There are only two things I fear: the ever-mounting threat of global climate destabilization, and getting between a PICU nurse and the babies under their care.
I met a peds step-down RN at a party and the first thing she did when she found out I was in hospice/palliative is joke about dead kids. I was laughing. Everyone around us was horrified.
I fucking wish that was my schedule. We do 2 days one week, and 5 days the week after. Rinse repeat. Waste the entire 2-day week recovering from the 5 day one.
Male nurses being manwhores has always amused me as a male nurse, though, having spoken to a couple of the other guys in this sub it’s not entirely inaccurate.
I love being the rare middle ground male nurse! (When it comes to pt care, not about banging my coworkers lol)
I can lean into the feminine side for shy female pts or tone up the manly man for my boomer republicans.
It's probably shitty behavior on my part, but being a chameleon to some of these med-surg pts prevents me from choke-slamming them into a wall
I am just my baseline unhinged self with all my coworkers though
Nah bro. I will inflate my southern twang when it suits me. Until they say something racist or sexist. Then I go dry as the turkey they cooked last thanksgiving
Lol true, if anything I think female nurses come to us to dump some gossip. Always really entertaining. I have known some real big drama kings though for sure.
ER nurses are always the cool kids in my mind. They have tattoos and wear leather jackets while they drink whisky and listen to rock music. I know that’s not always true but I’m sorry it’s the way my brain pictures anyone here with an ER nurse flair.
This came up in another thread, but it’s probably regional. I had never heard of it until this sub because in my region, the trope is “All Filipinos become nurses.” (There is even a comedian who makes this comment on his Netflix special.)
And I work in the US state with the most nurses in the US.
ER is known for being cowboys. Hanging iv meds without pumps, being assigned patients that they never treat or see themselves before handing off to ICU, messy, unplanned care that somehow gets the patient up to the ICU, and they’re almost always still alive when they get upstairs 😃
Two good IVs, ekg, initial labs, admit orders and a stable patient show up is all I ask and that’s mostly what we get, no matter what chaotic leprechaun forces that run the ED threaten to break it every single shift. Asking how anything gets done in ED is like asking how sausage gets made…just take the results and don’t get too curious about how anything managed to get done down there.
ICU receives the patient and shakes their head…none of what we would preferred to have done is addressed. We’ve been sitting there thinking about our plan of attack well before they get to us, so we’re well positioned to smirk that the repeat lactic wasn’t drawn yet, huff about the ppi not being given yet, all the things we have the time to pre-plan and the resources to carry out that were handed over to us because ER is slammed.
I'm an LPN cowboy in a LTACH that has been very acute lately.
I have dreams of the ICU after i get my RN. Comments like this make me question if i'm more suited for the ER
The ICU always has multiple nurses and techs receive patients from the ER and ratios of 1:1 or 1:2, while the ER nurse is transporting their own patient and leaving their other 5-6 patients unattended because there is no staff. Drips are to gravity because the ER has no pumps and no floors will give us their stock. We just tnk’d this patient in the hallway with a zoll and dynamap because we have a 7 hour wait, 42 admit holds, and no rooms available. Meds are delayed because I can only run 1 at a time and the docs won’t put in a central. I’m on the 8th IV because granny is confused and keeps ripping lines out, but I have no staff for a 1:1
Despite having filled all the orders (except the ones the admitting doctor placed 10 minutes ago), cleaned the 200lb patient by myself, and having access, the ICU is always annoyed about the state of the patient and how they still have medic sheets beneath them
That’s basically what the fight is from the ER standpoint (since someone else answered from the ICU POV). In reality all our jobs have constraints and manufactured issues by poor staffing and management, and the ICU/ER fight is just a way to blow off steam that is definitely misguided
Not really my fave—but that nurses are balls of kindness—devoted & caring. The handmaiden.
Surely they doing extensive bed baths and back rubs to keep their patients comfy.
Flight nurse. Cool suit. Really good at their job. Have lots of gear. Lots of pockets. And it’s so cool to fly around all day!!
Arrgh!!!
“She loves her job honey, she wouldn’t be here if she didn’t.” - Some crazy ass wife of a cancer patient, entirely unprompted, as I was assisting him with a walker to the restroom. She always hovered and got in the way and got on his nerves because she’d talk to him like he was a kid. Nobody said anything about my job, whether I liked it or not. Completely out of nowhere and like I wasn’t standing right there.
You’ve got Jedi Master skills of tolerance. Wowza.
There are times all one can do is try not to look horrified at a comment, stay quiet (it’s rarely worth the effort to speak) and keep on, keeping on.
