How my negatives notions about nurses were validated.

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The nurses may enforce the diet, but it is your doctor who actually orders it. Just as a speech therapist may *recommend* a diet based on what the patient can swallow safely, it is still the doctor who must write the order. If they ignored your diet order, they could have gotten into big trouble.

@ the OP: Well, I have to say I have had mostly positive experiences with nurses. From the month I spent in the hospital as a child to my past two months working in a hospital (in speech therapy), I've found that I've generally liked the nurses I've met. I've found them on the whole to be caring, sensitive, and knowledgeable people. Don't tar all nurses with the same brush. Maybe that bunch you ran into weren't the most sensitive, but not all nurses are like that.

Bear in mind also that they may have had a genuine complaint about the patient, even if they weren't expressing it in the best way. Patients are not always reasonable or rational, and they can be a bit frustrating at times. Nurses deal with patients for long stretches at a time (they have very long shifts), and just like anyone else, I'm sure they feel the need to blow off steam every once in a while.

OK, then the DOCTOR was REALLY an idiot! He never saw me, talked to me, etc.. The hospital wasn't even in the same state.



Well, when I was a kid I at least didn't get the impression they were idiots, except for one weird thing that happened and the lame excuse the nurse gave me. If I wasn't so shy, or it happened to me as an adult, I would have sued the pants off them. Speech therapy is probably not the most popular specialty so, hopefully, they go there because they DO care. You find more quacks in high paid, low stress, high profile, low profile, and popular specialties, depending on their REAL goal.

Just look at "catch me if you can". Frank went into high paid, low stress areas figuring he could get a lot of money for little effort/risk. BTW one was as a SURGEON! His reasoning? Most surgeons work on a team, and have understudies of a sort. He always managed to have someone ELSE do the work.



RIGHT! Some people ARE nuts! Like the girl in "my girl" claiming she had something wrong with her prostate!! !! !(Yeah, I KNOW females don't have prostates, THAT is the joke!) Still, they painted ALL people that had such complaints with the same brush! Like the idiot doctor that LAUGHED at me because I wanted a lyme disease test! HEY, there are a LOT of ways to catch lyme disease. IF, as he believed, deer ticks bit ONLY deer, humans would ******NEVER****** catch lyme disease! They get the tick bite because the tick bites them! And he knew nothing about me, I WAS in lyme disease areas. I had symptoms that COULD have been lyme disease. I had to rule everything out.

HECK, the last doctor to give me a "complete physical" was the lucky one to declare me 100% HEALTHY TWO MONTHS before I got a dissected aorta. That dissection was caused by valve damage that any doctor with REAL concern could actually find! Had it been found, there were a LOT of things that could have been done to correct the problem, or at least prevent it from getting worse. I could have died because that quack was too lazy to take my pulse the right way!

So sometimes patients ARE nuts! Sometimes they are simply wrong. Still, some DOCTORS/NURSES are nuts, wrong, or careless.

The worse thing a nurse has ever done to me was argue over which goofy looking child's bandage to put on the gaping wound where a mole was cut out of my leg. They settled on the purple soccer playing dinosaur.

The only annoying thing a nurse has done with me was to draw my blood a second time before my 3 PM dose of the super-antibiotic, so that they had to do it again later. Instead of having my blood drawn twice, it was drawn 3 times that day (they always had to draw blood before and after the super-antibiotic). That wasn't so bad though, although it was annoying. And that wasn't one of the nurses who took care of me daily, it was an IV nurse. The regular nurses were all great. My parents said it was a tremendous comfort to them knowing the nurses who were on the ward with me.

I wouldn't have minded a kid bandage, even though I'm an adult! Although I would have wanted some input on which one they gave me.

One time, some idiots(a GROUP of them) tried taking my blood a LOT! They kept saying they couldn't find a vien, etc... I forget how many times they tried, but I know it was over 5!! !! !! ! I was only like 8 at the time. So I broke away, and tried to run away from them. They CHASED me! That is something even my MOTHER talks about TO THIS DAY! We left, by the way. They never got my blood.

They often have trouble finding my vein, usually they have to just take it from the top of my hand.

some people just have hard veins to poke, but some nurses/doctors suck at taking blood. in september when i was in the hospital, they always got it on the first try (yay for massive rowing veins) but when i went to get some at the nephrologist's office she tried both arms, then finally settled on higher up on the arm after about 6 or 7 tries.

anyways, i've only had good experiences with nurses. the only bad experience i've had with one was what was mentioned earlier in my post.

I think that some nurses go into the profession because they genuinely care about people.. these are the "good" ones... just as some police officers go into the field to protect people because they care... THEN, there are the bad ones... the nurses that feed off the control.. They are in total control of an incapacitated patient and if that patient does not treat them with utmost reverence, they will show who's "boss"... (same as the bad cops that decide instead of going into a street gang, that they will bully speeders instead). Sometimes they show whose boss anyway, regardless of whether or not the patient isn't behaving the way they think they should... Again, they feed off the power.. I've heard stories where nurses enjoy sticking the catheters into the patients, etc.. They give the good nurses a bad name...

