Just Smile

I never knew that smiling could really fool people into thinking you’re happy. But in the mornings when the day staff comes on, they tell me I must have had a good night because I’m smiling. I reply by telling them I’m smiling because I finally get to go home!
When I’m working and in the middle of being stressed beyond belief, my patients and my co-workers are unable to tell. For some reason, I just smile through the stress at work. At least it seems to make everyone else feel better. My patients certainly don’t need to know and I’ve learned that it helps the rest of the staff that I’m working with. It helps them to think that it’s not so bad and they can make it through too. I never realized at first that I was smiling through everything. I guess after the night that I realized crying didn’t help me, my body just naturally reverted to smiling.

Breaks

I have to say that I have never ever officially taken a break on the floor that I work on. The only time I have taken a break is when I was floated to the ER. When I worked in the holding room I was able to leave when I had cleared out all of my patients. The other time I was there in the main room, I had sent all of my patients to their floors. On my own floor, none of the night nurses really goes in the break room to sit and eat. When we actually have time to eat, and yes there have been plenty of nights where I have too much to do to eat at all, we take the food out to our station and eat it there. I'm lucky I find time to pee. Usually around 2 in the morning I force myself to take the time to go to the bathroom. And of course, one time that I took a second bathroom break, my beeper went off telling me that my patient's heart rate was in the 180's and I had to go running. That'll teach me. But yes, the unfortunate truth is, I am always working while eating and have never been able to take a few minutes for myself. There is always more work to do.

And the day never ends at 7:30 like it's supposed to. It takes at least until 8 to give report to the nurse coming on. When you have 7-8 patients who are so sick, there is a lot of details to go over with them. After report is done, usually I have to finish writing notes on my patients, finish goal, finish other paperwork. I have seen nurses stay 4 hours after their shift is over to finish work. Yes, you read correctly, 4 hours! And no matter what the reason for staying late, even if it's to send a patient to a procedure, we never get overtime. My shift is 12.5 hours, I get paid for only 11.5 of those and usually work 13.5-14 hours with no break and no overtime. And yes, there have been days where I have not eaten during this time period and have not gone to the bathroom.

While it is not nurse's week, this sums it up nicely...