Respect Nurses!

They Are More Important Than You Think!

Nurses work everywhere, not just in hospitals and are on the fore front of patient care. They know more about patient needs than doctors do. Below are some good information and tips to help patients interact better with them:

1. Nurses are patients primary care giver, not the doctor.
2. Nurses are closer to patients than doctors.
3. Nurses help you navigate your way through the health care system.
4. Nurses not doctors manage patient’s pain.
5. A good nurse patient ratio is 1 nurse to 5 - 6 patients. In a critical care environment it should be 1 nurse to 2 patients.
6. Patients should tell the nurse the whole truth. Patients should not lie to nurses. Patient often lie about cigarettes, medications, supplements, alcohol, exercise. Remember, nurses are not judging you; they just need the truth to give the doctors the right information to provide the best care for you.
7.  If a nurse tells a patient to consider getting a second opinion from what the doctor tells you, do it because nurses advocate for patients, not the doctors they work with.
8. There are good and bad times to speak to nurses. 7 am is a bad time due to change of shift interruption, which can break down communication. 10 am is also a bad time because in acute care settings, this is medication delivery time, which is vital to patient safety and prevention of medication errors. Good down times to speak to them are between 3 pm and 3 am in the morning.
9. Nurses can make patient tests and injections less painful. Just ask them nicely and they can use numbing cream to make it less painful.
10. When nurses tell patients not to eat anything before a test or after midnight on the day of a test, patients should be obedient and don’t eat anything including even chewing gum because it gets air bubbles inside the body, which affect the test results.
11. People should drink 3 glasses of water before having blood drawn to make their arteries easier for nurses to find.

Are you interested in becoming a nurse? If you are, information about a bachelor degree in nursing online is available.