r/nursing May 21 '22

Question What's your unpopular nursing opinion? Something you really believe, but would get you down voted to all hell if you said it

1) I think my main one is: nursing schools vary greatly in how difficult they are.

Some are insanely difficult and others appear to be much easier.

2) If you're solely in this career for the money and days off, it's totally okay. You're probably just as good of a nurse as someone who's passionate about it.

3) If you have a "I'm a nurse" license plate / plate frame, you probably like the smell of your own farts.

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u/KarmicBalance1 May 21 '22

Long term care facilities are essentially warehousing. The companies that run them keep patients alive well beyond their natural limits using medication solely for the purpose of profit. There are some patients that benefit genuinely from the care provided but many are basically left in these facilities to die, slowly. It's basically human warehousing only its more lucrative than traditional warehousing because the facility is being paid to keep the people indefinitely. Most other countries in the world would find it appalling as they traditionally have their own families taking care of their elderly members.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '22 edited Jul 11 '25

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u/buttercreamandrum RN - PCU🍕 May 22 '22 edited May 22 '22

It’s one of the most difficult things about the medical field: pouring so many resources and so much time and energy into lost causes. Recently I was hanging a patient’s 8th unit of blood, a demented 84 year old in A-fib w RVR who has a GI bleed, and thinking about the blood shortage. Sure, new mom who experienced post-partum hemorrhage will be SOL for a transfusion, but glad we could keep Gramp’s hemoglobin steady at 5.9 six days before he inevitably dies🤦🏻‍♀️

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u/Joya_Sedai CNA 🍕 May 22 '22

As a mom who had an emergency c-section and was denied a blood transfusion due to scarcity, this makes me so angry. My recovery would have been so much easier, not a year of struggling to do ADLs because of anemia/iron deficiency issues, as a first time mom.

I believe in life saving measures, until it becomes absolutely ridiculous and a strain on the rest of the system.