Nursing Blog with Expert Insights

A while ago, I wrote a couple of posts about night shift, especially about how patients can get at night. On my unit, many of our patients are older and very sick, and because of that, they often become confused and combative overnight. Usually, that looks like throwing things, scratching, swinging, or kicking. It’s unpleasant, but it’s generally limited to the patient’s room. We can usually dodge it or simply leave the room. If a patient is a danger to themselves, we’ll call

For pretty much the entire first year of my nursing career, I experienced bullying. I was mainly influenced by one person (let's call her Molly), but others were involved as well. As a brand-new nurse, you're like a deer in the headlights. Everything seems to be moving really fast around you, and you're just trying to keep your head above water and not make a mistake that harms a patient. I had a nursing school instructor once tell me, "Students like you (referring to how ea

Check out part 1 where I talk about the general good and bad of working night shift here . Talking about the patients at night is a whole new discussion. There are a handful of difficulties and patterns I've noted over the years, mostly just in the very sick/elderly patients. For example, if a patient passes away at night, it almost always seems to happen between 3 and 6am. I don't know if I'm the only person that thinks that or not, but most of the time in my experience, the