Post Author: Debbie Moore-Black, RN

Debbie Moore-Black is a nurse who blogs at Do Not Resuscitate.

Debbie Moore-Black is a nurse who blogs at Do Not Resuscitate.

Perfect nurse. Perfect manager. Perfect puppet.

Conditions
August 13, 2019

Perfect nurse.

Perfect manager.

Perfect puppet.

An ICU physician once told me: Nurse managers have a life cycle of a mosquito.

Fast and furious

And then gone.

Deleted until the next one shows up.

It was the perfect ICU.

Twenty-five beds.

Dynamic intensivists. Phenomenal.

And they respected us nurses and collaborated with us. We had perfect cerebral perfusion together.

Experienced ICU nurses who knew what to do like clockwork — teaching the younger new nurses. Teaching them the facts of ICU. …

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Remembering a physician, suddenly taken away

Conditions
June 25, 2019

Our 20-bed ICU finally captured 10 intensivists — all board-certified in critical care medicine. We were fortunate enough to have one of these doctors in our ICU 24-7.

Of course, they all practiced professionally with expertise.

But I remembered this one the most: Dr. Jason McKenzie (name changed for privacy).

He easily became our friend and “go-to” person.

Clocking in at night and finding out that Dr. J was our doc, would give me …

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A love-hate relationship with nursing

Conditions
June 6, 2019

If you went to go to a museum in New York City and saw a live heart encased in glass, still pumping and pulsating — it would be my heart, shredded into a thousand pieces all in disarray. But it still would be pulsating. This describes my life as a nurse.

Nursing was a vacuum that sucked me dry and left me dangling with nothing more to give. Three years left …

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Nursing’s newest problem: The young eating the old

Policy
June 3, 2019

In 1976, we couldn’t wait to be nurses. Our starched white dresses with the nurse caps and stripes symbolized our graduation status as we were called one by one to receive our diploma and a rose.

We took an oath to care for the sick, to be professional, to critically think, to respect doctors and to respect patients and family members.

And to respect each other.

It was the age before computers. We …

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Nurses Week. Always and forever.

Policy
May 4, 2019

I have to work tonight. It’s Saturday. And I don’t want to go in. It’s springtime, the skies are blue, birds chirping, and the flowers show off their magnificent colors.

But it’s Saturday. And along comes being a nurse. We have mandatory weekends, mandatory holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving and Easter and Independence Day and Memorial Day.

Mandatory.

And even on my day off when I get a real nights sleep, I think …

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A nurse’s downfall was telling the truth

Conditions
April 21, 2019

These events happened over 18 years ago. Some content has been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty. Searching for positive changes in the health care industry. We are not a number, and the patients are not a number.

I’m not good at lying. My eyes go to the left or look downward, and I start to stutter and pause. There is no eye contact, and I fall deep into …

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My battle against the nurse’s cap

Policy
February 10, 2019

Florence Nightingale was among the first nurses who started wearing a nurse’s cap.

The cap was derived by nuns and represented those caring for the sick. Hair was neatly tightened into a bun and covered by the cap.
Back then becoming a nurse was typically seen as a female profession, but men were allowed to become nurses too. In 1930, only one percent of RNs nationwide were male.

Growing up in the 1950s …

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A lesson in never giving up

Conditions
January 18, 2019

Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets and Sesame Street, died at the age of 53. His diagnosis was toxic shock syndrome/streptococcus pneumonia — a deadly bacterial infection.

We were on vacation when we heard the news: The genius who opened the imaginations and hearts of our children … maybe you too … was gone. We were devastated and saddened that the magic Muppet man had died.

One year later, our ICU admitted …

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Go quiet into the night

Conditions
January 2, 2019

I know what you’re thinking: She’s cold-hearted, cruel, and unkind.

But am I? Or are you?

Grandma Lilly is 87-years-old and in the ICU. She’s on a ventilator with her wrists restrained to the side of the bed. Grandma can barely see because her eyes are puffy: scleral edema. And her heart races: 140 beats per minute. Her blood pressure is low and Levophed and vasopressin drips are ordered.

Her family can’t talk …

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The secret life of a nurse

Conditions
August 3, 2018

This is based on a true story. The name and some details of the events have been changed. 

