For Shame

i am a dood nurse. most nurses are females still, and have been for some time.

the recent influx of males into the profession of nursing may be a good thing. on the one hand, having more males in the profession is probably doing more to elevate nursing in status from being doctors handmaidens to, you know, an actual profession.

pro

case in point. our manager decided to try out a new thing. something about having the charge nurses introduce themselves to the patients every shift, or some such nonsense like that.

anyway, my manager is not the best communicator. he's this sooper non-confrontational guy, for one thing, and he's super old and kinda close to retiring. but, he has forgotten more about nursing than most of us will ever know, and he's sorta considered a saint around my hospital. for instance, he got grandfathered in and didn't have to get a BSN. like i said, he's an absolute saint.

so. with his new have-the-charge-nurses-introduce-themselves thing only sort of officially rolled out, chaos ensued. some charge nurses were like, so, are we supposed to do this every shift? and other nurses were super gung-ho about it, charging in and whatever.

now, i know that there are some hospital and floors that do this sort of thing already. the mom-baby floor were we delivered our kiddle-diddles did this, for example. it was perfect, the charge nurse came in, introduced herself in a non-threatening way, said she would be available, blah blah blah.

in an ICU, it is a little different. okay, it's really different. mom-baby, healthy people (mostly) having babies, flowers and sunshine and puppies and rainbows coming outta orifices and whatever.

ICU, hover between life and death.

so, when our sainted fearless leader didn't provide a script or guideline or anything for the charge nurses, many things were said. sometimes, what the charge nurses said caused the patients families to ask and wonder, 'why are you checking up on my nurse? is there something wrong? and then gung-ho charge nurse would have to back-track.

what needed to happen was a script needed to have been provided that took into consideration what patient families might think, and say things in a way that, oh whatever. it needed to have been done better.

one of charge nurses got asked by a patient for some dilaudid, and the charge nurse was all like, sure, i'll get right on that. the she sailed out of the room. well, turns out the dilaudid was discontinued, and the primary RN was left to pick of the pieces.

a lot of other stuff happened too, and most of it involved female charge nurse and female nursing staff. there were a lot of hurt feelings, and nobody said anything to Female Gung-Ho Charge Nurse. there was a lot of back talking and gossip though.

everytime somebody mentioned this, i always asked, okay, who is going to fix this? who is going to approach Female Gung-Ho Charge nurse? now, this may be stereotypical, but, this chatty bunch of women did nothing.

we have only two male charge nurses. and one of them did the gung-ho thing once, and he happened to do it a patient that was assigned to a male nurse that was friend of his.

scene 1: male charge nurse in the room, speaking with family and patient.

primary nurse walks in. 'whats going on?'

charge nurse, 'oh, you know, checking up on you. it's okay, the family says you're doing a good job.'

scene 2: right outside the room, right after scene 1, charge nurse and primary nurse.

primary nurse, 'what the HELL do you think you're doing in there, calling MY nursing into question with that family?'

(heating discussion follows, almost coming to physical blows, by some reports.)

and those two were friends!

afterwards, the to made up and it never happened again.

see, if i was being stereotypical, this would be the breakdown: female offends females, there is no confrontation, stuff gets dragged on, blah. dood offends dood, they immediately hash it out, problem solved, problem over.

okay, nuff of that. here's the con.

scene: an ICU, a LARGE female patient on a rotobed.

male ICU nurse (in a room full of other male nurses), 'okay, everybody grab something, and lets get this patient scooted up in bed. oh hey, be careful of her gunt.'

nurse j, ' whats a gunt?'

male ICU nurse, ' you know man, not quite a gut, not quite a ........'

nurse j, 'oh okay, i get it.'

awesome. 'gunt,' huh?

for shame. the darker side of male nursing.