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10 Signs That You’re a Nurse UPDATED ON JANUARY 27, 2016 BY JEINI RELOVA RM, RN   Nurses can really be one of those professions you get to be a little bit out of the norms. You tend to see the world in a different perspective and act as if you are a whole new person. So get those pens and papers and check if you are indeed one of the angels of the sick room. See also: 18 Signs You’re Being Raised by a Nurse. 1. You have OCD. You have a sanitizer or alcohol inside your bag. Your eyes automatically and subconsciously become a microscope seeing those itsy-bitsy-tiny microorganisms leaping and crawling on your skin. It also feels incomplete if you don’t sanitize your hands after you touched something. …And you have an unlawfully unlimited supply of these. 2. Fast-Drip Eating. You during your 2-minute lunch break. You can eat and chew your food as fast as lighting. Since there’s no time for chit-chats, especially on a toxic shift, you have to finish eating within 15-20 minutes most of the time. 3. You believe white is fashion. You seldom go to the mall or seeing a friend with a new outfit, it is usually that white clinical uniform you get to wear in work. 4. Scrubs are in. Should I wear this shade of blue or that similar looking shade of blue? Well since you only get to be around the halls of the hospital or clinics, you only have two options to be fashionable. It’s either the white one or the colorful scrub suits. And this usually takes almost half of your wardrobe space. 5. You panic more than an average person. Waaaahhh! Since you can to be exposed to various medical concepts and procedures, you then to overreact when it comes to your health status. You tend to exaggerate and make the first line of defense for your health. 6. You’re the worst patient.   “…including a few nurses on my unit” You can be paranoid in dealing with your sickness, but the worst and most hard-headed patients are nurses. You tend to deviate from the norms. For example, you catch a cold and is not allowed to at least eat or drink cold stuff for a meantime, yet still manages to do the exact opposite. 7. You find gross topics are fascinating. “Yes, tell me more about that guy who lacerated his arm and almost poked his eye with an ice pick.” Normal people usually talks about this stuff not in front of the food since it is also for etiquette, but nurses do these freely, get stoked and even make fun of it. It’s like watching a good movie, the grosser it is the more interesting it gets. 8. You’re a master of thy bladder. It’s like a superpower. You tend to control and manages to not pee as long as you can remember. When you get the chance to go the bathroom, that is when you are reminded you actually have to micturate. …but in the end of the day, this is you! 9. You’re an owl of the day. You tend to have a disrupted circadian rhythm since you confuse night into day because of your shifting hours. You sometimes have a problem getting to sleep since you are still fired up and want to catch up with what’s in the outside world. Just like a Pikachu. 10. You paint the town red. The color of red starts to be your favorite color, because you get to see it once in while during your shift. It doesn’t even bother you much if you get to see a pail full of it. It’s like painting the whole room with its different shades. Just be careful not to get that red stuff on you – always. Nope. Not referring to period period.    

