Bedpan Banter
Welcome to Bedpan Banter | The Human Side of Healthcare -- the podcast that feels like sitting at the nurses’ station swapping stories with your favorite coworkers. Hosted by the one and only Nurse Mike, this show goes beyond the textbooks and into the real, raw, and hilarious moments that make up nurse life.
Whether it’s unfiltered stories from the floor, emotional patient moments, or those laugh-until-you-cry shifts you’ll never forget... we’re talking about it all. Oh, and don’t worry, we’ll be sneaking in a few knowledge bombs you can actually use on the job.
If you're a nursing student, new grad, or seasoned pro who just needs to feel seen (and maybe laugh a little), you’re in the right place.
Bedpan Banter
Cleaning Bedpans, Setting Boundaries & Melanie Gomez's Nursing Journey to FNP
PICU nurse and social media personality Melanie shares her journey from med-surg to pediatric critical care, exploring the challenges of transition and her pursuit of becoming a Family Nurse Practitioner.
• Started as a med-surg nurse during COVID before transitioning to PICU after two years
• Experienced significant learning curve moving to pediatrics, especially managing family dynamics and developing critical thinking skills
• Currently pursuing Family Nurse Practitioner degree while working part-time in PICU
• Chose FNP over other specialties to broaden opportunities outside hospital settings
• Believes family-centered care with better parent education would transform pediatric healthcare
• Shares emotional story of a long-term patient whose birthday wish was simply to eat at a restaurant
• Emphasizes importance of connecting with coworkers to process emotional cases
• Recommends perspective-taking: "Even on your worst day as a nurse, your patients still probably have it worse"
Follow along with Melanie on IG & TikTok @cafeconscrubs! Don't forget to follow and subscribe, and remember, don't let the bedpans bite.
To submit your stories & comments, visit: https://simplenursing.com/podcast/
Welcome to Bedpan Banter with me Nurse Mike. Welcome back to another episode of Bedpan Banter, the official podcast here of Simple Nursing, where we discuss the human side of healthcare. With me today is Melanie, a PICU nurse and social media sensation. So what is going on? Welcome to the show hello, thanks for having me, of course so tell me about your journey as a nurse and really what you got started. Have you always been in picu?
Speaker 2:no, um, I actually started back in the covid days. I started as a med surge nurse in the adult world. I did that for a couple of years and then I finally applied to a PICU job that was just open online and got the job and I've been there ever since.
Speaker 1:Whoa, no way. So how long did you stay in med-surg?
Speaker 2:For about two years, I believe like two and a half.
Speaker 1:Were you pressured into med-surg?
Speaker 2:Because I know a lot of nursing professors and deans like, push you into med-surg. Because I know a lot of nursing professors and deans like, push you into med-surg. I know everyone's like drilling it. Yeah. No, I kind of had no other choice. Like I really wanted a job but, fun fact, it was actually an ICU position. But when I showed up for the interview the director was like, oh, I see that you're applying for an ICU job, but we don't take new grads into our ICU position, so you're going to MedSurgTelly.
Speaker 2:I'm like well, just my luck. So I ended up there because of that and also because I was applying to pediatric positions at the time, but no positions were really available during COVID, at least for me.
Speaker 1:So so you stayed two years there. Do you think that gave you like a really well-rounded view of nursing, or yeah?
Speaker 2:oh yeah, I learned so much like I was able to bring those skills on, to pick you for sure nice.
Speaker 1:And then, what do you think about pick you now? Do you love it, is it?
Speaker 2:I love it more now, but it was a hard transition really it was. It was hard like about that yeah my co-workers will tell me, like melanie, you remember that one time you stormed out of that room in tears saying who the heck got you into PICU. It was hard. It was hard. Pediatrics in itself it's like a whole other world.
Speaker 1:What was the biggest change? Because you're adult health right, what's the biggest change to working with kids now?
Speaker 2:well, now I'm in a critical care setting and then on top of that you're in pediatrics. So then there's like the huge learning curve for that plus, you know, developing my critical thinking. I didn't I mean med search. You do need it right, because you upgrade patients to the icu all the time, but it's just so different, much more high paced. It was really hard at first.
