Nursing Blog with Expert Insights

As I mentioned in my "About" section of the Nurse's Refuge website, there was a particularly troubling code at work lately that took me almost a week to process. I remember feeling angry and sad about it, while also feeling ashamed about the fact it was troubling me days later. After all, I've been a nurse for over 5 years now. I've been in enough codes by now to be a little more used to it, right? And honestly, usually they don't hang around in my head for days. But this one

I have a lot of respect for doctors, both residents and attendings. I especially respect the ones who recognize the fact nurses can have valuable insights on their patients since we spend significant time face-to-face with the patients, implement their treatment plans, and do most of the hands-on stuff. We are very familiar with our patient's baseline, needs, preferences, history, etc. In my experience, most doctors recognize and utilize that, and even express appreciation di

Sometimes patients, both confused and oriented patients, think we do things just for the heck of it. Or for money, or for control, or for power, or even, according to some, it's straight up that we don't know what we're doing and we're idiots. Usually it's confused patients making these claims, but I see oriented patients making these claims too. However, this story was a confused patient. Believe it or not, we do tend to do medical interventions for a reason... In this case