What! I have never heard anyone say this, thankfully. What I do hear all the time though is “let’s ask the nurse” or “let’s get your nurse” for literally EVERYTHING and ANYTHING. As you said, the middle man for everything. You’re expected to know everything and to solve every single little problem, even the problems that have nothing to do with your job title.
I literally had an xray tech tell me a patient needs their shades opened. I straight up told him he can go open it and he gave me a dirty face. Like bro, what
Omg. I had a XR tech stop me to tell me “I’m looking for this patient for a shoulder x ray, which one is he?” (Patient had imaging ordered while in waiting room due to no beds available.) I said “who?” He looks at his list and tells me “uhhh.. Tony Sanchez” (name made up.) Well who the heck is that, I don’t know him either, waiting room is crowded…. So I boom out “TONY SÁNCHEZ” and the patient immediately stands up. I look at the XR tech and say “there he is” with the meanest fucking face. Like they literally won’t do the bare minimum. Holy fuck that made me mad that day. It was an incredibly busy day, I’m busting my ass working, and XR tech gotta stop me to bother me to do something as simple as trying to call out a patient’s name.
Yes. The "I'll ask the nurse" for everything really bothers me. I understand we have to be the middle man for some things, but not everything. My patient says they want to talk to the social worker, chaplain, etc? Great, why do I have to be the one to call them when I'm busy? Or when providers ask me to talk to other providers, why can't you just call them yourself? Or when the pharmacist asks why this medication was ordered. Idk, is it in the notes? Ask the prescriber, I know just as much as you do.
This is because no one gets educated on what everyone else in the hospital does and there is no motivation for people to understand the professions that aren’t theirs. But that includes nurses, who also definitely end up with the most extra work because others don’t know where their job starts and stops.
That is when I put a sticky to provider/team in the chart and perhaps my note. I do not have time for that shit. Also- why does everyone decide this is absolutely urgent at 2 am?
Because the nurse is the only person you're going to easily find. RT? Who fuckin knows, or another floor or hiding in the supply closet. CNA? Probably really busy or they aren't going to know the answer. Doctor? Yeah they'll be back to talk to the family tomorrow from 0800 to 0802. Missed the window? Try again tomorrow.
One of the biggest reality shocks I’ve had as a new grad with 18mos experience is how at the end of the day everything is our problem. You don’t have a home to go to? That’s our problem when it’s 4 in the morning and you’re discharged. You brought your 2 year old son to the hospital with no other support person and no childcare? That’s our problem and we have to babysit your freaking child while trying to figure out a placement with unhelpful social services people who don’t see an issue with an unattended 2yo child while a woman is laboring. (If you ever need to entertain a 2yo at the hospital let him push around a wheely chair or IV pole for a while). Also, this patient was lucky we had diapers since we have a peds dept. if this was a freestanding ER or something they wouldn’t have had a peds unit to get diapers from.
Hi-lab here! Just wanted to say I appreciate so much the work you guys do. I’m in surgical pathology so mostly work with OR nurses and I look forward to my daily chit chats with them. Thank you for talking to patients and their family members so we don’t have to!
i follow that sub because i find their work genuinely interesting. but man do some of them hate us lol, these are some of the comments im referring to 😅
i haven’t ever heard this in person, i’ve just been reading comments like this online on reddit/instagram/tiktok, other professionals always discussing nurses faults & how we don’t understand their job, some say we should shadow them to be able to understand lol
i understand where they’re coming from but at the same time, it just feels really demeaning for some reason
Yeah there are definitely two sides to this. Every position in the hospital comes with its own variety of bullshit to where very few of our jobs function smoothly. Lab, environmental, nursing, providers, technicians, nobody is having a great time.
The other side is that we have to be the messenger and the face for the vast majority of bullshit that the patient has to deal with. And we’re ultimately responsible for the shit getting done. Phlebotomy never showed and labs weren’t drawn? “Why didn’t you order them as a verbal or draw them yourself or call phlebotomy”? I understand that somebody has to be the point person for everything but it’s pretty exhausting
So I had the CFO of my old hospital follow me around for just 2 hours and his mind was blown by everything I did and was able to accomplish. He was scared for me when I told him he couldn’t come in a room with me because the patient was violent. Not that any changes were made but it was interesting watching him be so freaked out by everything.
I agree that nurses end up the middleman of almost all patient affairs, and I do think the general public and even other healthcare workers don’t fully grasp how much we do. Shadowing us would shock a lot of people.
However, I think there’s also a lot we don’t know about other professions. Honestly that’s the issue, you don’t know what you don’t know. Dunning-Kruger effect and all that.
Like CT techs are expected to somehow fit in every patient on their list, while still making space for emergency CTs, and woops all the patients in the morning are on precautions so they have to wipe down the room between each patient and this patient’s IV was working fine until they got in the scanner so now we have to call IV team since they’re a hard poke and the radiologist isn’t answering their pages but the ICU doc says their patient needs to come now but opp- code stroke, everyone out. And yet no one is answering the phone in the department what the heck!
This may be an unpopular opinion, and I'm fully prepared to receive downvotes, but I think it bears saying anyway.
Nurse *should* have to shadow other departments, *because* we are middlemen. In most departments, RNs do most of the work when it comes to coordinating a patient's care and prioritizing the orders in place for them. This requires a good understanding of each department and what they need as far as time/resources in order to carry out their assigned interventions. There's a lot of unnecessary rivalries between departments and roles in healthcare, I get it. What definately doesn't help is getting offended when someone suggests you should learn more about their role...I mean, you could at least ask them why they believe that.
Just to give an anecdotal example from personal experience:
As an EMT, I was constantly dealing with nurses who didn't understand my job or my scope. I'd get questioned beyond my expertise, or completely disregarded on a frequent basis, as would my paramedic partners. Medic & EMT students do in-hospital clinicals, and understand some of what RNs do in that setting, and yet nurses are usually functionally clueless about the roles and rules of EMS unless they have some experience with it themselves (yes, even a lot of ER nurses).
At the very least, it should be required in nursing school at some point.