Speaker 1:And then they always say with pediatrics like, you're not only treating the patient themselves, but it's also the family, the parents, right, they hover a lot, oh the parents. Talk to me about this.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, that's like a whole other. Yeah, that's really hard to navigate.
Speaker 1:And then how do you manage and balance, because it's not just the adult person anymore, it's like a whole family unit now.
Speaker 2:It's hard. I mean, there are some families that they'll calm down with your personality. I'm never going to come onto a family all prejudiced, like, oh they're difficult. I already know they're difficult, so I'm going to be like, no, I never really have a hard time with them, but I've had friends who they've had to call security on the family because they're just insane. Whoa yeah.
Speaker 1:That's crazy. All right, so big question here have you ever been into like a verbal argument with the parents or physical altercation or anything, or is it just?
Speaker 2:I wouldn't say it was no, it wasn't physical, um, but it happened to be the home health nurse of the patient. This was like a chronic child that came into us, his trach was having issues and I'm trying to troubleshoot things and she's like, oh my god, like just yelling and like in my ear and I was like ma'am, like no. So I was like just calming down this lady, like I need to do my job, like you need to chill.
Speaker 1:Yeah, take a chill pill.
Speaker 2:So I did tell her that Afterwards the dad was like hey, she's just very scared, like whoa, you know, don't be like that.
Speaker 1:That's so funny, the dad's being the mediator, yeah and I'm like no, I understand, but she also.
Speaker 2:If she's a nurse, she would know that freaking out is out of the question.
Speaker 1:Like you, you can't yeah, so it sounds like you had to learn a lot of boundary setting yes especially with being in a new transition oh yeah is that something you had to learn, like boundary setting, uh, in med surge, when you were a new grad, or?
Speaker 2:yes, of course, because in med, adult med search, the patients themselves get a little slick. So you have to set boundaries with them a little slick, yeah, and then with their families too. But then in the pediatric world, like, especially as a new grad, it's so hard, I feel like just you develop that over time. Also, it helps if you have a good preceptor who's like hey, don't let them talk to you like that. Or hey, look, the situation shouldn't have happened, don't allow it next time. Or this is how you handle that next time. I think that helps a lot too. But at the beginning you're like okay, you know you don't want to step on anyone's toes, like it's the parents, so it's like, okay, like you know all right, so let's talk a little background.
Speaker 1:What got you into nursing like? Do you know All right, so let's talk a little background.
Speaker 2:What got you into nursing?
Speaker 2:Do you always think you wanted to be a nurse?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think during my lifetime I wanted to be one of two things either a music teacher or a nurse.
Speaker 2:And as I got older I realized I was leaning a lot more into the nursing role, especially like straight out of high school I made sure I had a job in health care my parents both have health care backgrounds and it wasn't until I started volunteering at children's summer camps and stuff like that that I grew more interested in the pediatric route, even though I didn't have an opportunity to be a pediatric nurse right off of school. But we had a child seize on us in one of these summer camps that I was volunteering at and I hated feeling like I didn't know what to do because I was a psych major at the time, like I didn't really know where I was going to go with my schooling, and I remember thinking, ok, no, like I need to go to nursing school, like I need to learn about something to know, like if this were to happen again, like I know what to do and that's pretty much what. Like that was my why for nursing school.
Speaker 1:So then, when you finally decided, okay, nursing, did you always know that you wanted to be, you know, go to a four-year university? Or did you go to associates route? Oh no, that was.
Speaker 2:I remember being so like, torn between like am I going to do my associates? What's best, what's like? I felt like I didn't know what to do. So I just did my associates in pre-nursing, and when it came time to decide, I had applied to florida international university but was missing a credit, so I would have had to wait a whole year. So, and they were bachelor programs. So I ended up finding out about west coast university and that's how I ended up going there, and now I'm there for my master's in fmp no way, man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you guys don't know, west coast is like one of the most elite but also most expensive yeah.
Speaker 2:So I always tell people, like, do your undergrad or your two years of your associate degree at a community college somewhere affordable. That way you're just paying for nursing school and even then they have a lot of scholarships that help out and stuff like that yeah, I want the opposite route, right I went associate's degree with okay like a public school.
