The hardest part of my job as the evening shift charge nurse is getting other people to do their’s. People seem to want to go toward entropy and are willing only to do what they perceive to be their job. And they are forever looking at the other people working the shift. And they are only willing to do exactly what the other person has done/is doing/has been assigned to do.

Me, I do whatever anyone else doesn’t do. But I have work of my own to do, a lot of work of my own to do. So, I cannot do your job for you.

I will not assign you to do many task.

I will not assign you to do something that I am not willing to do myself.

And that list is vanishingly small.

Sorry.

I have several new techs and nurses on the evening shift. Some of them are new faces, some are old. The story will still be the same.

I wish that the bosses would tell people, when they ask to change their shift, that despite the rumors on day shift that persist, evening shift is no walk in the park. There are no excessive breaks, there are things that have to be done, every night. The most important thing is that there is NO ONE else!

There is no one to give you a break, we are all in rooms.

There is no one to go fetch that thing you think the doctor just has to have, we are all in rooms.

There is no one to take out the trash from your room, we are all in rooms.

There is no one to clean your room, we are all in rooms.

And do not come looking for praise for doing your job. You will not get it here.

Welcome to evening shift, you have to rely on yourself.

Because we are ALL IN ROOMS.

The holidays, a time of wonder and joy. The holidays are for children and old alike. With presents, and food, and parties.

Unless you work in an operating room. Then the holidays are a time of rushing, of working, of continual cases, of seventy hour weeks, not including on call hours.

Everyone and their brother have met their deductibles and need surgery, like, last week. So they can be off during the holidays, recuperating. While everyone around them works to make the holidays awesome and magical.

It is also a time of bigger cases, more complex cases. Oddly, it is a time of increased cancer cases, especially of the bowel.

It is also a time of heart breaking cases. Like the ectopic pregnancy that we had to remove at 0130 Christmas morning. I don’t have children, and I’m not unduly religious, but even I know that is plain wrong by the universe.

I’m not sure if it is because we are busy, busy, busy, but I have no love for December.

Sadly, I wrote this one year ago. And it is still true and he still is a douche.

Ladies, it has begun. This makes me so mad, so sad, and so determined to stand up for my coworkers and the everyday person who can’t stand up for themselves. I know that standing up for yourself as a nurse is easier said than done. But I will not and do not stand for it when I am being abused by a surgeon, or another staff member. That is one of the best things my mother taught me, that I have the ability to say no, this is not right

Tonight, a very long, very bloody case was ending and I went into the room to help them come off the table. As I was preparing to move the patient with the rest of the team, this blowhard dickhead who has been intolerable since Tuesday, starting mouthing off to the nurse in charge of the room. Since was a surgical tech, and the nurse had twenty years of experience on him. He was saying some very not kind things to her, impugning her abilities in the OR, heavily hinting that she wasn’t as experienced as him because she was a woman. I looked at him after one minute of this and I told him to stop, that that talk was unprofessional and would not be tolerated in this operating room. He blustered at me, saying that he was just giving her a hard time. I looked at the nurse and asked, point blank, if he’d been “giving” any of the men in the room a hard time. She said no. At that moment the patient was ready to be moved. We safely transferred the patient and got him to the recovery room. The tech didn’t say anything to me as he left. But, after prompting, the nurse told me about her day with him, about the slights and the jokes at her expense. And I was appalled. I reassured her that she did nothing wrong and that she had to right to tell the tech that he was inappropriate, just like I did.

But I knew that this was just the beginning. Now that his man had been elected, he was feeling free to act like his man in his place of employment. He was feeling free to make rude comments, although he stopped short of copping a feel, which would’ve gotten him fired. At least we have that small saving grace, that laying hands on people in a malicious manner is dealt with swiftly and with termination.

I am going to escalate this to the management. My boss and I will be having a little conversation about this.

I realize that in the OR people feel freer to talk about what is on their mind, to be a little crude. Hell, I swear like a sailor at work. But if you are the only woman in a room full of men and the others are making you uncomfortable you should be able to shut that kind of shit down and make it clear that you will not be tolerating it, without laying hands on the perpetrators.

Fuck that shit, I don’t care if the president elect got away with it.

Not in my OR.

There will be no excuse.

I disappoint people every day.

It is different every time.

Sometimes it is the doctor who wants to impossible 2nd room.