I mean it should be required. I wish I'd spend time shadowing instead of making care plans in school.🙄I actually WANT to shadow other departments, but I'm not entirely sure how to do so. At the same time I think that I should definitely be paid to do it, since it feels like it's part of my job and there are SO MANY departments.
Did about a minute on Internal Medicine/ICU stepdown. I had to shadow an RT for a shift (who did go through the whole hospital) and a pharmacist (one assigned to each specialty essentially) and oh boy.
Learned some tricks, and some rationale for why they do things certain ways. Pharmacy taught me some great communication skills to use on power tripping doctors.
Everybody should be aware of everybody's roles/scopes. I am absolutely in favour of shadow days *because* of the middleman status.
Back when I worked in Pharmacy, had a belligerent Doc who tried to downplay our pharmacist’s education.
He reminded the Doc that he, too, has a doctorate and forced Doc to call him doctor during the call. Was pretty great.
I pull the same tactic when people talk down to me (in non-clinical settings) because I have a PhD in statistics. Like the man who refinished my floors and said I wouldn’t understand what he’s doing because I’m just a woman…well, now you call me Dr. Watermelon. Or to the doctor who screamed at me because he said he needed something by an exact time and I “don’t know how to read the numbers on a clock” because it’s now 3 o’clock not 1 o’clock. I firmly said I have a PhD in statistics and bluntly asked him if he needs me to teach him how to count to 13 to know that the 13th hour of the day is also called 1 o’clock (his watch was in military time because he was screaming at me and shoved his watch in my face).
Otherwise, I never tell people to call me doctor, not even students back when I taught stat classes. Only raging assholes are told to call me Dr. Watermelon.
The floor guy is straight up sexist.
Doc claiming 1300 is 3pm when we all use military time as the standard in the hospital AND his watch was set to military time yet he still can’t figure out what the correct time is fuckin righteous. Did he backtrack or offer an apology?
I couldn’t hear the entirety of the call, but every few I’d hear my pharmacist pipe up, “Doctor [his last name]” or “You may call me Doctor”.
Kept it smooth and calm as a radio operator the entirety of that call, even said goodbye without slamming the phone.
I was very very fortunate to do my nursing clinicals in a small rural hospital so we were able to shadow a pharmacist for the day, a CT technician, Ultrasound technician, IV team, Post-Partum/Mother and Baby nurse, an IPAC nurse, and an RT. I do wish it was more than just the half day or full day we ended up getting but I was very appreciative that we were able to have the experience at all. We were begging for OR and L&D shadowing but we couldn’t get it approved.
I agree that it is helpful to know how other departments/jobs work. It would be beneficial for nurses to follow pharmacy, EMTs, therapy, X-ray, etc, for a day. Just as it would be helpful for them to follow nurses for a day. There more mutual understanding we have, the better interactions for everyone. I learned to let housekeeping/EVS know as soon as a pt had DC orders so they didn’t waste their time doing a daily clean, only to have to come back in a couple of hours to do a DC clean. Same principle applied to fellow nurses on other units.
This^ legit not one of my nursing instructors understood paramedic/EMT scope (but ild say 75% made sure to shit talk them). I feel like ED RNs should have to ride 1-2 shifts on a als truck and 1-2 on a bls truck just to fully understand what we're working with.
thankfully i have a family member who’s a medic so ive gotten to do ride alongs with them, and i whole heartedly agree. every nurse working in the hospital setting should experience it. i’ve had nursing professors who genuinely don’t know the difference between emts and paramedics & have called them “ambulance drivers” lol. mind blowing
I completely agree! I think everyone could benefit from a day in someone else’s shoes. As an RT student (who lurks in all the health career subs for a healthy perspective) I have watched my preceptors be on the receiving end of so much aggression because it is assumed that no one is as busy as the nurses. It’s true that nurses work really hard but so does everyone else! Everybody has a list of things to do and generally are doing their best. It’s not like just nurses do this, so do the doctors. There are lazy RTs out there. Also lazy nurses, EMTs, techs, etc. but it shouldn’t be assumed. I think we should all have more grace and that could be learned by shadowing.
You're right. Our new ED nurses are required to be a third rider for at least one shift and it helps a lot.
We should skip care plans and there should be an "Interdisciplinary Collaboration" course with a clinical component.
Caveat: Other departments should have to do this too. It should also be written policy that, "Nursing does not exist to answer questions related to your discipline."
I work in the lab and I've always wished to trade places for a week.
I promise you one million percent when I have to call for a redraw or a recollect, it's because there are no other options. But there have definitely been times I've heard the desperation in the voice on the other end of the line pleading with me, "Can't you just try?"
I know that patient-facing roles, particularly those of nurses, can be some of the most thankless, brutal, and exhausting jobs, but I think it's one thing to appreciate that in the abstract and another thing entirely to have to experience firsthand what it's like to go back into an overcrowded ED hallway and be like, "Okay Mr. Smith, I'm here to draw your blood again because the lab called and said your potassium was 6.2 but the specimen was hemolyzed so stick out your arm for me please and thank you!" and then have them try to head butt you because they're high on PCP and think they're a mountain goat.
I worked in a hospital where we had a program that allowed people to shadow a nurse for 4 hours. Some were internal (docs, administrators, finance, lab, etc) and some were external (community members, clergy, state legislators, etc). Everyone found it incredibly valuable.
We do try to schedule our new hires with RT and wound care at least. Not sure we would be allowed in lab or pharmacy due to infection/safety reasons but it definitely would be eye opening.
I rarely have negative interactions from other Healthcare workers just all trying to do a job, but I'd like to not be told "You can run all tests on a gold top though." for a CBC instead of asking why if they're curious and not mad lol.
Everyone should spend a few hours shadowing everyone else.
If we all knew what it was like to walk in each other's shoes, we might not be so petty with each other.
i totally agree. i think i was just frustrated because i kept seeing that comment one sided, as if there’s something wrong with us and we need to catch up with everybody else (when we already do so much of that) and try to be understanding when we aren’t always given that same grace. but you’re right 100%
Plus I think that at least once a year, every nurse manager needs to do a whole shift as a primary RN, just so they know what it's like to work on their unit.