Speaker 1:Basically it was like four grand for two years. So you mentioned that you're an fnp family nurse practitioner school. Yeah, which a lot of students. I think that's like the top three. After you get your license as an rn. Um, how do you, are you working as an fnp student and so I'm still a PICU nurse.
Speaker 2:I did, uh, step down to part-time so now I'm working two days out of the week. That way I leave room for clinicals, because we have to do about 18 hours a week for a total of a hundred by the end of the eight week term. So between that and studying for school, like I just figured, part-time would be best. But yeah, I'm still working. I still need the money.
Speaker 1:Is it really hard to balance both?
Speaker 2:It's not as hard as nursing school, I'll tell you that. But because you already have that prior knowledge, that is really helpful. It's just a different level of thinking, like now you're changing your hat into a provider, which I find really hard, and then it's like more in-depth knowledge.
Speaker 1:All right, it's very controversial. A lot of new grad nurses want to jump into FNP. Do you think that there needs to be a foundational knowledge or a few years as a nurse before going to nurse practitioner?
Speaker 2:It's a very controversial question but I don't have a straight answer for that. But I don't have a straight answer for that why? Because I have been in the PICU for three years. So anyone would assume, okay, she's doing her FNP to continue in the pediatric route. Well, I'm not.
Speaker 2:I don't see myself as a pediatric provider. I'm doing it to open more opportunities for myself, that I know I will receive training and eventually get you know, get to the level that FNPs are at wherever you know they work. Will it help if I have experience in that particular specialty? Yes, and sometimes I wish, okay, like if I had been interested in something else, maybe I could have, you know, dedicated more time to that. That way I'm a more experienced FNP. But I've spoken to plenty of nurse practitioners. Regardless of the schooling, regardless of the experience that you get in bedside or whatever, you're never going to be 100% prepared for the FNP or the NP role. You're going to learn a lot on the job, just like nursing, like we learned most of lot on the job, just like nursing, like we learned most of it on the job. So that's my answer to that question.
Speaker 1:Okay. So speaking of experience, pick you nurse. What are some things that school didn't prepare you for for being a pediatric ICU nurse?
Speaker 2:Definitely the family dynamics. Nobody prepares you for how it truly is going to feel like when you're doing something and you have the mom or the dad telling you like you're the worst person ever. Why are you doing this to my child? And yada, yada, yada Like because they don't understand what we have to do. And I'm not saying every parent is like that, but the vast majority like that, but the vast majority. And then there is the emotional aspect of it which the fact that I was already a nurse for some time prior helped me already develop like my coping skills and like compartmentalize properly.
Speaker 2:but we're dealing with children now right so it's a lot harder, like it's so different studying about nursing in school and reading it off a book versus or being a student. Shadowing a nurse during clinical rotation versus actually being the nurse, taking all that emotional responsibility headfirst it's been hard.
Speaker 1:So speaking of it being emotionally tolling, and you know tough, how do you mentally prepare for all this before going into your shifts?
Speaker 2:I'm personally. I pray a lot and I blast music. I just get myself in a really good mood and stay positive because I mean that's all that you can do right. And I feel like if I were to have a rough patient, a rough family dynamic, at least I'm in a good mood to handle that, versus like just being anxious and miserable. Don't get me wrong when I first started working in the PICU, I was anxious. I my face broke out, I had severe acne, it was. It was bad because I really didn't know what to expect. Versus now, it's like all right, you're kind of familiar, but you still don't know what to expect. Versus now it's like all right, you're kind of familiar, but you still don't know what you're gonna expect. But it's different now.
Speaker 1:And I think that's something that any new grad or someone transitioning in practice, like you did med search to pick you yeah it's like there's always that learning curve, you know yeah, even though you've been that nurse for two years and you have that knowledge transitioning to something new.
Speaker 2:Anytime you do something new, you have to give yourself a little bit of grace period exactly because you're not going to know everything and the way they did did things in my med search floor, they it doesn't work the same way in my PICU. The providers are different. A lot of new faces protocols.
Speaker 1:It's a lot of new stuff so we're talking earlier about you being a PICU nurse and all the emotional toll on it. What made you want to become a nurse practitioner and have that transfer?