https://pin.it/7xlGxyN   HOME » NURSELIFE » 15 HILARIOUS BEHAVIORS YOU DEVELOPED AS A NURSE 15 Hilarious Behaviors You Developed as a Nurse UPDATED ON JANUARY 19, 2017 BY MONICA FLORITA, R.N.   Your behavior defines who you are. In psychology, for certain behaviors to develop, these are triggered by a stimulus – the environment where we spend most of our time. So if you ask me where can you find a nursemost of the time? I must say 70% in the workplace, 20% together with their families, and 10% in the bed sleeping (lucky nurses). That’s why with the 70%, it’s plausible why there are some side-splitting behaviors we developed in the process. As experts in our own field, these hilarious behaviors might make others grin and shake their head in disbelief. In return we can say, “I know, I know… It’s because I’m a nurse.” 1. The overpowering desire to pop or puncture anything suspicious on someone’s body. “Damn, I could insert a G14 in this vein,” says every nurse. Curiosity is the lust of the mind. It can also be the reason why nurses seemed to have a sick fetish in anything suspicious or atypical in the human anatomy, may it be yours or others. Is this some kind of a bizarre obsession that we all have in common? When we see a bulging lesion, a pustule, or most especially a protruding vein to hit upon, the desire and unknown euphoria it gives in popping or puncturing it are quite strong. And when we try to ignore it, the struggle is real. 2. X-ray-like ability to perceive organisms wriggling on the skin This extraterrestrial ability to see the minute organisms in your hands after handling a gross procedure is undeniably another power you gained being a nurse. The effect? Frequent hand washing. Nursing made you feel incomplete whenever you fail to wash your hands numerous times during the shift. 3. Assertiveness in self-diagnosing Since nurses are doctor’s angels on the bedside, a simple disease won’t freak you out. Years of experience gave you the confidence to diagnose successfully and treat yourself. Don’t worry, your pride will also let you seek a doctor if it’s life and death situations, ONLY. 4. You behave like an owl even on your day off. If you’re scheduled on a night shift throughout the week, your day off will not make a difference. It still feels like you’re on duty, minus the patients. Isn’t it frustrating why you’re not sleepy when you should? 5. The unstoppable condemnations on TV shows showing unrealistic nursing procedures. It’s your day off and you decided to watch a medical drama. Then all of a sudden, your eyes keep noticing that the doctor did not do the CPR right or the IV line regulator of a critical patient is closed. Well, you can’t help it, you can’t let a wrong procedure be taught on-screen. Nurses know best (wink). 6. It is always a sugar rush when you get together. If you happen to be in a reunion of ER nurses, then this is a usual scenario. You can’t even beat them in games involving quick thinking. Wow! Awesome, quick-witted people. 7. You are immune to the ‘gross’ things in life. You can normally eat and sleep even after handling sticky, smelly and nasty bodily fluids. Maybe because you just totally wiped out your gag reflex? Try to test it once in awhile; maybe it was placed somewhere else. Also, you can easily figure out a disease based on body fluids alone. Aren’t you a genius? 8. You love it when people are shocked that you’re not wearing white, or your scrubs. There are only two occasions where nurses do not wear their white or colorful scrubs, on their day off, and upon retirement.  If you happen to have another lucky chance (yes, having a vacation is a great luck for us!), you just love how different you look, and the look you receive from others. Oh well, perks of being a nurse. 9. Medical emergencies outside the facility do not rattle you. Most nurses are immune to medical emergencies; unless it involves their own family or relative (which will be a different case), these scenarios will just be a piece of cake. 10. You’re a master of quickly dressing and undressing a patient, even with an IV line. For ordinary people, changing clothes of a bedridden patient can be a complicated task, but not with a skilled nurse, who is exceptional at this. Even with her eyes closed, you’ll be amazed by how fast a nurse can do this. But of course you don’t really have to close your eyes, just saying. 11. Extremely fast chewing and digestion. Oh! need I say more? If there’s a contest where one should masticate and digest its food the fastest, you can’t belittle a nurse! To be able to attend to an emergency case, we developed this amazing talent of eating on the go! 12. Easy recognition of any pills on sight. Recognizing a tablet, a vial or an ampoule on sight is another remarkable behavior we automatically developed as nurses. This astonishing behavior is not just great by itself but by saving lives. If you’re a nurse, you know that people on drama shows committing suicide by drinking quite a lot of pills are not dead at the end, they just get hospitalized for… well, the drama effect. Even before drinking, nurses know it’s not a pill. 13. The power to clear everyone on sight just by talking about your ‘normal’ experiences with your patients. This can happen if you’re in a restaurant with co-workers after a tiring shift, while talking casually about your patients with amoebiasis, foul stoma, or an eviscerated intestine.  Nurses are powerful when it comes to that. 14. Your hilarious behavior when a colleague says, “The unit is QUIET.” If you’re a nurse, you have a bizarre behavior upon hearing the word ‘QUIET.’ The ‘Q’ word is so powerful it attracts a bunch of patients to make everything but quiet. It’s calm and easy then all of a sudden; all hell broke loose. Lesson? Prevention of the word is better than curing all that patients. 15. Superb ability to hear even from a distant, as long as it’s for her patient’s welfare. The tingling ear when you hear two people discussing that having a low BP is anemia, or to take maintenance medications only when the BP is high, can only be relieved without correcting them. Mind you, nurses can also be great educators. Nurses may somehow be weird for others. But for us, these are the hilarious results of being passionate in the work that we chose. We must always take pride in how far we have come in our profession. Great nurses will always be weird yet interestingly loving creatures who touch the lives of others.

https://pin.it/3hyNPAx List of things to do: 1. Haircut to Trim my split ends 2. Shave my legs (backs off them too) 3. ..........    