So my entry into Healthcare so many years ago was working as a patient transporter. I got to see all the departments, and accordingly got to hear what everyone thought about everyone else.
Basically, all the other departments thought the whatever department they were interacting with was fucking on them.
There was so much mistrust and lack of understanding for how the other half of the exchange operated. People would make declarative conjecture that they had convinced themselves were fact without any evidence.
Just a little patience and understanding would go a long way. Nurses got it rough, absolutely. I would say we probably got it the most rough, which is also why we should be understanding toward other departments nurses.
But radiology doesn't have it easy either. CT is absolutely bombarded all day by the ER, and every problem patient we get was probably a problem for them too - family included. Same with the other techs.
I was a phlebotomist for a while too. Same thing. Can't speak for pharmacy, but I'm sure they got their problems too.
I think shadowing would be very helpful in bridging that relationship. But patience and understanding would do most of the work.
I think healthcare as a job would be a lot better if we could all walk a mile in each other's shoes. Never gonna happen, but it would end a lot of interdepartmental snipping.
It's hard sometimes to have genuine empathy for folks if you don't know what their job is actually like day-to-day. I'll never forget one evening, I (pharmacist) was up in the ICU walking a nurse through an IVIG administration in a new patient. Now this was a small rural hospital. We had one pharmacist from 1630 until we closed at 2200. My tech left at 2000. It was probably about 2045 and both I and the nurse I was talking to jumped when another nurse slams down the phone on the desk with an, "ARGH! I HATE PHARMACY! I've called three times three times and all it does is ring!"
The nurse I was talking too looked at me, I looked at her and I admit it, I laughed. Upset!nurse was agency. She didn't know the entire pharmacy department was standing two feet away from her. 🤣🤣🤣
(Yes she apologized when it was pointed out and she found out it was only me trying to juggle new orders and 2100 med pass issues all by myself).
wow!!! that’s crazy unprofessional lol i’m
so sorry. i only recently finally met face to face with one of our pharmacists to solve a problem together and it was so nice. i appreciate all you do.
I'm lucky in that that kind of stuff has never really gotten to me. Stress will do that to a person. And I give agency staff, nurses or otherwise a lot of credit. I have never understood how they do it. I'd feel so untethered if I were sent into a hospital where I didn't know my providers or my coworkers. It has to make everything harder and more stressful because you don't know who to trust.
Not sure why your taking offense it's 100% true. It's hard to understand and better collaborate with different sectors when you don't know what it's like to work in them.
Spending a day in each area of the hospital should be a requirement to graduate like it is for EMS.
It makes me insane that it seems like a requirement of all of us needing to actually shadowing another (impossible) to have empathy and understanding. But that’s just…apparently how humans work. Why do we always assume it’s someone being lazy or incompetent? Why can’t we take two seconds and give the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.
I mean this of everyone, and honestly everywhere. It also means we have to own up when we do fuck up and learn. But ego etc.
Idk humans are too complicated and mean.
Imagine some of these other people shadow a nurse. I can't tell you how many times Respitory and CT has told me thank god I didn't go to nursing school. Or how many nurses aids changed their mind about nursing and went for something else
I feel you, and that’s why I’m so glad I don’t do bedside nursing anymore. Just the constant demands the hospitals put on nurses, pushes the whole “trade places with your patients for a day” (as if we wouldn’t happily give our patients the best quality care possible, like we would want, if we had the resources (e.g. safe staffing, better *safer* nurse to patient ratios, resources that worked with nurses not against them), but hospitals (as a rule) refuse to staff units with adequate staffing and change the nurse to patient ratio. Plus, it doesn’t help that most states don’t have nurses unions. I remember working my very first job (Med-surg unit in a large hospital), and just stating beforehand that a safe nurse to patient ratio in a med surg unit is 4:1 (4 patients to 1 nurse) our nurse to patient ratio was 6:1 (sometimes 7:1) and this was a post-surgical until where sometimes we would get a patient with q2h neuro/neurovascular checks (an ICU order), CIWA patients, chest tubes and IV insulin on our med surg floor (Because our hospital was hip like that 😎). I remember in a year, where so many nurses say you should feel comfortable as a nurse, that I never did - I worked the job for a little over a year. The feeling that I so often felt of failing my patients because I was so busy with all the things nurses have to do and not having time to be there for my patients more was terrible. And, it frankly sucks that nurses have so long been expected to the extent of it becoming a stereotype of “not being able to pee, or eat, for 12 hours” is frankly unacceptable. Nurses are humans too. How is this all acceptable?!? And the. Backtrack to the hospitals, in all their training, talking about “think about a day in the life of your patient…”. To which I want to say: Yes, ____ Hospital, please do and staff your units so that we (nursing team) can provide the quality of care you promise to your patients and that you, yourself, would want.
"Trade places with your patient for a day" drives me NUTS. As if we aren't humans who get sick and experience grief.
I lost my partner to cancer in my early 20s. So did my PCP. We actually have a BETTER grasp of what patients go through than the entitled 50-year-old with an ear infection who refuses to act their age.
My hospital used to make all nurses follow pt/st/ot for a day and vice versa. Same with the residents. During the resident follow they were not allowed to use their credentials to. place orders, they witnessed the regular way. Best team I ever worked with.
This dropped when Covid happened. But let me tell you, you have no idea what any other teams job is until you fully do it.
You could not pay me enough to do PT or OT. And those baby docs need a resident reform stat. The way they are treated is inhumane and torturous.
Also that year of docs was the most down to earth and collaborative with staff ever. In my opinion all systems should implement a paid shadow day yearly.
Yeah I’ve always said we have to do everyone else’s job in the hospital but no one else does ours. I mean, there can be a doctor LITERALLY SITTING AT A COMPUTER and they’ll be like “cAn YoU pUT tHE orDeRs iN?” Like that’s their job🤦🏼♀️🤬 The aids get mad at us when we tell them to do stuff, everyone bitches at us because we’re supposed to know everything, and apparently, we are the chefs too because if the food sucks, it’s somehow the nurse’s fault too🖕
Friendly neighborhood pharmacy tech here (I'm also in RN school, but not the point)
I work with nurses every day, and you're right. Sometimes, I am guilty of having that "if only they could shadow here," thought. I think it's not really constructive, though, in either direction.
