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RealityRN
Posts Tagged ‘Caring’
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Rookie Wit & Wisdom

Brienne Pies, RealityRN’s most recent Spa Giveaway recipient, isn’t a nurse yet—but nursing seems to be in her blood.

A nursing student at South Dakota State University, Brienne remembers how her mother, a hospice RN, changed lives.  “People would always come up to her while we were shopping and thank her for the care she provided them or a loved one. I wanted to know what [...]
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Seasoned with Sage

I'm a school nurse; I left the ER behind: the stress, the shift work, the adrenaline. Now I work in an exclusive private boarding school in the European Alps. Naturally, like most affluent kids, they don't know how lucky they are.

One of the students told me the other day she wants to be a nurse. I asked her why, and she said she thought I [...]
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Rookie Wit & Wisdom

After being off for a few days, I went back to work at my cover-all ICU. I had the typical two, vented patients, who were very much fluff and turns.

Around 9 pm on my first night back, a twenty-something-year-old male from the ER arrives. The ER nurse gave our nurse report, stating the patient was breathing a little fast. We are all thinking 25-30 breaths [...]
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Rookie Wit & Wisdom

I am drained: mentally, physically, emotionally, and psychologically.

One month at the PICU, I’m so tired. It's been the kind of month that keeps you up all night. If you finally get to sleep, you wake up from a disturbing dream.

You smile and joke the whole day at work, but subconsciously you're bleeding from the gut. And there are no sutures to keep the wound closed. [...]
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Reality Unscripted

Nurse Appreciation Week--what exactly does that mean?

Do you feel more appreciated this week than all the others? Does your employer do something special that makes you feel like all the hard work is worth it? Do your patients bend over backwards to give you their thanks?

While it's nice to have a week that's all our own, if we're counting on others to make [...]
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Reality Unscripted

One of my early posts was about setting boundaries with those who are all too happy to cross them. This go around I'm taking a different slant.

I'm here to admit I haven't done a very good job at setting my own boundaries.

I'm in the middle of a situation that has made me exhausted, crabby, and out of clean underwear. I've allowed myself to [...]
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Rookie Wit & Wisdom

"What are they doing here?" asked Shannon. "They shouldn't be here. It's an emergency room, for goodness’ sake."

I nodded in agreement. "Yeah, can't they see we're too busy?" I added. At the time I had only been working in the emergency room for six months, and like all good junior staff, I was mimicking my seniors.

You see, the problem was that we were ridiculously busy, [...]
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Handling Stress
A new nurse self-care survey can help you identify your blind-spots.

“Take care of yourself!” - Wouldn’t it be nice if your job description included this directive?

Unfortunately, nurses, who pour themselves into caring for others, are notorious for self-neglect. There’s no one around to make sure you make “you” a priority.

It’s a conundrum—you know you ought to take better care of yourself, but you don’t. Maybe you’re too tired to care. Maybe you don’t know [...]
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Seasoned with Sage

I often struggle to remember the good days at work. But the good outweighs the bad, otherwise I wouldn't still be a nurse. One of the more memorable, feel-good stories goes like this:

At 41, Mr. Jones was too young to need vascular surgery, especially since he wasn't diabetic, and as far as he was aware, he didn’t have a family history of circulation problems. But [...]
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Reality Unscripted

I read a blog entry this week from a friend whose son is having a bone marrow transplant today. I could fill a book with all the things I've learned from this family, but I'll just share one thing with you today. This particular entry was about how you can't rush a 10-year-old who doesn't want to do something. Especially if he [...]
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