Also, for the record, nurses have a high incidence of drug abuse... They will often cheat the patients out of their high-priced pills so they can maintain their drug habit.. Granted, hospitals require nurses to work extraordinary hours and they can be under great pressure, etc.. -- This may be why many are driven to drugs.. I would imagine that the "good" nurses are often bullied by the "bad" nurses also and that might drive them to drugs too.. It's a very demanding, under-paid job... Soon, there will be a great shortage of nurses..

Like many doctors, I doubt that the "bad" nurses make good patients themselves, because they know all that goes on.. I imagine if a "bad" nurse were injured and out of her territory (having to go to a hospital where she doesn't know anyone), she/he would probably be quite frightened and humbled by that experience...

Um, maybe a few of those nurses all day had to take care someone's loved one who is in a vegetable mental state and should be taking off dialysis, but instead their "loved ones" refuses to take them off for selfish reasons instead of what is in the best interest of the patient. Or maybe they were just yelled at by an egocentric doctor telling them that they should have done some procedure, even though their head nurse or ethical background tells them not to. Or maybe they were being treated by the patience families as maids and she or he had to politely tell them that it was not her responsibility to fill their beverages. Or maybe the reason is that average nurse's shift is 12 hours on their feet all day or maybe the reason is they are given 4 patients to take care of but are expected to be at the patients bedside within 3 seconds after ringing that little buzzer. Let me tell you something, they have the right to let off steam to each other, because people are stupid.

And I'm not even a nurse.

Mw99: I can actually relate to this a bit. People often look at me like I'm mental when I say it but I haven't tended to like most nurses when I've met them. Particularly the older ones, they can often seem really bitter, battle hardened, domineering and rude. Considering their profession and what they have to put up with in terms of pay and working conditions (in this country at least) I guess it's hardly surprising. Young nurses seems to be much better as I guess they aren't as worn down.

One of my friends mum's was a nurse and she was fearsome. She used to tell me exactly what she thought of me in no uncertain terms and never cut me any slack as a 17 year old lol. I once made the mistake of asking her for a lift to the petrol station (5 minutes by car or a 40 minute walk) when I ran out of petrol after my second week of driving. Boy I never asked her for a favour after that. You'd have thought I have just been caught smuggling a kilo of cocaine through customs they way she went on!

Then you and I are both mental, because I have the same perception of most (not all) old nurses I've encountered.

1. coughing properly after open heart surgery is done so that you don't get pneumonia. it's evidence based practice, and it should be done every two hours. yes, it hurts......you just had open heart surgery, of course it is going to hurt
2. if you had open heart surgery, it means you have heart disease. if you have heart disease, then you should be eating a cardiac diet. why should you get to have expensive surgery and then keep eating whatever the hell you feel like? you have to put some effort into your own health!

People in retail talk about their customers all the time. Watiresses talk about their customers all the time. I'm sure businessmen make fun of their customers all the time, I'm sure lawyers do, the police do, teachers talk about their students....so why can't nurses? I'm not saying there aren't bad nurses out there...of course there are! But to just hate all of nursing is silly. You have never done nursing! It is very difficult. And as for us only doing what doctor's say and cleaning up, it's absolutely not true! It takes experience, training, and lots of good judgement to be a good nurse, and it's very challenging! Maybe you should try being even a nursing assistant for one single day and then see how you feel about nurses.

I would agree that many nurses do not have appropriate psych training and are judgemental because they do not really understand psychological disorders. There are many good psych nurses out there, but sometimes medical nurses are bad in this area. I have noticed this just from going to nursing school. This should not really be surprising to anyone however when you consider the mental health parody in this coutnry.

YEAH, and the stitches could break! How about simply avoiding infection, rather than trying to mitigate it's effect!?!?!?!?



*******WRONG*******! I did NOT have heart disease! I had a bad valve that caused my aorta to almost burst. A full cardiac diet COULD give me a stroke! I actually have to take it easy on exercise, and greens!
DOCTORS ORDERS! I STILL have an anuerism, so the same thing could happen AGAIN! In fact, tomorrow I go to get checked by a doctor, and in another 6 months get an mri to check it's progression!! !! That happens every year!

Well, if I can have what I like, WHY NOT!?!?!? Why have a "cardiac" diet if it can give me a STROKE!? Sorry, but I know more about my condition than you, and most doctors. I even told my last doctor what every cut and hole was for in the operation I had! I read the writeup on it by the surgeon, and checked it all out on the internet. BTW only one out of every 5000 heart patients has what I had, and most NEVER make it to the hospital. Most that DO, DIE! Just like the last famous person to have what I had, John Ritter!

Just don't tell nurses you read it online. They won't take you seriously even if your sources are accurate.

It doesn't have much to do with infection-control procedures actually. From what I know, it has to do with being bed-bound and not moving around much, so that mucous settles in your lungs. Anyone who's bedbound, at home or in the hospital, is at risk for pneumonia for that reason. Because I was mainly bedbound after my surgery as a kid, I had to do breathing exercises 10 times every hour in order to avoid pneumonia. I also doubt the stitches would come out just from coughing- I had a six inch line of stitches across my abdomen, and throwing up constantly, while it pulled at the stitches and was uncomfortable, didn't pop any of my stitches. And throwing up is more strenuous than coughing.

The same can be said of some psychologists. If you don't show them reverence, if you question something they tell you, if you make a counterargument, they will show you who is the boss.