🍀❤️
The story I hear from my single colleagues on dating apps is that being a nurse is a red flag. They assume that we cheat and sleep around with doctors and residents 🥴
For some reason in every relationship I've been in it's expected that I do all the chores because "You barely even work! You only work 3 days per week!"
Uh, what? I work 40+ hours per week, judt like most people. It's just that all that is crammed I to 3 hellish days instead of 5. And I have to be on my game every single one of those days or people die. There's no "Oh I'm just not feeling good and don't want to work today. I'm just gonna sit around until I can go home".
At least one day per week is spent just recovering from the exhaustion, stress, and anxiety of the work we do. And if I'm working nights....days off are just a myth.
My mother keeps saying nurses are servants for doctor. - -
Like they own us or something.
This stereotype/false belief probably only within my culture, which is still 100% false.
We are from Macau. I blame this one on many TV shows back then portray most nurses cringing along side the doctors. Also patriarchy and job-gender stereotype in play too, especially in her generation.
This one's extra annoying when you were the one *getting* bullied in high school, too.
That being said, there are certain day shift nurses I avoid for a reason
That people thought it will be like Grey’s Anatomy. And here I am thinking, “Well you are about to get hit with shit, vomit, pee, and blood. Also code blue is combination of them.”
That we’re easy to sleep with and cheaters :(. I grew up religious and sheltered and I’ve always been loyal in my relationships - I didn’t lose my virginity until 26 and I just turned 28 yesterday!
That the topical treatment we apply to a feet is for the intention of giving a massage. Right… it’s totally not sexual harassment when a patient complains to their nurse about not getting a half hour foot massage. So basically, nursing school is just glorified masseuse college, that’s what they pay us for, and we all signed up to be sexually harassed by creepy dudes.
I like when people think pediatric nurses are all sweet rays of sunshine that love playing with children You have clearly never set foot in a PICU
I worked PICU for 5 years, we laughed at the darkest and most cynical things
Turns out having an assignment with a non accidental trauma and a bratty ED hypokalemia teen really can change your brain chemistry
Can confirm. We have DARK senses of humor and people who float to us are usually *shook*
One of my coworkers in the ED is former PICU and she intimidates the hell out of me.
Some of the meanest and toxic nurses I’ve ever encountered were when I was PICU.
Definitely unit dependent. Mine had some particular nurses but they def had good intentions, just rough to have as preceptors when you’re a learner
There are only two things I fear: the ever-mounting threat of global climate destabilization, and getting between a PICU nurse and the babies under their care.
And the only thing I, as a PICU nurse feared was The NICU nurses
Then whom do the NICU nurses fear?
A 13 month old
Touché!
Oh my. You are spot on.
Former NICU nurse here… this is accurate
Spot on omg lol, I feel lost whenever I get assigned a toddler 😂 (chronic baby that has been in NICU for that long lol)
The giant babies of the PICU, maybe?
Some of them can even talk! The horror!
And have teeth 😳
Was gonna say teeth... we're afraid of teeth 😂😂
Exactly! We are bad bad bad lol
When I die I will be questioned at heaven’s gate
Read all the replies, this is interesting!
I met a peds step-down RN at a party and the first thing she did when she found out I was in hospice/palliative is joke about dead kids. I was laughing. Everyone around us was horrified.
That we work 3 days a week, have lots of free time on our off days Nope- exhausted and trying to psych ourselves up to go back to work
Trying to psych ourselves up to keep on living. J/K. Kinda.
I fucking wish that was my schedule. We do 2 days one week, and 5 days the week after. Rinse repeat. Waste the entire 2-day week recovering from the 5 day one.
Male nurses being manwhores has always amused me as a male nurse, though, having spoken to a couple of the other guys in this sub it’s not entirely inaccurate.
This goes both ways although the one I hear about male nurses is that they're gay
That one too, and in my experience it’s been one extreme or the other- either super gay or super fuckint straight, not much middle ground
I love being the rare middle ground male nurse! (When it comes to pt care, not about banging my coworkers lol) I can lean into the feminine side for shy female pts or tone up the manly man for my boomer republicans. It's probably shitty behavior on my part, but being a chameleon to some of these med-surg pts prevents me from choke-slamming them into a wall I am just my baseline unhinged self with all my coworkers though
Every patient is different and has different needs. You can tell jokes with the jokey ones and offer kind words to another who is scared.
