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21 " Simpson calculated that if an inpatient nurse sees an average of even just four patients during a twelve-hour shift, in twenty years she will care for more than 11,000 patients and families. A clinic nurse who sees ten patients per shift will care for nearly 43,000 patients. "
― Alexandra Robbins , The Nurses: A Year of Secrets, Drama, and Miracles with the Heroes of the Hospital
22 " Molly had heard that some staff nurses treated agency nurses poorly, but she was surprised now that it was happening to her. “If the agency nurses weren’t there, the staff nurses would have a much higher patient ratio,” she explained. “We make their job easier, but they’re rude and unfair.” Another agency nurse had told Molly that one day she had arrived at an ER that had a total of seven patients. The charge nurse assigned her all seven. When the nurse asked why, the charge nurse said, “You’re agency. You’re getting paid more than us. You can handle it. "
23 " Molly had no desire to be a floor nurse. At every hospital where she had worked, there was a rivalry between the ER and the other nursing departments. “We think they’re lazy and they think we’re bitches,” Molly said. One of the most frequent complaints ER nurses had against floor nurses was that floor nurses tried to avoid getting new patients as shift change approached. "
24 " Rather than addressing the nurses being spread too thin to provide care that is good enough, they assume the nurses aren’t coddling the patients adequately enough.” What annoys nurses is that the concept of “patient experience” has morphed patients into customers and nurses into “rank and file” automatons. Some hospital job postings advertise that they are looking for nurses with “good customer service skills” as their "
25 " 1980s, when a study of Intensive Care Units revealed that “the most significant factor associated with excessive mortality was the degree of nurse-physician communication "
26 " When nurse-doctor relations are poor, patients die unnecessarily. "
27 " Yes, we are taught to be patient advocates, but we are also taught to be a check on the doctor. The problem with that is we’re only taught to see docs as adversaries.” Nurses “never get a good understanding of the stresses and strains of what it’s like to be a physician. "
28 " how do doctors and nurses learn to behave and negotiate with each other? "