Nurses Week Day Four: Pockets!

Ever seen the posts that have been floating around for a while of "what's in my purse"
Well, luckily nurses don't carry purses.  Can you imagine?  Oh how annoying!!!!


But we DO have pockets.  Lots and Lots of pockets!!!!!


So whats in my pockets?????

Allow me to show you

so lets go left to right!

1. Penlight-supposed to be used to look at pupils.  Usually I use it to plug dying monitors and IV poles in without turning on the light and waking up my patient!

2. Permanent marker-multipurpose of course.  But frankly I mostly use it for labeling wounding dressings.

3. Dry erase marker-every patient room has a board with important info on it.  But do these boards ever have markers.  RARELY.  So I carry one of my own :)

4. CLICKY PEN (part 1) red, blue, green and black.  

5. The Backup Pen- black and boring, but just in case.  This is also the pen I loan to the people..aka drs who always say "Do you have a pen"

6. CLICKY PEN (part 2) pink, light blue, light green, and purple.  SOOO fun!  I bought the first pen and then decided I wanted funner colors 

7. Chap stick-the hospital air is crazy dry-so we slather this on all night long.

8. Extra alcohol wipes-I use at least 50 of these a night and there are almost always a few hanging out in my pockets

9. Caps- I have hundreds of these little plastic tops that you pop off medication vials.  Someday I'll make things with them but for now..they will collect in my pockets and get put in the ziplock bag of caps at the end of the night.

10. SMARTIES SMARTIES SMARTIES!!!!!!  I love these things.  And I always have them in my pockets.  You can always tell which nurses station I sat at through the night-because there will be a pile of smarties wrappers in the trash can.  Why do I love them so much-we will never know.  Some people drink coffee.  I eat smarties :)

11. Phone- I truly hate this thing.  Doctors, Lab, the ED, patients, patient families, the charge nurse.  EVERY ONE calls me on this thing.  Not to mention the alarms that sound from it throughout the night.  Oh well....thems is the breaks of bein a nurse

12.  PAPERS.  The little ones are report sheets.  This is what we use to give the next nurse report.  It goes through all the systems and all the important details.  The big sheet is my cheat sheet.  My to do list. Color coded of course.  Meds to give.  Procedures to complete.  Tasks that need to get done. Its ALL here!!!

And that is my pockets!!!!!

fellow nurses-what's in yours??

Be Happy Be Healthy