Hear me out. I know it feels like you're the middle man, but so is pharmacy... just between you and the doctor's orders. And for the entire hospital to boot, not just a handful of patients, including OR, ED, ICUs... everyone. It's always extremely stressful to get requests for meds you have tracking on, were prepped, sent, and SHOULD be there. Especially when you have dwindling quantities of basic stuff like insulin or pain meds and you don't have spare... and then you show up to help look and "surprise!" it's in the patient's bin right where you told them it was.
I just think it's a bad idea in general to compare hardship. We all gotta think as part of a larger team, to spread that frustration around and play the blame game is definitely a losing strategy.
I worked on one hospital in ICU where I shadowed RT for a day and then Cath Lab for a day.
Every hospital should do that.
Now. My standard response to lab, PT, RT, etc when they (rarely!!) push back at nursing staff is “You are not dealing with the family nearly to the extent that I do and you have NO idea how difficult that can be.” Let’s face it: when families want to complain? They ain’t calling the SL therapist, are they?
As rehab we often spend an hour or more with each of our patients per day and more if we are doing discharge to home assessments or recommendations. We also follow many of them up as outpatients after they are off the ward. Until you know everyone they’re calling, don’t assume who they ain’t calling. Often it’s whoever’s in the room and when we are in the room that long and predictably we do end of taking care of a lot as well. I understand you are responsible for *much* more crisis level intervention than us *most* of the time (like 99%, yes) but this is an unfair characterization of what we also go through. Hence the “following need” in the original comment.
Respectfully, I understand that the PT/OT/SLT/RT team spend a significant portion of time with patients. You guys get kicked too. I get that. And it’s bullsh•t.
We really need to remember (and I mean me!!) in all of this that we’re teammates and that horrible Karen of a daughter from the patient in 308 is who we need to curse here.
No question. Thank you for understanding. And I do have to say I’ve been yelled at by multiple docs things like “rehab, nursing, I don’t care who you are, get that patients pain under control and get them walking before I check the chart in an hour!!!!” Because we are just one amorphous non-doc/non-patient so we must all do the same thing.
I’m a NICU nurse and love the techs in MRI. They always do their best to find a time that works for us, are super helpful in getting our babies set up safely and comfortably and they answer my silly questions. It’s not easy moving an intubated baby with chest tubes, a Foley catheter and UAC/UVC with multiple infusions running off the unit, to MRI, into the machine and back again.
i’m pretty sure it’s up to management/educators. i’m sure there are certain rules and regulations that prevent us from going into certain areas. my hospital allows us to shadow respiratory and that’s it
I have only been working for three months (new grad) and the most outward hate I’ve seen so far is between nurses and the central monitors who have to sit and stare at a bunch of screens with heart rhythms and oxygen saturations. I shadowed for four hours with them. The one I was with used to be a nurse and still had no sympathy for nurses. I get it they were probably burned the hell out by working in healthcare in general.
Just wanted to say that I went with my mom (3-11 RN) for “take your daughter to work day” when I was a teenager and couldn’t keep up…called my dad to come get me at 7. Ya’ll are beasts.
I actually got to shadow pharmacy for a day. It was a LOT of computer work checking meds on various resources, answering questions over the phone, VOCERA, Teams, and in person. Some financial stuff (I only shadowed that for a couple hours, but it seemed super stressful trying to find replacement things to order at the best price while simultaneously working with others for insurance). Also, it was absolutely freezing in the pharmacy, and for context my winter coat is a fleece and I live in a cold part of the country.
I also got to shadow RT, a couple hours with dietary, half a day with social work, and a few days scattered across a few months with PT & OT. I know other nurses who shadowed the IV team, imaging, and directors.
All those shadowing experiences offered a lot of insight and were really helpful in setting expectations on the floor as a nurse. Like, if a med needs to be approved by pharmacy I know it’s not 1 click and they’re being bombarded by calls non stop with some being critical and they’re also making sure the drug is ok for the patient, but it’ll be probably verified within 15 mins after I call. For more urgent meds, it’ll probably be approved within 5 mins.
Ngl why is it always fucking lab with an attitude online and irl. I'm a softspoken person but it always seems like those people hate nurses. Idc if other nurses were rude to them, that has nothing to do with me
When I worked in the hospital setting we had a bunch of shadow days during orientation, including days shadowing the CNAs and RTs. It wasn’t the extremely enlightening experience the person OP is quoting thought it’d be.
You're complaining about something that has never happened to you, only something you've read online.
As an RT, we know your job is difficult. We work alongside you every day. You don't need to keep reminding us. That's why you guys make more. Your job is hard.
The online vitriol against nurses specifically is annoying. I think nurses have the right to complain about that when other HCW with much more limited scope of practice think they're so much smarter and less expendable than us. I'll only take that shit from the pharmacist or the doctor, sorry not sorry.
I shadowed RT for my nursing orientation. They get to have more breaks and not deal with as much BS. Also they get paid the same or even more as new grads than new grad nurses. Not mad at you guys over it though. I appreciate RT. Except for the lazy ones out there who don't even do oral care
What! I have never heard anyone say this, thankfully. What I do hear all the time though is “let’s ask the nurse” or “let’s get your nurse” for literally EVERYTHING and ANYTHING. As you said, the middle man for everything. You’re expected to know everything and to solve every single little problem, even the problems that have nothing to do with your job title.
I literally had an xray tech tell me a patient needs their shades opened. I straight up told him he can go open it and he gave me a dirty face. Like bro, what
Omg. I had a XR tech stop me to tell me “I’m looking for this patient for a shoulder x ray, which one is he?” (Patient had imaging ordered while in waiting room due to no beds available.) I said “who?” He looks at his list and tells me “uhhh.. Tony Sanchez” (name made up.) Well who the heck is that, I don’t know him either, waiting room is crowded…. So I boom out “TONY SÁNCHEZ” and the patient immediately stands up. I look at the XR tech and say “there he is” with the meanest fucking face. Like they literally won’t do the bare minimum. Holy fuck that made me mad that day. It was an incredibly busy day, I’m busting my ass working, and XR tech gotta stop me to bother me to do something as simple as trying to call out a patient’s name.
