Words of Wisdom for the Chronic Care Nurse

• When stripping a bed, there will invariably be a surprise package in it.  Wear gloves.
• Armpit odor will linger on your forearm for two days.  Drape a towel over your arm before your lift your patient onto the shower chair.
• Bleach helps remove BM from under your fingernails.
• Always avert your face when disconnecting any type of urine tubing.  Droplets will flick in your direction.
• Dear, sweet Granny will drool on your shoulder while you lovingly help her pivot into bed.
• When you turn patients over to wash their backs and bottoms, expect a release of gas.
• During your career in Chronic Care Nursing, you will be called a whore (and many other choice words) in at least six different languages.
• Your unit will always have at least one finger paint artist whose favorite color is brown.
• That same patient is usually the one that loves to  hold your hand and pinch your cheek.
• The patient you just meticulously groomed will have a messy accident just as his son, a prominent lawyer, walks in.
• The newer and more expensive your unit is, the greater the chance pureed spinach will be sneezed onto it.
• Cups of OJ with Peri-Colace mixed in will be flung at you with great regularity.
• Never buy work shoes that cannot be thrown in the wash with copious amounts of bleach.
• The biggest complainer on your unit will have a daughter on your hospital’s Board of Trustees. When the Nurses’ Aides have gone on break and you are passing meds, at least six patients will urgently need to be helped to the bathroom. Simultaneously, your supervisor and at least two physicians will appear.
• The MOM you gave, hoping it would kick in on the next shift, takes effect the next day, when you are in the previous situation.
• Yes, you too will come face-to-face with an exploding colostomy bag.
• By the time you retire, you will become an expert translator of gibberish in multiple languages, including Physicianese.
• Disasters come in clusters. Always have several incident report forms, death certificates, lab forms, straight-cath kits, suction machines, x-ray requisitions and suture kits ready before you begin your shift.
• The family that only visits once a year will find it absolutely incomprehensible that their Mom with Alzheimer’s doesn’t recognize them, but she just loves you and the rest of the staff.

By Christine Stephens, RN

Classic Nurse Humor: Detailed Advanced Directive

In hospice, whenever we admit someone to the program we have to ask questions about advanced directives. When I asked one patient whether or not he wanted to be put on a respirator, he said, “No, I don’t want to be put on a machine if I’m a vegetarian.”

When I relayed this message to the attending physician, he agreed. “If I couldn’t eat a hamburger, I wouldn’t want to be on a machine either!”