A Day in the Life of a Nurse: Typical Daily Activities and Duties
A nurse is a highly trained medical caregiver who offers advice on outpatient care while helping doctors develop treatment plans that’ll support the healing of patients through procedures and operations. If you’re pursuing a career in nursing but unsure what a typical day looks like, this article takes a closer look at the daily life of a nurse to help you fully understand how much these wonderful people do.
What do nurses do on a typical day?
One thing to note is that nurses spend about 90 percent of their day on their feet. They move from the clinic room to the consulting room to the patient room with a happy demeanor full of compassion to keep patients calm and comfortable. To have this emotional intelligence and discipline level, nursing has to be a passion.
For this reason, anyone interested in this profession is advised to go through some form of counseling to ascertain their compatibility. If you’re not yet in college and would love to go through career guidance counseling services, you can gain top college counseling services from any college around you. There are also some free college counseling services offered for freshmen in selective colleges that make use of a unique approach to help you find the right fit for a career whilst considering your passion and academic strengths as a high school student.
On that note, here are a few things nurses do on a typical day.
They receive patients
When a patient enters the hospital, they’re first offered nursing services before seeing the doctor. The nurse is the first to hear about their concerns, and they help the patient record all ailments before they meet with the doctor.
They manage patients’ records
Managing patients’ records is another thing nurses do on a typical day. This is done mostly when nurses are changing shifts. The new nursing team will read all the records to understand how best to care for the patient. During the shift, they record any new and important information to help the next team take adequate care.
They handle drug administration
Doctors rarely administer medication to patients, so when a doctor prescribes a medication for a patient, the nurse typically receives this medication request and administers it to the patient. After the drug is administered, the nurse will study the patient’s reaction to the drug to know if they’re at risk of an allergic reaction. In addition to drugs, nurses help with administering intravenous fluids and antibiotics.
What impacts the daily routines of nurses?
The duties of every nurse depend largely on the type of setting in which they find themselves. Other factors affected by their specific location include the kinds of patients they treat and the number of hours they’ll work. As a nurse, you might find yourself working in hospitals, attending walk-ins, providing personal care, and working in at-home care clinics, amongst other places.
Nurses in hospitals are most likely to work 24-hour shifts to provide round-the-clock care to patients suffering from both acute and serious conditions. A typical day in the hospital starts and ends with nurses handing overall information of patients to the next team of nurses to ensure smooth treatment and caretaking.
A registered nurse (RN) provides care to patients in emergency transport vehicles, which is done hand in hand with other emergency medical technicians. Depending on the emergency, a nurse might need to work additional hours when managing a single patient.
As for walk-in clinics, they offer nurses more regular working hours since all appointments are scheduled around full-time work hours. There might be some emergencies, which will require additional work hours, but these are rare.
To sum up, there’s no denying that the most highlighted medical worker in many movies and television shows is the doctor. Still, it may surprise you to know that nurses usually come into contact with patients the most. Outpatient care has greatly benefited from the service and dedication of many nurses all around the world.