Sometimes it is the staff member who wants to go home early.

Sometimes it is my boss who wants me to tell her that we are fully staffed.

Sometimes it is myself when I do something against my own code.

Sometimes I care.

But mostly I don’t.

When I disappoint someone who unreasonable about not getting their 2nd room, or to go home early, or someone who has to work later because we are not fully staffed, or that the new tech has to go into a room at 1700 when she tells me she’s never done that kind of case at our hospital, but has at other hospitals, and I tell her there is no choice, welcome to evening shift. When I disappoint any of the above, I tell myself that I’ve made a friend.

Of course I am being sarcastic.

They weren’t interested in being my friend, just wanted something I couldn’t give.

That’s how you make friends on the evening shift when suddenly our volume has ballooned to December levels, and it’s only October.

I’ve been at Magnet since Tuesday. It is Friday. I prepared to go to Magnet for a week. I will be recovering from being at Magnet for a week, running around doing all the things I didn’t do for 4 days. 

But, Magnet was worth it! 

Magnet is nurse engagement, it is nurse led, it is nurses teaching nurses, it is research studies, it is products that nurses make themselves that make their shift a little easier. At Magnet, we are all that nurse. The nurse who makes the department better, the nurse who works tirelessly so that the patients are well taken care of, the nurse who works with leadership to make changes to make the nurse’s lives and the patient’s lives better.

 Magnet is amazing.

Magnet is also tiring. I’m an evening shift nurse and I had to be up every day before 0600 in order to get my homework done and prep for the day. The time change helped. 

Magnet is also over. Sitting at the airport with my luggage because I’m ready to be home. 

For tomorrow is Saturday. The night of the Great 100 Gala. And I’m a great 100 nurse. It means that I am one of the top 100 nurses in NC. I’m over the moon about the honor.

But there is a lot of work to do between now and then. 

The last two workdays, the ones that I had off, were awesome. I so very rarely get a full day off between working 5 days a week and weekend call days and I got THREE FULL DAYS OFF IN A ROW. Excuse me if I’m a little excited. This meant no hospital, no call, no phone answering. Okay, I cheated, I answered texts but I did not answer the phone. I’m proud of myself.

But these last two days were a rehearsal for the six days I will have off soon for the Magnet conference. I will be out of state so I can’t take call. I know my relief will do brilliantly. After all, she just got two days practice being the evening charge nurse.

Almost time for the curtain to rise on the Magnet Conference, t-eight days until I leave.

I am an operating room nurse (to be seen as OR from here on out). I’ve been a nurse since 2001. I have been an OR nurse since 2002.

I always wanted to be an OR nurse. My mother is an OR nurse. So there is a proud tradition in our family of service. My father was in the Air Force and now he substitute teaches. I get it from both sides, apparently.

I have worked at 4 different hospitals: the small, rural California hospital where I learned my trade, the specialty orthopedic hospital, the main hospital attached to the ortho one, and a smallish suburban hospital. I currently work in the smallish suburban hospital. I’ve been here eight years, I think?

I may use big words, or acronyms, but I will try not to. Or, if I do, I will explain myself.

I will not spare the gore though, or the bloodshed, or the profanity.

Because the OR is a batshit crazy place to work. Full of sharp instruments, sharp voicesm verbal slaps, both mine and others.

And I would not work anywhere else.

Because this place, this is where we heal people.

Um, when I woke up this morning I was not intending on getting a website or relaunching my OR nursing blog on a new platform.

Oh, shit! What happened?

No, I was supposed and still am supposed to be doing statistics homework. Which I still have to do, by tomorrow night. Plenty of time, right?

My name is Kate DeVine. No, not really, but sometimes it behooves me to be anonymous. This will be a not safe for work blog, that means there will be graphic descriptions, and definitely be profanity. I mean, all the swears, so many fucking swears. And I will probably abuse people I work with. Names and details will be changed in order to comply with HIPAA. I will not name the town or corporation I work with. But the corporation will probably be abused too, if that makes you feel better.

I will be bringing over posts from my tumblr site of the same name. But I kind of tend to get lost on tumblr and that isn’t conducive to being prompt and timely with posts.

I’m also in graduate school and I’m hoping to use this blog as a way to blow off a little steam. I’m going to post Sundays and Fridays to start.

Shall we begin? Here’s hoping this goes well.