse, who competently and calmly yanks my posterior out of the various slings I get it into? How about any one of the pharmacists, who never act irritated when I call with yet another question about some crazy-obscure drug and its possible interactions with another crazy-obscure drug?

All of those people are important, yes. All of them have talents or knowledge that I don’t have, and are happy to help answer questions or pick up the pieces when my head explodes. Put all of ‘em together, though, and you still don’t have one Lisa.

Lisa has worked at Sunnydale General almost as long as I have. She manages part of the housekeeping staff now, having worked her way up from being a part-time housekeeper on the floors. I couldn’t do my job without her, and I am not kidding when I say that.

If I need a room turned around in the unit in 10 minutes, Lisa will send somebody who can get it done in eight, or come do it herself. If a patient has one of those Body Fluid Disasters that they sometimes do, Lisa will take care of it with minimal fuss and no embarrassment to the patient. And if I’m a genius and manage to spill an entire cup of coffee down my front an hour into my shift, she has a pair of scrubs handy in my size. (Plus, she keeps a stash of extra toilet paper. That’s invaluable.)

We used to complain to each other about our respective managements. She always said that if she ever got to be a manager, things would change—and they have. Even though she’s as short-staffed as the rest of us, she manages somehow to make sure people aren’t spread as thin as they used to be. Housekeepers don’t get hurt as often as they used to because they now have different, better equipment that limits the number of step stools they have to climb and the amount of bending they have to do. Things run more smoothly now and people are happier.

I would feel it if the pharmacy disappeared into a hole in the ground. I would miss Martinez if he went someplace else, and I’d be hobbled without the other nurses on the unit. If Lisa weren’t there, though, work in my unit would grind to a halt within a week.

What’s amazing to me is that nobody seems to notice what she does. That’s a sure sign that you’re doing your job well—if things just work without drama or difficulty.

So, who is it that YOU couldn’t live without?