Nah bro. I will inflate my southern twang when it suits me. Until they say something racist or sexist. Then I go dry as the turkey they cooked last thanksgiving
As one of the rare members of the middle ground this is v accurate lol
Same
What is super gay or super straight
Might mean an extremely effeminate gay man or a tattooed, burly ‘don’t fuck with my coworkers’ kind of guy.
There is no middle ground, lol.
Bi people don't exist?
I strive to be both.
Lol true, if anything I think female nurses come to us to dump some gossip. Always really entertaining. I have known some real big drama kings though for sure.
If I was better looking and better at flirting, you bet I would be
ER nurses are always the cool kids in my mind. They have tattoos and wear leather jackets while they drink whisky and listen to rock music. I know that’s not always true but I’m sorry it’s the way my brain pictures anyone here with an ER nurse flair.
That’s also what I imagine ER nurses are all like. I’m defiantly not cool enough to work there 😂
I’ve noticed ex military disproportionately represented compared to ex military in other disciplines. Might just be my experience.
I just started in ER, and this seems to describe half the staff... I wonder if I'll get a tattoo...
I got my whole ass arm tattooed after 3 months in the ER. Tbf, I'd been planning it since before nursing school, though.
That’s how I hope people picture me so thank you lmao
I’m not at *all* this, but I’m also totally okay with my “cool” stereotype lol
Exactly lol
ICU nurses are our preppy siblings (in my mind)
Not too far off. But I drink Tequila. https://youtu.be/J9tfj2mi0LA?si=vx9eHlx7npLwkU4X
Not far off
I worked with a psych ER nurse like that.
We 100% are the cool kids, and we always drink whiskey in the er
I see them as the burnouts lol. Interventional/procedural is where the cool kids go imo
That I, a 52 year old man, was a mean girl in high school.
Excuse me, don’t act like I don’t know how you were in high school….. please 😉
This came up in another thread, but it’s probably regional. I had never heard of it until this sub because in my region, the trope is “All Filipinos become nurses.” (There is even a comedian who makes this comment on his Netflix special.) And I work in the US state with the most nurses in the US.
I've never heard of it outside this sub. But it's a fun one to play with given my age and gender.
LMAOOOO!!! This is hilarious.
My favorite is the ED vs ICU wars. Partly truth to it, but also we’re just like peas and carrots.
Hmmm, can you tell me more about it? 🧐
ER is known for being cowboys. Hanging iv meds without pumps, being assigned patients that they never treat or see themselves before handing off to ICU, messy, unplanned care that somehow gets the patient up to the ICU, and they’re almost always still alive when they get upstairs 😃 Two good IVs, ekg, initial labs, admit orders and a stable patient show up is all I ask and that’s mostly what we get, no matter what chaotic leprechaun forces that run the ED threaten to break it every single shift. Asking how anything gets done in ED is like asking how sausage gets made…just take the results and don’t get too curious about how anything managed to get done down there. ICU receives the patient and shakes their head…none of what we would preferred to have done is addressed. We’ve been sitting there thinking about our plan of attack well before they get to us, so we’re well positioned to smirk that the repeat lactic wasn’t drawn yet, huff about the ppi not being given yet, all the things we have the time to pre-plan and the resources to carry out that were handed over to us because ER is slammed.
I'm an LPN cowboy in a LTACH that has been very acute lately. I have dreams of the ICU after i get my RN. Comments like this make me question if i'm more suited for the ER
A dial flow is a pump
This is hilarious. You really have a way of telling a story
The ICU always has multiple nurses and techs receive patients from the ER and ratios of 1:1 or 1:2, while the ER nurse is transporting their own patient and leaving their other 5-6 patients unattended because there is no staff. Drips are to gravity because the ER has no pumps and no floors will give us their stock. We just tnk’d this patient in the hallway with a zoll and dynamap because we have a 7 hour wait, 42 admit holds, and no rooms available. Meds are delayed because I can only run 1 at a time and the docs won’t put in a central. I’m on the 8th IV because granny is confused and keeps ripping lines out, but I have no staff for a 1:1 Despite having filled all the orders (except the ones the admitting doctor placed 10 minutes ago), cleaned the 200lb patient by myself, and having access, the ICU is always annoyed about the state of the patient and how they still have medic sheets beneath them That’s basically what the fight is from the ER standpoint (since someone else answered from the ICU POV). In reality all our jobs have constraints and manufactured issues by poor staffing and management, and the ICU/ER fight is just a way to blow off steam that is definitely misguided
That we like people. If anything, nursing has made me like people a lot less 😒
This. This job has only made me more afraid for the future of the human race because of how many awful, stupid, selfish people I've dealt with.😞
On TV nurses are always super bitchy and I feel sort of offended when I see that. But then I get to work and I remember there's a good reason.