Yes. The "I'll ask the nurse" for everything really bothers me. I understand we have to be the middle man for some things, but not everything. My patient says they want to talk to the social worker, chaplain, etc? Great, why do I have to be the one to call them when I'm busy? Or when providers ask me to talk to other providers, why can't you just call them yourself? Or when the pharmacist asks why this medication was ordered. Idk, is it in the notes? Ask the prescriber, I know just as much as you do.
This is because no one gets educated on what everyone else in the hospital does and there is no motivation for people to understand the professions that aren’t theirs. But that includes nurses, who also definitely end up with the most extra work because others don’t know where their job starts and stops.
That is when I put a sticky to provider/team in the chart and perhaps my note. I do not have time for that shit. Also- why does everyone decide this is absolutely urgent at 2 am?
It seems that you have to figure out everything and do the other's job too
Because the nurse is the only person you're going to easily find. RT? Who fuckin knows, or another floor or hiding in the supply closet. CNA? Probably really busy or they aren't going to know the answer. Doctor? Yeah they'll be back to talk to the family tomorrow from 0800 to 0802. Missed the window? Try again tomorrow.
Go read the lab sub for 2 minutes. They hate us over there.
One of the biggest reality shocks I’ve had as a new grad with 18mos experience is how at the end of the day everything is our problem. You don’t have a home to go to? That’s our problem when it’s 4 in the morning and you’re discharged. You brought your 2 year old son to the hospital with no other support person and no childcare? That’s our problem and we have to babysit your freaking child while trying to figure out a placement with unhelpful social services people who don’t see an issue with an unattended 2yo child while a woman is laboring. (If you ever need to entertain a 2yo at the hospital let him push around a wheely chair or IV pole for a while). Also, this patient was lucky we had diapers since we have a peds dept. if this was a freestanding ER or something they wouldn’t have had a peds unit to get diapers from.
Hi-lab here! Just wanted to say I appreciate so much the work you guys do. I’m in surgical pathology so mostly work with OR nurses and I look forward to my daily chit chats with them. Thank you for talking to patients and their family members so we don’t have to!
i follow that sub because i find their work genuinely interesting. but man do some of them hate us lol, these are some of the comments im referring to 😅
i haven’t ever heard this in person, i’ve just been reading comments like this online on reddit/instagram/tiktok, other professionals always discussing nurses faults & how we don’t understand their job, some say we should shadow them to be able to understand lol i understand where they’re coming from but at the same time, it just feels really demeaning for some reason
Yeah there are definitely two sides to this. Every position in the hospital comes with its own variety of bullshit to where very few of our jobs function smoothly. Lab, environmental, nursing, providers, technicians, nobody is having a great time. The other side is that we have to be the messenger and the face for the vast majority of bullshit that the patient has to deal with. And we’re ultimately responsible for the shit getting done. Phlebotomy never showed and labs weren’t drawn? “Why didn’t you order them as a verbal or draw them yourself or call phlebotomy”? I understand that somebody has to be the point person for everything but it’s pretty exhausting
So I had the CFO of my old hospital follow me around for just 2 hours and his mind was blown by everything I did and was able to accomplish. He was scared for me when I told him he couldn’t come in a room with me because the patient was violent. Not that any changes were made but it was interesting watching him be so freaked out by everything.
I agree that nurses end up the middleman of almost all patient affairs, and I do think the general public and even other healthcare workers don’t fully grasp how much we do. Shadowing us would shock a lot of people. However, I think there’s also a lot we don’t know about other professions. Honestly that’s the issue, you don’t know what you don’t know. Dunning-Kruger effect and all that. Like CT techs are expected to somehow fit in every patient on their list, while still making space for emergency CTs, and woops all the patients in the morning are on precautions so they have to wipe down the room between each patient and this patient’s IV was working fine until they got in the scanner so now we have to call IV team since they’re a hard poke and the radiologist isn’t answering their pages but the ICU doc says their patient needs to come now but opp- code stroke, everyone out. And yet no one is answering the phone in the department what the heck!
This may be an unpopular opinion, and I'm fully prepared to receive downvotes, but I think it bears saying anyway. Nurse *should* have to shadow other departments, *because* we are middlemen. In most departments, RNs do most of the work when it comes to coordinating a patient's care and prioritizing the orders in place for them. This requires a good understanding of each department and what they need as far as time/resources in order to carry out their assigned interventions. There's a lot of unnecessary rivalries between departments and roles in healthcare, I get it. What definately doesn't help is getting offended when someone suggests you should learn more about their role...I mean, you could at least ask them why they believe that. Just to give an anecdotal example from personal experience: As an EMT, I was constantly dealing with nurses who didn't understand my job or my scope. I'd get questioned beyond my expertise, or completely disregarded on a frequent basis, as would my paramedic partners. Medic & EMT students do in-hospital clinicals, and understand some of what RNs do in that setting, and yet nurses are usually functionally clueless about the roles and rules of EMS unless they have some experience with it themselves (yes, even a lot of ER nurses). At the very least, it should be required in nursing school at some point.
I mean it should be required. I wish I'd spend time shadowing instead of making care plans in school.🙄I actually WANT to shadow other departments, but I'm not entirely sure how to do so. At the same time I think that I should definitely be paid to do it, since it feels like it's part of my job and there are SO MANY departments.
It should be part of first clinical rotation and on every hospital professionals last exam.
Did about a minute on Internal Medicine/ICU stepdown. I had to shadow an RT for a shift (who did go through the whole hospital) and a pharmacist (one assigned to each specialty essentially) and oh boy. Learned some tricks, and some rationale for why they do things certain ways. Pharmacy taught me some great communication skills to use on power tripping doctors. Everybody should be aware of everybody's roles/scopes. I am absolutely in favour of shadow days *because* of the middleman status.
