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A day in the life of a Med / Surg Nurse:

Arrive at the hospital @ 6:30am. Get patient assignments. Sometimes you have 4 or as many as 6 patients assigned to you. Sometimes they're all on the same side of the floor sometimes you're split between two hallways. Next, you get report from the nite nurse. She tells you all about what's going on with your patients as of that nite. You may have to follow up on various chores she just didn't have time to finish or attempt to start. If that's so you're already behind in your day. She also inform you if someone wasn't doing well at nite and whether you need to keep a close eye on that particular patient during the day.

Now let's begin the day. You check the order bin to see if there are any new or existing orders for each of your patients. Now you browse your patients rooms and see if they are still breathing and or whether they have any problems you need to attend to right away. Someone may be having trouble breathing, someone may have pulled out their IV, someone may be screaming that they had no help all nite and they are ready to leave the floor. You may even have someone who decides to code on you right then and there.

If you're lucky enough to have a quiet start to your day you then peruse to see if all the vital signs on the charts are there and that blood sugars were taken. You write them down and scan them to see if you need to contact any doctors with patients who have high blood pressure, very low or very high Blood Sugars, or if they are satting low in their oxygenation levels. If they are having any problems you need to contact the doctor and / or intervene to make sure they don't get worse. You need to keep monitoring their vital signs closely while putting in a call for the doctor. YOU MUST STAY WITH THIS PATIENT till they are stable. In some instances you might call for backup either from another nurse or by calling a rapid response team or by even calling a code. So now you may be behind in your days work.

Assuming the above doesn't happen you now check lab values on the computer for patients who had their blood drawn that nite. If they're available you write them down and pass along to the doctor any values that are out of wack.

Now you move towards giving out the morning meds. You take meds out of the pyxis (the med computer) for one patient at a time, making sure they are the right meds for the right person at the right time. You go into the patients room check their ID band if you haven't worked with

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