Oh how I hate it when I am told that I am not a REAL nurse. I was just for a crazy minute on a chat site with other nurses and heard not once, not twice but more than 5 times that I was no longer a real nurse because I am a HOSPICE nurse. So what do these so called real nurses think that I do? To answer some of the questions I was asked; 1. Yes, I still do an assessment of each of my patients and enact interventions to relieve symptoms for comfort. No, I do not just sit back and watch my patients die!!!!!! 2. No, I cannot write orders, or do my own thing. I am an RN, I still must follow physician orders. Yes, I have several standing orders that I can utilize to bring comfort to my patients for symptoms. I still must make sure that the attending physician knows that the order was instituted. Must still follow up to make sure that the patient is responding to the medication or treatment that was initiated is working and being tolerated. 3. As when I worked on the med surg floor of a very busy teaching hospital I must still keep up with different disease processes and the expectations as the disease progresses. If I run into a disease process I am not familiar with I must find out about it, what to expect as the disease progresses. Unlike the nurses who had the gall to tell me that I am not a real nurse, when I am in a patients home, I cannot excuse myself, go into the next room or pull a call light and have someone come help me out. I must find a way to figure out the solution to the problem before leaving the patient. (This does not mean I dont make many calls in figuring out the problem). So sorry about my soap box, but sometimes you just gotta get it off your chest.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 03:04:15 +0000
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