Speaker 2:Some really difficult shifts in med side. And then, once I started the program, the FNP program, I realized oh wait, now I'm going to have a lot more responsibility.
Speaker 1:You're the provider. Now You're the one that orders stuff. You're the provider, yeah.
Speaker 2:So there's that scary aspect to it, but I feel like I wanted more opportunities outside and away from bedside. Bedside is special to me. I you know I'm a yapper, I'm a social person. I love talking to my patients I bedside, but it takes a toll. It really physically mentally, emotionally yeah I don't see myself doing that for a very long time yeah, like 20 30 years yeah and I praise the nurses that still do it 20 years plus, like that's just their calling, that's what they see themselves doing.
Speaker 2:But I wanted to go back to school and see if I could find something else that I could still be passionate about and put forth all my effort, but not be like burnt out so when was that bridge?
Speaker 1:because you're already working as a nurse, you're paying down student loans and things like that then you're going to be taking on more student loans for fmp, okay. So when was that tipping point? Did you like?
Speaker 2:because you didn't always know you wanted to be an fn, like a nurse practitioner no, I didn't know, and it was through meeting a lot of fmps, specifically in family, seeing what they did on the daily, especially here in miami. You have so many opportunities with beauty, you know beauty industry cosmetics, aesthetics.
Speaker 2:Um, I was actually talking to my Botox lady. I don't go anymore, but I'm trying to save, okay, yeah, but I was talking to her and I she's a DMP. I don't think I'll go back to school for that, but I was looking into that, but I'm like no, no, no.
Speaker 2:Msn is good for me, but she has so many more opportunities. She still engages with patients, she has her own clientele and she's living her best life. I want a smoother life. I want to settle down, have kids. I don't want to be stressed out about my bedside job or even like because some of my friends are like, well, you can stay in peds, um, and work inpatient at the hospital, since you've already worked there for three years. I'm like those mps do not have a life really they do.
Speaker 2:It's a lot of responsibility like you're having to present during rounds all the time it's. I think I've done my fair share of critical care nursing. I think I'm ready for the next chapter.
Speaker 1:And so the next chapter. Do you foresee yourself as a nurse practitioner in cosmetics, beauty, or is it a office like a? Definitely not an office like an urgent care style.
Speaker 2:No you know I haven't tried the urgent care. I was actually there recently. I had to take one of my friends to the urgent care and I was like this is kind of cool because it's fast paced, but not I mean, it was also late at night, but I haven't. There's just so many opportunities and so many avenues you can go nursing. So I've always been curious about aesthetics as well, but I feel like I want to volunteer, shadow, do stuff like that and see if that's something for me. I feel like I would really enjoy it.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you're going for FNP family nurse practitioner, but there are multiple different specialties as a nurse practitioner, like you know psych and pediatrics.
Speaker 2:Pediatrics. Can you explain?
Speaker 1:the other areas that you even considered.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I considered family NP because it was more broad, and I feel like you'll hear a lot of people say that, no, I just want to expand, broaden my horizons, and that's truly why I went for the family NP To stay in hospitals. Nowadays they are requiring acute care NP.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you can be an acute care NP, work in the ER, work in the ICU.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And you didn't want to do that? No, because I felt like it would tie me down to a hospital setting, which is what I was trying to stay away from. However, I do have a friend who she's doing her FMP. She's about to finish. She works in PICU, like I do, but she wants to specialize in ped pediatrics. So what she's going to do is she's going to go back for a pediatric certification that takes about a year. So let's say you go into FMP, you find a specialty, a niche that you really like. You can go back and certify in that specialty, whether it's P, it's acute care, um psych, a lot of psych nurse practitioners now I have three friends that are going for psych mp great career path right now.
Speaker 1:There's so many openings, a lot of yeah for it right now so yeah, there's a lot of options okay, transitioning back to you as a pq nurse, pediatric icu. You were a med surgeon nurse for two years, then transitioned. How was that transition?
Speaker 2:It was a huge learning curve. I oftentimes felt like I wasn't good enough, even though I felt pretty confident by the second year in adult med-surg with my skills. But pediatric is just this whole other ballgame. But the good thing was that there was a residency program that I applied to.