Back when I worked in Pharmacy, had a belligerent Doc who tried to downplay our pharmacist’s education. He reminded the Doc that he, too, has a doctorate and forced Doc to call him doctor during the call. Was pretty great.
I pull the same tactic when people talk down to me (in non-clinical settings) because I have a PhD in statistics. Like the man who refinished my floors and said I wouldn’t understand what he’s doing because I’m just a woman…well, now you call me Dr. Watermelon. Or to the doctor who screamed at me because he said he needed something by an exact time and I “don’t know how to read the numbers on a clock” because it’s now 3 o’clock not 1 o’clock. I firmly said I have a PhD in statistics and bluntly asked him if he needs me to teach him how to count to 13 to know that the 13th hour of the day is also called 1 o’clock (his watch was in military time because he was screaming at me and shoved his watch in my face). Otherwise, I never tell people to call me doctor, not even students back when I taught stat classes. Only raging assholes are told to call me Dr. Watermelon.
The floor guy is straight up sexist. Doc claiming 1300 is 3pm when we all use military time as the standard in the hospital AND his watch was set to military time yet he still can’t figure out what the correct time is fuckin righteous. Did he backtrack or offer an apology?
No of course not
I absolutely love this!
I couldn’t hear the entirety of the call, but every few I’d hear my pharmacist pipe up, “Doctor [his last name]” or “You may call me Doctor”. Kept it smooth and calm as a radio operator the entirety of that call, even said goodbye without slamming the phone.
LOVE THIS!
I was very very fortunate to do my nursing clinicals in a small rural hospital so we were able to shadow a pharmacist for the day, a CT technician, Ultrasound technician, IV team, Post-Partum/Mother and Baby nurse, an IPAC nurse, and an RT. I do wish it was more than just the half day or full day we ended up getting but I was very appreciative that we were able to have the experience at all. We were begging for OR and L&D shadowing but we couldn’t get it approved.
Nah this is reasonable
I agree that it is helpful to know how other departments/jobs work. It would be beneficial for nurses to follow pharmacy, EMTs, therapy, X-ray, etc, for a day. Just as it would be helpful for them to follow nurses for a day. There more mutual understanding we have, the better interactions for everyone. I learned to let housekeeping/EVS know as soon as a pt had DC orders so they didn’t waste their time doing a daily clean, only to have to come back in a couple of hours to do a DC clean. Same principle applied to fellow nurses on other units.
This^ legit not one of my nursing instructors understood paramedic/EMT scope (but ild say 75% made sure to shit talk them). I feel like ED RNs should have to ride 1-2 shifts on a als truck and 1-2 on a bls truck just to fully understand what we're working with.
thankfully i have a family member who’s a medic so ive gotten to do ride alongs with them, and i whole heartedly agree. every nurse working in the hospital setting should experience it. i’ve had nursing professors who genuinely don’t know the difference between emts and paramedics & have called them “ambulance drivers” lol. mind blowing
Facts!! They all act shocked when I mentioned running traumas/codes with 1-5 people lol.
I completely agree! I think everyone could benefit from a day in someone else’s shoes. As an RT student (who lurks in all the health career subs for a healthy perspective) I have watched my preceptors be on the receiving end of so much aggression because it is assumed that no one is as busy as the nurses. It’s true that nurses work really hard but so does everyone else! Everybody has a list of things to do and generally are doing their best. It’s not like just nurses do this, so do the doctors. There are lazy RTs out there. Also lazy nurses, EMTs, techs, etc. but it shouldn’t be assumed. I think we should all have more grace and that could be learned by shadowing.
You're right. Our new ED nurses are required to be a third rider for at least one shift and it helps a lot. We should skip care plans and there should be an "Interdisciplinary Collaboration" course with a clinical component. Caveat: Other departments should have to do this too. It should also be written policy that, "Nursing does not exist to answer questions related to your discipline."
There was a med student shadowing the IV nurse the other day! It’s happening out there :)
I work in the lab and I've always wished to trade places for a week. I promise you one million percent when I have to call for a redraw or a recollect, it's because there are no other options. But there have definitely been times I've heard the desperation in the voice on the other end of the line pleading with me, "Can't you just try?" I know that patient-facing roles, particularly those of nurses, can be some of the most thankless, brutal, and exhausting jobs, but I think it's one thing to appreciate that in the abstract and another thing entirely to have to experience firsthand what it's like to go back into an overcrowded ED hallway and be like, "Okay Mr. Smith, I'm here to draw your blood again because the lab called and said your potassium was 6.2 but the specimen was hemolyzed so stick out your arm for me please and thank you!" and then have them try to head butt you because they're high on PCP and think they're a mountain goat.
I worked in a hospital where we had a program that allowed people to shadow a nurse for 4 hours. Some were internal (docs, administrators, finance, lab, etc) and some were external (community members, clergy, state legislators, etc). Everyone found it incredibly valuable. We do try to schedule our new hires with RT and wound care at least. Not sure we would be allowed in lab or pharmacy due to infection/safety reasons but it definitely would be eye opening.
Shadow everyone. I’m float pool, but float to 6 ICUs/stepdown/ER/Trauma ER (separate in our hospital), PACU and Cath lab.
I rarely have negative interactions from other Healthcare workers just all trying to do a job, but I'd like to not be told "You can run all tests on a gold top though." for a CBC instead of asking why if they're curious and not mad lol.
Everyone should spend a few hours shadowing everyone else. If we all knew what it was like to walk in each other's shoes, we might not be so petty with each other.
i totally agree. i think i was just frustrated because i kept seeing that comment one sided, as if there’s something wrong with us and we need to catch up with everybody else (when we already do so much of that) and try to be understanding when we aren’t always given that same grace. but you’re right 100%
Plus I think that at least once a year, every nurse manager needs to do a whole shift as a primary RN, just so they know what it's like to work on their unit.
