Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I do general repair work at a hospital. could we make it a policy that there be a male nurse on staff on each and every floor and that no repair request is sent until the male nurse looks into it and writes up the request? I just had one request that said a room had a mechanical burn smell when there's nothing mechanical in the room,...what is a "mechanical burn smell" and how would they know it if they smelled it. Went to the room and there was no smell. The latest I'll write here word for word exact quote,..."leak from ceiling, has loud smell that smell like chemical". How many years of college does it take to be a nurse with this kind of language skills?
It still doesn't top my all time favorite nurse request. Was paged to go to a floor. When I got there the nurse said to me, "Oh, I'm so glad you're here. How do you flush yogurt down the toilet?"
Other examples include spring time at midnight, got a call about flying bugs at a nurses station. Get there and all the windows were open and all the fluorescent lights were on. Told the staff they need to close the windows. They told me "no, we need fresh air. Just get rid of the bugs."
Then there was the nurse who accidentally flushed the key to the narcotics locker. That's OK, accidents happen. But she expected me to go down and try to find the key for her after it'd already gone down the sewer. Not going to happen. I changed out the lock and gave them a different key.
Women, if a group of you are sitting at an area and you feel like it's way too hot or way too cold but everyone else feels comfortable, don't call maintenance to fix the AC for you. If that happens then you're probably going through menopause so suffer through the hot or cold flash and keep in mind it's easier for one person to be uncomfortable than all your co-workers being uncomfortable. If you think 80 degrees or higher is comfortable and you're not elderly then you need to see a doctor. Had one very considerate nurse (sarcasm) turn the thermostats up to over 80 degrees at the desk, in the offices, and in an empty patient's room that she used as her personal break room. Oh, by the way, that particular room was for TB patients. When she was done she'd leave the room at over 80s. Since the room wasn't being used, no one went in until we had a TB patient arrived. Imagine someone with TB and breathing problems being put in a room that was about 85 degrees. Nice.
I do general repair work at a hospital. could we make it a policy that there be a male nurse on staff on each and every floor and that no repair request is sent until the male nurse looks into it and writes up the request? I just had one request that said a room had a mechanical burn smell when there's nothing mechanical in the room,...what is a "mechanical burn smell" and how would they know it if they smelled it. Went to the room and there was no smell. The latest I'll write here word for word exact quote,..."leak from ceiling, has loud smell that smell like chemical". How many years of college does it take to be a nurse with this kind of language skills?
Hey, nurses are nurses, I remember when I was in residency a nurse once page me at 3 am just because a Pt had 100 HR. When i found out for what they have called me, I went crazy.
There are some nurses that are pretty cool. An example is the light in the ceiling over the patient was burnt and the nurse sent the request to us at night and said in the request it can wait until morning. Another example was a nurse who made an innocent mistake and was able to laugh at herself. Different nurse making the same mistake got angry and slammed the door when I pointed out her mistake. A television won't turn on if it isn't plugged into an electrical outlet. The TV was mounted on the wall and the outlet was next to the TV on the wall. It was an innocent mistake and one worth a laugh over but not worth getting angry over.
It does drive some of us crazy when we hear nurses complaining about not being paid enough money as we watch them going online to plan their vacation to Paris or leaving the hospital in their BMW, Mercedes, Volvo, Audi, or some other expensive luxuary car. And yet most of our hospital's doctors drive pickup trucks, VW, Toyota, Honda, and one old model Saab 9-3 convertable.
Why do some nurses send a request to maintenance to repair their computer?
Here's another whopper. Sink is clogged. Only the nurses can use this sink. Out of the pipe under the sink I pull out food, paper towels, coffee stir sticks, straws, plastic knives, metal knives, and coffee grounds. I laid it out on the counter and called them into the room to show them what was clogging up the sink. First words out of the nurses' mouth was, "can you install a garbage disposal on the sink?". They put metal knives down the sink and they want a garbage disposal. No, they didn't get one.
My biggest and most logical complaint about the nurses involves patient comfort. My main job is the heating and cooling system. If a patient tells the nurse he/she is too hot or too cold then send us a request to check that patient's AC. Don't assume because you feel fine that there's nothing wrong. Let us check it out anyway. There may be nothing wrong but we could still do something to help make the patient more comfortable. There may be something wrong with you (hormones or body heat from running around all shift). Correcting the problem may be as simple as changing an air filter or adjusting a thermostat. It may be as complicated as calibrating a thermostate, resetting the system, or adjusting the CFM of air flow to the room. If you don't tell us something is broken then we won't know it's broken. I honestly think it's a woman thing. Women, men don't read minds. Which is harder? Complaining to your friends and co-workers that your husband/maintenance doesn't do something or politely ask your husband/maintenace to do something? One will get the job done a lot faster and with a lot less stress than the other.
Gosh, Dave, I hope you're never in the hospital and really need a nurse.
These men and women are some of the most valuable members of a medical team. There's no need to stigmatize an entire profession, or at least the distaff side, because their English skills and technical acumen aren't up to the Olympian standards apparently required to complete a service request.
Gosh, Dave, I hope you're never in the hospital and really need a nurse.
These men and women are some of the most valuable members of a medical team. There's no need to stigmatize an entire profession, or at least the distaff side, because their English skills and technical acumen aren't up to the Olympian standards apparently required to complete a service request.
These people save lives every day.
I don't question their medical knowledge. However, with all their years of college education they should have basic language skills (spelling and grammer is horrible) and should be professional enough to notify maintenance of a mechanical problem rather than loudly complaining at their desk, loud enough for people to hear down the patient wings. Nursing staff deal directly with the patients and their care but contrary to popular perception among administration and the public, they aren't the only ones who do so. There's a team of staff that work for the patient care and comfort and for us to work as a team there has to be a level of communication and we, the non-nursing staff, are not receiving it from them. The pharmacy isn't getting the information from the nurses, the lab isn't getting the information from the nurses, the kitchen staff isn't getting the information from the nurses, the maintenance staff isn't getting the information from the nurses, and the housekeeping staff isn't getting the information from the nurses. I think it's fair to say more than 50% of the nursing staff do communicate this way. But the number of nursing staff that don't is way to high. I regularly ask the staff to send us notices of things needing repairs and thank the ones that do. I also do my part to stop bad nursing staff behavior. Example, one night a floor staff decided to use the patient educational TV/VCR cart at their desk to watch movies they rented. They turned off the lights at the desk, popped some popcorn, and watched a movie instead of caring for patients and paperwork. One of them was sleeping in the chair. I notified the hospital supervisor and heads rolled that night. Patients may have been in bed but their family staying with them had to walk past that desk to ask for help since they weren't responding to patient calls about IVs beeping or patients needing help. Several of them no longer work for us.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