Speaker 1:Nice, okay, what is that exactly for people that aren't familiar?
Speaker 2:So during the residency program it's a 16-week program you have class time, so lecture time.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:And yeah, and it was really helpful, honestly, and you have a nurse that you shadow for those three months, Wow. So during that time you become familiar with the nurse, the unit, the kinds of patients that come in and pretty much everyone that you're going to be working with eventually.
Speaker 1:Was there like a contract you had to sign Because that's a lot of training? Did you have to stay there for like a year or two?
Speaker 2:No contract that I remember.
Speaker 1:Whoa, that's pretty good.
Speaker 2:yeah, because like probably gonna watch this and laugh.
Speaker 1:Well, got you the craziest part because a lot of community hospitals they don't have these preceptorship uh, which is really helpful, especially as a new grad or transfer oh yeah and so you're just kind of thrown to the wolves.
Speaker 2:Sometimes that's how I felt in adult med search really there was no preceptorship in med surgery there was, but it was like a month or two, because they were so desperate to get more nurses. It was the height of covid. A lot of nurses had left and there were too many patients, so they were like hey, do you feel confident? All right, these are your patients. Like yeah it.
Speaker 1:That was pretty brutal right on the deep end. Yeah, all right. So million dollar question if you can do one change to pediatric care or PICU nationwide to affect all the health care, what would it be?
Speaker 2:I think family-centered care, providing family-centered care and with that I mean heavily educate parents so that they're more aware and more helpful to nurses during the PICU stay. Like a lot of the time the parents have no idea what's going on with their child. They feel like they have to be put into a corner or else they'll get in the way of the care because they don't know. They don't want to mess anything up, but if we're taking the time to educate them and tell them hey, this is what's going on, this is why we're going to do, is why we're going to do this and we're going to do that, the nurses play a huge role in that too. Like, don't just walk in the room and give the med because you don't want to wake anybody up, cause I've had, uh, friends tell me that the parents have woken up saying, oh, but nobody's told me, like what medications my child is getting, or whatever that's gotta be. Like what medications my child is getting or whatever.
Speaker 2:That's got to be like. Sometimes we don't want to because they're sleeping, especially if you're a night shift nurse. So I get that. But a lot of the times if you just educate them, you won't always have to wake them up because they'll know. Okay, if I hear Melanie walk in the room, I know she's giving this medication, this medication, and it's going to help my kid do this, this and that. Just this, this and that, like just education. I feel like a lot of the times that's lacking.
Speaker 1:I can already see it now, where it can be super simple, right, yeah, parents come in, family comes in. That's like, hey, parents, you're going to watch this five minute video.
Speaker 2:And then here's a pamphlet, and then guess what Resources?
Speaker 1:Yeah, here's like a one pager of like when the medications are given and how the rounding goes, roundings go, so you can be an active player.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've noticed that we do that. Let's do it, man. Yeah, I've noticed we do it in the discharge papers. I don't know if you notice like it's a fat pamphlet with like summarizing the disease, summarizing, uh, the medications. It's like that's what should be given to them day one literally a packet.
Speaker 1:It doesn't have to be anything fancy, okay. So tell us about a story, since you've worked in various settings in health care. Uh, tell us about a story that's just really heavily impacted you and helped you become the nurse you are today well, right off the top of my head, I can think of one, because there's many.
Speaker 2:Uh. This patient was in the hospital for months. He's 22 years old. For months, for months, he without giving away too much information, he basically received a stem cell transplant, had history of sickle cell disease, ended up getting a stem cell transplant was a rough recovery and he kept asking when am I gonna go home? When am I gonna go home? He asked the doctors. Am I going home in april? Am I going home? Go home? He asked the doctors. Am I going home in April? Am I going home in May?
Speaker 2:He actually went home recently, but on the day of his birthday he asked to go outside. We had to disconnect him from specific machines in order to do that. Like we had to plan around that so that he could just sit outside for his birthday, get some sun. And I was his nurse that day and I asked him I was like, hey, if you had one wish in the world, like one place you'd wanna be at or one thing you'd wanna do right now, what would it be? And he said I wanna be at a restaurant having my favorite meal, a cheeseburger and fries.