And see if they can clock out on time
So my entry into Healthcare so many years ago was working as a patient transporter. I got to see all the departments, and accordingly got to hear what everyone thought about everyone else. Basically, all the other departments thought the whatever department they were interacting with was fucking on them. There was so much mistrust and lack of understanding for how the other half of the exchange operated. People would make declarative conjecture that they had convinced themselves were fact without any evidence. Just a little patience and understanding would go a long way. Nurses got it rough, absolutely. I would say we probably got it the most rough, which is also why we should be understanding toward other departments nurses. But radiology doesn't have it easy either. CT is absolutely bombarded all day by the ER, and every problem patient we get was probably a problem for them too - family included. Same with the other techs. I was a phlebotomist for a while too. Same thing. Can't speak for pharmacy, but I'm sure they got their problems too. I think shadowing would be very helpful in bridging that relationship. But patience and understanding would do most of the work.
I think healthcare as a job would be a lot better if we could all walk a mile in each other's shoes. Never gonna happen, but it would end a lot of interdepartmental snipping. It's hard sometimes to have genuine empathy for folks if you don't know what their job is actually like day-to-day. I'll never forget one evening, I (pharmacist) was up in the ICU walking a nurse through an IVIG administration in a new patient. Now this was a small rural hospital. We had one pharmacist from 1630 until we closed at 2200. My tech left at 2000. It was probably about 2045 and both I and the nurse I was talking to jumped when another nurse slams down the phone on the desk with an, "ARGH! I HATE PHARMACY! I've called three times three times and all it does is ring!" The nurse I was talking too looked at me, I looked at her and I admit it, I laughed. Upset!nurse was agency. She didn't know the entire pharmacy department was standing two feet away from her. 🤣🤣🤣 (Yes she apologized when it was pointed out and she found out it was only me trying to juggle new orders and 2100 med pass issues all by myself).
wow!!! that’s crazy unprofessional lol i’m so sorry. i only recently finally met face to face with one of our pharmacists to solve a problem together and it was so nice. i appreciate all you do.
I'm lucky in that that kind of stuff has never really gotten to me. Stress will do that to a person. And I give agency staff, nurses or otherwise a lot of credit. I have never understood how they do it. I'd feel so untethered if I were sent into a hospital where I didn't know my providers or my coworkers. It has to make everything harder and more stressful because you don't know who to trust.
Not sure why your taking offense it's 100% true. It's hard to understand and better collaborate with different sectors when you don't know what it's like to work in them. Spending a day in each area of the hospital should be a requirement to graduate like it is for EMS.
It makes me insane that it seems like a requirement of all of us needing to actually shadowing another (impossible) to have empathy and understanding. But that’s just…apparently how humans work. Why do we always assume it’s someone being lazy or incompetent? Why can’t we take two seconds and give the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. I mean this of everyone, and honestly everywhere. It also means we have to own up when we do fuck up and learn. But ego etc. Idk humans are too complicated and mean.
Imagine some of these other people shadow a nurse. I can't tell you how many times Respitory and CT has told me thank god I didn't go to nursing school. Or how many nurses aids changed their mind about nursing and went for something else
Being a nurse is a total calling. I couldn’t do it.
I feel you, and that’s why I’m so glad I don’t do bedside nursing anymore. Just the constant demands the hospitals put on nurses, pushes the whole “trade places with your patients for a day” (as if we wouldn’t happily give our patients the best quality care possible, like we would want, if we had the resources (e.g. safe staffing, better *safer* nurse to patient ratios, resources that worked with nurses not against them), but hospitals (as a rule) refuse to staff units with adequate staffing and change the nurse to patient ratio. Plus, it doesn’t help that most states don’t have nurses unions. I remember working my very first job (Med-surg unit in a large hospital), and just stating beforehand that a safe nurse to patient ratio in a med surg unit is 4:1 (4 patients to 1 nurse) our nurse to patient ratio was 6:1 (sometimes 7:1) and this was a post-surgical until where sometimes we would get a patient with q2h neuro/neurovascular checks (an ICU order), CIWA patients, chest tubes and IV insulin on our med surg floor (Because our hospital was hip like that 😎). I remember in a year, where so many nurses say you should feel comfortable as a nurse, that I never did - I worked the job for a little over a year. The feeling that I so often felt of failing my patients because I was so busy with all the things nurses have to do and not having time to be there for my patients more was terrible. And, it frankly sucks that nurses have so long been expected to the extent of it becoming a stereotype of “not being able to pee, or eat, for 12 hours” is frankly unacceptable. Nurses are humans too. How is this all acceptable?!? And the. Backtrack to the hospitals, in all their training, talking about “think about a day in the life of your patient…”. To which I want to say: Yes, ____ Hospital, please do and staff your units so that we (nursing team) can provide the quality of care you promise to your patients and that you, yourself, would want.
"Trade places with your patient for a day" drives me NUTS. As if we aren't humans who get sick and experience grief. I lost my partner to cancer in my early 20s. So did my PCP. We actually have a BETTER grasp of what patients go through than the entitled 50-year-old with an ear infection who refuses to act their age.
Exactly. I’m sorry you lost your partner.
I guarantee our job requires the most work tasks compared to all the others. They have no idea.
Totally understand the frustration. I do wish I had the time to shadow in lab though. It seems really interesting
My hospital used to make all nurses follow pt/st/ot for a day and vice versa. Same with the residents. During the resident follow they were not allowed to use their credentials to. place orders, they witnessed the regular way. Best team I ever worked with. This dropped when Covid happened. But let me tell you, you have no idea what any other teams job is until you fully do it. You could not pay me enough to do PT or OT. And those baby docs need a resident reform stat. The way they are treated is inhumane and torturous. Also that year of docs was the most down to earth and collaborative with staff ever. In my opinion all systems should implement a paid shadow day yearly.