She was the smarter nurse who floated to ICU, to CVRU, to CCU. She could handle any crisis: balloon pumps, CRRT, open-heart patients, respiratory distress, code blues — anything.

Sandy was quiet. She didn’t really have any nurse friends. She was a loner.

But we could depend on her to take the most difficult assignments.

She …

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Comfort in my final hours

Conditions
May 13, 2018

My name is Lucy.

I have stage IV liver cancer. I wanted everything done — even though the doctors told me this disease is terminal. My family, my church and my friends were praying for “the cure.”

Though I believed in God and the hereafter, I wasn’t ready to go. 74-years-old with beautiful children, grandchildren, and a great-granddaughter.

I woke up confused. In the background — wherever I was — I could hear …

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Texting and driving: what happens every day in America

Conditions
April 2, 2018

Jenna had it all: She was smart, pretty, inquisitive and popular, with just one more year until she graduated from high school.

She was at the top of her class and couldn’t wait until high school was over, and she could become a pediatrician just like her dad. One day, Jenna would be an MD.

“One day at a time,” her parents always told her, even though she wanted to rush to …

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My husband was dying. I was being ignored.

Conditions
January 25, 2018

It was a long December.

A few years ago, my husband of 37 years got his death sentence: recurrence of liver cancer with mets to his lungs and lymph nodes.

He had a “Whipple” — a surgical procedure for pancreatic cancer — on Dec 24, 2015, and the surgeon discovered liver cancer too. So it was a 16-hour surgery. We were told he might die on the table.

His eyes haunted me as …

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I’ll never forget the eyes of a 6-year-old sexual assault victim

Conditions
November 23, 2017

Patsy loved playing bingo every Wednesday night. Her boyfriend of three years loved watching her daughter Jenna who was a tiny and pretty six-year-old her momma called “princess.”

Even though they weren’t related, Jenna called Patsy’s boyfriend “Uncle Billy” at her mother’s behest.

And Uncle Billy made Jenna shyer and quieter than she usually was. He’d walk in on those Wednesday nights and demand a big hug and kiss on the cheek …

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What man’s best friend taught me during a patient’s death

Conditions
November 13, 2017

Years ago in a 15-bed acute medical-surgical ICU, the nursing supervisor contacted me about a special assignment. Once I knew what it was, I said, “Absolutely.”

We were about to admit a patient in his 40s with end-stage AIDS/HIV. He asked to be a DNR, but his MD wanted to admit him to the ICU for close monitoring. But the patient had a special request. Even with IV antibiotics and pain …

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A nurse shares who she really is

Conditions
October 4, 2017

How do I tell you who I am in a couple of paragraphs?

Well, I was born in 1955, so that makes me 61 years old. My namesake is probably movie star and America’s sweetheart Debbie Reynolds.

My maternal grandfather was straight from Italy; my paternal grandfather was straight from Ireland. Both crossed the Atlantic and landed on Ellis Island in New York Harbor. It was the promised land.

So, that means I …

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A nurse returns from vacation. And she’s thankful to the ICU she came back to.

Conditions
September 14, 2017

I’m in the ICU and was just back from an incredible tropical vacation. Nine days of vegging out on the beach. The glistening ocean was just steps away from the five-star hotel I was staying in, where doormen greeted me with fruity daiquiris and a staff that couldn’t wait to serve my every whim.

I was in paradise, and far, far away from the reality of my day-to-day existence as an …

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A nurse was attacked in the emergency department. This is her story.

Conditions
August 14, 2017

Victim: Female nurse, age 25

Time: circa 1980

Place: A hospital in a sleepy Southern town with fifty beds, six emergency department beds, one nurse, one doctor and one secretary.

It was an unusually quiet Friday night in this small emergency department.

We all knew Friday was “party day”: pay day, play day, alcohol, pills, drugs, loud music and lots of really bad decisions.

Not only did we cover the entire city, but we also …

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Who is alive: man or machine?

Conditions
July 27, 2017

He had cardiomyopathy and CHF for over 20 years. At the time, doctors told him he could die at any time. That was 20 years ago. His EF was 10 percent — barely livable.

Two decades later, this admit kept him on a see-saw with respiratory distress, a bad heart, bad lungs, atrial fibrillation with RVR and heart rate in the 140s all day long. He progressed from nasal cannula to …

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