50 secrets nurses won't tell you...

I recently read an article titled, "50 Secrets Nurses Won't Tell You," and I have to do a post on this subject because it is quite interesting and funny.
Here a few of my favorite:
1. "Despite nurses best efforts, hospitals are still filthy and full of drug-resistent germs."
  *This is true, last week at work some gooey black thing came out of our ice machine.  We tried to send it to the lab for them to run a work-up on it, but we couldn't because we didn't have an order.
2. "Feel free to tell us about your personal life, but know that we're here for 12 hours with nothing to talk about.  So the stuff you tell us will probably get repeated."
  * Quite often we talk about our patients.  It's a coping mechanism.  If we didn't talk about the funny things people tell us we'd all go crazy.  3 nights ago we couldn't get enough of the certain patient who had certain tattoos all over his arms and who the certain people the tattoos were of.  Talked about it all night.  Oh... or they guy who told me what he uses to wipe his bum...hmm I won't go there.
3. "If you are happily texting and laughing with your friends until the second you spot me walking into your room, I'm not going to believe that your pain is a ten out of ten."
   *Often times a patient will be sleeping, chatting and laughing with visitors until the moment I walk in, in which they flip a switch to, "Ugghhh.  My pain is so bad.  It's a ten out of a ten."  We call this the "My nurse is here" syndrome.
4."People have no idea of the amount of red tape and charting we have to deal with every day.  We spend hours at the computer just clicking boxes.  They tell us, 'If it wasn't charted, it didn't happen.'  So I always chart with a jury in the back of my mind."
   *This is what I call "Chronic Right Hand Cold."  When I've been charting for way too long, my right hand gets freezing, because you know, hospitals are cold and I've been sitting on my left hand while I chart but my right hand is being left out in the cold.  I always chart with the picture in my mind of myself sitting at a podium in front of a judge.
5.  "Some doctors can be real jerks."
    *Last week one of the Docs I work with threw a notepad across the nurses station because we didn't have the paperwork he wanted.  Then later he tapped me on the shoulder and sheepishly thanked me for my help.  I know he only did that because he realized he was acting like a two-year old before.


Trust me, I could go on, but just to make you smile and laugh.....