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Tuesday, November 5, 2024

This guest post was written by Karen Hardin, MSN, RN, NE-BC, CNE, the director of the bachelor of science in nursing programs at Marian University, Indianapolis, IN. In 2012 she attended Telling Stories, Discovering Voice: A Writing Weekend for Nurses, offered by the CHMP’s program in Narrative Writing for Health Care Professionals

Forty years ago this summer I graduated from a diploma nursing program at a large city hospital. I agreed to stay on as a nurse and was assigned to the female surgical unit. I was pulled, on my first day, to the male unit across the hall, which became my home for the next three years. I progressed from new graduate to charge nurse to head nurse within a year. Now, that hospital is moving to a state-of-the art facility, and that move, along with my 40th anniversary, have put me in mind of 1973, a year of many firsts for me: first job, first paycheck, first white uniform, first patient death.

First death: I knew James (not his real name) for only the last hour of his life. I’ve never forgotten him or the events of that day.

The day started with morning report from the night-shift charge nurse, Mac. We all called each other by last name, but we called her Mac. She sat at the head of the table in the nurses’ station at 7 AM. I, the only RN at the table, sat next to her. She’d started working there the year I was born.

Immediately after assignments were posted, I made my first set of rounds. James was in the second bed by the window in 16B, one of two four-bed rooms. He had been in the ICU until the night before. I took the clipboard from the foot of the bed and looked through his records: temperature, pulse, blood pressure, intake, and output. I introduced myself as the day-shift charge nurse. I did a quick head to toe. I checked his nasal canal. I checked the IV rate, solution, and site. I made sure that his abdominal dressing was dry and intact, his pedal pulses were present, and he was alert and oriented times three. I assessed the other three patients in the room and as I left, James asked me, “What do they call you around here, Little Mac?”

This is a reposted from Primary Care Progress. CHMP and Primary Care Progress are celebrating Nurses Week together modeling collaboration and team. That’s the way we like it!

Shocked by a tense interaction she witnessed between a nurse and a resident, this nursing student saw the urgent need for nursing and medical students to learn to work together and communicate with each other.

karrah-hurdBy Karrah Hurd

After six weeks in the accelerated bachelor of science in nursing program at the University of Rochester, I was already on clinical rotations in the hospital. I was learning clinical functions that my second-year medical school friends had no idea how to perform: catheterizations, wound dressing changes, how to calculate and administer medications.  There’s just not enough time in the first two years.

On the other hand, in the nursing program, our heavy clinical schedule doesn’t provide us much time to perfect writing SOAP notes (or subjective/objective assessment and plan), for example, which medical students practice every day.  It was clear that we were each acquiring distinct knowledge and skills that we could share with each other — if given the chance.

I was living with several medical students, so we had what I learned would be a rare opportunity to share our knowledge with each other.  I taught them how to administer different medications for their voluntary flu clinics and calculate medications.  They taught me how to write an awesome SOAP note, how to perform more specific subjective and objective assessments, and ways to remember complex pathology and physiology concepts.  Working together, we learned from each other and came to appreciate the unique skills that each of us could bring to patient care.  However, I quickly learned that this type of cooperation didn’t always carry over to the hospital.