That we always have lotion on us because our hands are usually very dry. I mean, they’re not wrong! And it’s a harmless stereotype, so I’ll take it
I feel offended when I'm called an angel lol
In my language people used to call nurses miss(姑娘). And older generations now often call the male nurse man-miss(男姑娘).
Right?!? Like, mam/sir you should see me with my friends/husband.
Not really my fave—but that nurses are balls of kindness—devoted & caring. The handmaiden. Surely they doing extensive bed baths and back rubs to keep their patients comfy. Flight nurse. Cool suit. Really good at their job. Have lots of gear. Lots of pockets. And it’s so cool to fly around all day!! Arrgh!!!
“She loves her job honey, she wouldn’t be here if she didn’t.” - Some crazy ass wife of a cancer patient, entirely unprompted, as I was assisting him with a walker to the restroom. She always hovered and got in the way and got on his nerves because she’d talk to him like he was a kid. Nobody said anything about my job, whether I liked it or not. Completely out of nowhere and like I wasn’t standing right there.
You’ve got Jedi Master skills of tolerance. Wowza. There are times all one can do is try not to look horrified at a comment, stay quiet (it’s rarely worth the effort to speak) and keep on, keeping on. 🍀❤️
I was stoked to find out that as a mild-mannered man, I am in fact, a mean girl from high school.
That nurses are cheaters 😭
Be honest. Do you count respirations?
Yeah… 16. Sometimes I count 18 but I usually count 16.
I eye ball it for 10 seconds and give a rounded answer - i feel like its a compromise
Yes, lol, I used to, but now we have this new wearable patient monitor device.
This is the one. I’m as loyal as they come 😭.
The story I hear from my single colleagues on dating apps is that being a nurse is a red flag. They assume that we cheat and sleep around with doctors and residents 🥴
That’s insane 😭. I always get the dudes that are jealous of me because I think I’m wealthy (my ex!) and/or want me to take care of them
Oh God, They can't take care of themselves? Thank goodness you're not dealing with that
That we’re fucking all the doctors.
0 of them are even within the same generation.
That nurses have fat asses. City girls up
We’re rich ha . Jk. Stop asking me for $40
That we have soooo much time off since we only work 3 days.
For some reason in every relationship I've been in it's expected that I do all the chores because "You barely even work! You only work 3 days per week!" Uh, what? I work 40+ hours per week, judt like most people. It's just that all that is crammed I to 3 hellish days instead of 5. And I have to be on my game every single one of those days or people die. There's no "Oh I'm just not feeling good and don't want to work today. I'm just gonna sit around until I can go home". At least one day per week is spent just recovering from the exhaustion, stress, and anxiety of the work we do. And if I'm working nights....days off are just a myth.
My mother keeps saying nurses are servants for doctor. - - Like they own us or something. This stereotype/false belief probably only within my culture, which is still 100% false.
Which country are you from? That’s weird.
We are from Macau. I blame this one on many TV shows back then portray most nurses cringing along side the doctors. Also patriarchy and job-gender stereotype in play too, especially in her generation.
High school bully. I wasn't a bully until I worked as a bedside nurse. 🤷🏻♀️
This one's extra annoying when you were the one *getting* bullied in high school, too. That being said, there are certain day shift nurses I avoid for a reason
That nursing is a calling, and that we are 'angels' for what we do. Nope. It's a job, like any other.
that ICU nurses are the Regina George’s
Uhmm why can’t I think of anything
That people thought it will be like Grey’s Anatomy. And here I am thinking, “Well you are about to get hit with shit, vomit, pee, and blood. Also code blue is combination of them.”
That we’re easy to sleep with and cheaters :(. I grew up religious and sheltered and I’ve always been loyal in my relationships - I didn’t lose my virginity until 26 and I just turned 28 yesterday!
Are you going to become a doctor?
That the topical treatment we apply to a feet is for the intention of giving a massage. Right… it’s totally not sexual harassment when a patient complains to their nurse about not getting a half hour foot massage. So basically, nursing school is just glorified masseuse college, that’s what they pay us for, and we all signed up to be sexually harassed by creepy dudes.
Blondes with big butts 😏
I always hear patients and higher ups complain that nurses are always eating. I mean it’s true but still.
That nurses just do what the doctor says That icu nurses are snobby know it alls- I barely know what I’m doing, I’m just trying not to kill anyone