https://nurseslabs.com/10-signs-that-youre-a-nurse/   Pretty funny

Hi , my name is Kim...i guess I'm a bit late to this topic...and warn ahead of time, this may be a longer reply than the others, but...i love nursing because i like to help people solve problems that other people haven't been able to/unwilling to solve. That puts me at the front of the line for working the behavioral units. I am able to relate with those that life has labeled as "difficult, demanding, combative etc"  and the majority of the time I actually prefer these units due to smaller patient/nurse ratio.   Forgive me, but while I have the attention of my colleagues from across the nation...i offer this analogy:   As with the rest of our profession, my job includes popping pills and using them as the solution to various problems...it's obviously the easiest less time consuming goto...As everybody already knows, best practice and standard operating procedures dictate that the"magic 💊" be the last result in a long line of attempted non-pharmacological interventions we attempt.   "Pain has been defined as the perceived and unpleasant response to actual or potential tissue damage." https://journals.lww.com/nursing/Citation/2018/09000/Pain_control_and_nonpharmacologic_interventions.19.aspx Throwing a pill or capsule at this "problem," has resulted in that prescription opioids are now recognized as a driving force in what the CDC is calling an opioid overdose epidemic.  This journal article catcgorized pain as mild, moderate, and severe.   Mild=Pain is annoying and nagging; it does not typically impact the activities of daily living,   Moderate= pain is irritating and can impair the person's ability to perform activities   Severe= pain dominates one's senses, preventing performance of activities of daily living ....   It has always bewildered me that no matter what we think whether or not the person is in actual pain, we MUST accept the patient's report of the pain...we have to take their word for it and not question whether or not they are telling us the truth in order to just get the pill ...   Take a look back at what was defined as pain...it is the PERCEPTION of the response to actual or POTENTIAL tissue damage. That means in order to decrease and control pain, we need to address the person's PERCEPTION.   Perception is defined as  "the state of being or process of becoming aware of something through the senses." "the perception of pain" by Oxford languages.   Now, everybody has heard those ads on television of prescription medications...they are forced to read the laundry list of side effects of the newfound "solve your problems" pill ...sometimes they are even comical (anal seepage) and often times the list keeps going and going to include death as a side effect. https://br.ifunny.co/picture/1-291-side-effects-pfizer-released-recently-the-side-effects-yuUx7mEa9?s=cl   1291 potential side  effects????? WTF!!!!     https://m.facebook.com/memes/photos/a.527860673898191/9246299912054180/?type=3&wtsid=rdr_0lTBiqvBa6fE4HRvD   With all these potential side effects, doesn't it just make sense to try something else first??? That's where non pharmacological interventions come into play. Non-pharmacological interventions have the potential to complement pharmacological interventions and may offer alternative treatment options in the management of symptoms, including pain (Bausewein etal., 2009). Some researchers have divided non- pharmacological interventions into five categories (see Table1): (a)cognitive-behavioural, (b)physical, (c) emotional support, (d) helping with activities of daily living and (e) creating a comfortable environment, but point out that a given classification is not exclusive of the others (Po ̈ lkki et al., 2001) https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Caroline-Arbour/publication/258115617_Patients_and_ICU_nurses'_perspectives_of_non-pharmacological_interventions_for_pain_management/links/5b87bff792851c1e123b7ddb/Patients-and-ICU-nurses-perspectives-of-non-pharmacological-interventions-for-pain-management.pdf https://scholarlyworks.lvhn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1865&context=patient-care-services-nursing Are you understanding the MAGNITUDE of what is going on? As nurses, it is (legally) permissible to cause the death of someone entrusted in our care (by giving a pill) or at the very least be responsible for causing one or more of the negative side effects listed. No questions asked...doesn't it make more sense that we can cut those risks by 100% by not giving that pill. Simple things such as touching someone can be more effective.    I'm hoping, if you are one of the ones to make to this point, you will reconsider pushing pills. Even if you don't have the time to. Stop what you are doing....listen to what is actually going on...can the pain be relieved by adjusting someone's position? Ask Jack Black who sat on a tack !!! https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41LJ5lYCzEL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg&tbnid=_AD0BOrDwnkhvM&vet=1&imgrefurl=https://www.amazon.com/Man-Sits-Tack-Chair-Original/dp/B09KYJ4CGT&docid=s9chr4JnzLvdpM&w=1000&h=636&hl=en&source=sh/x/im/5   I can't think of a dad joke ...but here's one my step dad told to me...   On the way to the burial, a coffin falls from the back of the herse. It rolls down the hill and tumbled around the corner until it finally came to rest inside a pharmacy. Right then, the man popps up and asked the pharmacist , "hey Doc....do you have anything to help stop this coffin?(coughing)   My name is Kim . Nice to meet you.  

I'm unsure of what you are asking. Does it have something to do with gathering references? If that's the case, then absolutely ask the facility. How else will you get the references if you only work agency, you have no other choice. That being said...anytime you had someone praise your work...try getting into the habit of asking them if you can use them as a reference and even possibly get them to write it right then.

Totally agree. I'm not sure how much it happens that the facility waits for a pool of people to choose from. I think if they have a need, they will fill it as soon as someone offers.

I have to disagree with first come first serve.  If a clinician is a bad fit for a facility then the facility shouldn’t have to hire them just because they we’re able to request the shift before someone who is a good fit.  That’s like saying they have to hire whoever got the first interview. 

Very insightful @Kimberly Griffin4804500565!   I do hear from a lot of clinicians that building that rapport with staffers helps get shifts, great tip!   ⬆️ There are also a lot of perspectives on the "first come first serve". The patients, caregivers, and facilities. Curious if anyone else has any input on this!

Doing this would not be out of the Ordinary...You could also just ask the receptionist for the number. It certainly is not a number they would wish to keep secret. The more people that have it, the better chance of filling all the holes in their schedule. I would recommend getting to know the staffers. When you build up a rapport, they will include you in on their MAYDAY mass texts looking for clinicians for last minute emergencies that are inevitable to come up. Also, it should be first come first serve. If I pick up the shift first then I should get the shift. The other agencies I work for have it as such For the patients, I would have to vote the opposite. Patients deserve caregivers that can take  care of them the way they are accustomed to/prefer. Healthcare should not be left up to who can push the button faster.