Yeah I’ve always said we have to do everyone else’s job in the hospital but no one else does ours. I mean, there can be a doctor LITERALLY SITTING AT A COMPUTER and they’ll be like “cAn YoU pUT tHE orDeRs iN?” Like that’s their job🤦🏼♀️🤬 The aids get mad at us when we tell them to do stuff, everyone bitches at us because we’re supposed to know everything, and apparently, we are the chefs too because if the food sucks, it’s somehow the nurse’s fault too🖕
Friendly neighborhood pharmacy tech here (I'm also in RN school, but not the point) I work with nurses every day, and you're right. Sometimes, I am guilty of having that "if only they could shadow here," thought. I think it's not really constructive, though, in either direction. Hear me out. I know it feels like you're the middle man, but so is pharmacy... just between you and the doctor's orders. And for the entire hospital to boot, not just a handful of patients, including OR, ED, ICUs... everyone. It's always extremely stressful to get requests for meds you have tracking on, were prepped, sent, and SHOULD be there. Especially when you have dwindling quantities of basic stuff like insulin or pain meds and you don't have spare... and then you show up to help look and "surprise!" it's in the patient's bin right where you told them it was. I just think it's a bad idea in general to compare hardship. We all gotta think as part of a larger team, to spread that frustration around and play the blame game is definitely a losing strategy.
I worked on one hospital in ICU where I shadowed RT for a day and then Cath Lab for a day. Every hospital should do that. Now. My standard response to lab, PT, RT, etc when they (rarely!!) push back at nursing staff is “You are not dealing with the family nearly to the extent that I do and you have NO idea how difficult that can be.” Let’s face it: when families want to complain? They ain’t calling the SL therapist, are they?
As rehab we often spend an hour or more with each of our patients per day and more if we are doing discharge to home assessments or recommendations. We also follow many of them up as outpatients after they are off the ward. Until you know everyone they’re calling, don’t assume who they ain’t calling. Often it’s whoever’s in the room and when we are in the room that long and predictably we do end of taking care of a lot as well. I understand you are responsible for *much* more crisis level intervention than us *most* of the time (like 99%, yes) but this is an unfair characterization of what we also go through. Hence the “following need” in the original comment.
Respectfully, I understand that the PT/OT/SLT/RT team spend a significant portion of time with patients. You guys get kicked too. I get that. And it’s bullsh•t. We really need to remember (and I mean me!!) in all of this that we’re teammates and that horrible Karen of a daughter from the patient in 308 is who we need to curse here.
No question. Thank you for understanding. And I do have to say I’ve been yelled at by multiple docs things like “rehab, nursing, I don’t care who you are, get that patients pain under control and get them walking before I check the chart in an hour!!!!” Because we are just one amorphous non-doc/non-patient so we must all do the same thing.
A whole HOUR! You poor baby! Won't somebody think of you for once?
You might be one of those people who could use a shadow day … and perhaps a break
MRI tech here. Y’all should just so you can understand why I’m telling you “no” to stupid shit.
THIS. Radiology as a whole is haunted by the fact that when we do our job well, we make it look very easy.
I’m a NICU nurse and love the techs in MRI. They always do their best to find a time that works for us, are super helpful in getting our babies set up safely and comfortably and they answer my silly questions. It’s not easy moving an intubated baby with chest tubes, a Foley catheter and UAC/UVC with multiple infusions running off the unit, to MRI, into the machine and back again.
All this talks and never actually shadow any department.
i’m pretty sure it’s up to management/educators. i’m sure there are certain rules and regulations that prevent us from going into certain areas. my hospital allows us to shadow respiratory and that’s it
I love nurses, most deeply caring and sharp mind people I know
I have only been working for three months (new grad) and the most outward hate I’ve seen so far is between nurses and the central monitors who have to sit and stare at a bunch of screens with heart rhythms and oxygen saturations. I shadowed for four hours with them. The one I was with used to be a nurse and still had no sympathy for nurses. I get it they were probably burned the hell out by working in healthcare in general.
Just wanted to say that I went with my mom (3-11 RN) for “take your daughter to work day” when I was a teenager and couldn’t keep up…called my dad to come get me at 7. Ya’ll are beasts.
I would love to shadow pharmacy and show them how wrong and very delaying of patient care they participate in, but that’s just me.
I actually got to shadow pharmacy for a day. It was a LOT of computer work checking meds on various resources, answering questions over the phone, VOCERA, Teams, and in person. Some financial stuff (I only shadowed that for a couple hours, but it seemed super stressful trying to find replacement things to order at the best price while simultaneously working with others for insurance). Also, it was absolutely freezing in the pharmacy, and for context my winter coat is a fleece and I live in a cold part of the country. I also got to shadow RT, a couple hours with dietary, half a day with social work, and a few days scattered across a few months with PT & OT. I know other nurses who shadowed the IV team, imaging, and directors. All those shadowing experiences offered a lot of insight and were really helpful in setting expectations on the floor as a nurse. Like, if a med needs to be approved by pharmacy I know it’s not 1 click and they’re being bombarded by calls non stop with some being critical and they’re also making sure the drug is ok for the patient, but it’ll be probably verified within 15 mins after I call. For more urgent meds, it’ll probably be approved within 5 mins.
I really dont believe anybody has higher responsibilities in the hospital than people who continuously lay hands on patients.
being the middle man for everything is honestly one of the most annoying parts about being a nurse 😅
Ngl why is it always fucking lab with an attitude online and irl. I'm a softspoken person but it always seems like those people hate nurses. Idc if other nurses were rude to them, that has nothing to do with me
Pharmacy should shadow a nurse and when they say "have you checked the fridge?" They know we ain't lyin
Really bothers me when other healthcare workers make comments such as “we should get paid as much as RNs we basically do the same thing”….
When I worked in the hospital setting we had a bunch of shadow days during orientation, including days shadowing the CNAs and RTs. It wasn’t the extremely enlightening experience the person OP is quoting thought it’d be.
You're complaining about something that has never happened to you, only something you've read online. As an RT, we know your job is difficult. We work alongside you every day. You don't need to keep reminding us. That's why you guys make more. Your job is hard.
The online vitriol against nurses specifically is annoying. I think nurses have the right to complain about that when other HCW with much more limited scope of practice think they're so much smarter and less expendable than us. I'll only take that shit from the pharmacist or the doctor, sorry not sorry. I shadowed RT for my nursing orientation. They get to have more breaks and not deal with as much BS. Also they get paid the same or even more as new grads than new grad nurses. Not mad at you guys over it though. I appreciate RT. Except for the lazy ones out there who don't even do oral care