Speaker 2:And that was so like wow, wow, something so simple that we take for granted. We can go eat whenever we want, we're not stuck in a hospital. Like something that he can't have because of his disease and the limitations, like he was barely eating as it is and all he wanted was like to be able to have a full meal and not have that negatively impact him. That's all he wanted on his birthday. Ever since that day I realized okay, like you, really, you see these patients in and out in the hospital and it can almost become a routine. But sometimes you have to stop and think, okay, like this is all they've seen for a few months, like their prison kind of so you have to.
Speaker 2:As a nurse, you play a huge role in that, whether it's decorating their room or like singing with them or coming in with something funny. Maybe they won't find it funny because he was hard to crack, but eventually they appreciate you and they'll smile when they see you and and you make their stay a lot better it's just like a reminder that nurses are a glimmer of hope yeah, and even on your worst day as a nurse, your patients still probably have it worse, you know exactly and I just saw a recent post that was.
Speaker 1:Like you know, it's a privilege to be stuck in traffic it's a privilege to be late somewhere, because there are patients like this right that are on the verge of like never I haven't seen their family in months.
Speaker 2:They've been in the hospital for weeks have tubes, yeah, or sometimes the family themselves. They have other siblings that they have to care for. They have to go to their job and they can't be there all that. They can't be present in the room with them all the time, so you're literally their entertainment too like it just shows how big of an impact you, as the nurse, could be oh yeah, on the patients all right, melanie.
Speaker 1:so we had a few viewers sent in specific questions for you. So question number one from Brandino from Chicago Illinois Do you ever go to your car and cry your eyes out about some of the patients you've taken care of?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, all the time, really. Well, no, there was this one patient in particular that I didn't cry until I got home and started telling my parents about what had happened, and that's when I was like that was another patient that was there forever.
Speaker 1:Oh, it was a long term patient.
Speaker 2:Came in for a cough ended up being cancer. It was like really sad.
Speaker 2:And you know we bathe our patients daily, or you should, whether it's day shift or night shift, and we had wrist restraints on this patient because they kept trying to tug at the lines and stuff and you know, for cancer the she had a port, so we couldn't um, and when I finished the bath and I'm going on to reapply the, the restraint, she just goes like that to me and she just extends her hand like she was very little it's and that hit me because I was like you're only this old, because I know a lot of my co-workers know who I'm talking about and this is all you know you spent your holidays here. You you're even used to the wrist restraint.
Speaker 1:This is in pediatrics. This is in PICU. Oh wow.
Speaker 2:And it hit me. I was like why? And I was pretty, fairly new too to the unit, so that was like the first time that I was like whoa, like I was not expecting to cry Because I feel like I'm pretty tough at holding it in and keeping it inside. But I got home and I started telling my parents you know, this happened. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:And then cry Like cry Very bad.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it does happen.
Speaker 1:And kind of going off of that we have. Kevin from Nairobi had a few questions. How do you handle emotionally tough cases involving children?
Speaker 2:You truly trauma bond with the people you work with. So something that's helped me a lot is talk to my co-workers. Like I've approached many nurses that I work with and they pick you and I'm like, hey, this is happening, like isn't this sad? Or you know, what should I do, like it's affecting me or I, and honestly, some of the best advice I've received have been from the nurses that I work with who have been probably doing it a little bit longer than I have, or way longer than I have. Um, yeah, talking it out really that's your number one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, especially, I need to talk it out. Yeah, you're a yapper, I'm a yapper. Did your hospital have resources for traumatic events?
Speaker 2:that's or do like if they do, I don't know of them, but I'm sure they do no, but it's funny because, like, that's something we included in our new grad prep course.
Speaker 1:We have sat down with experienced nurses and we're basically going through like how to navigate things outside of skills.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like trauma and then like time management and anxiety.
Speaker 2:That is so important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's why I think it's so important that you connect and, yeah, like you said, trauma bond with your coworkers because they know exactly what they get you. I mean, you can even explain it to your partner or you're like you cried with your parents, but they don't really understand.
Speaker 2:They cry with you and they're like, oh my God, like they look at you with these eyes like this is what you do for a living, like how, how?
Speaker 1:so with somebody who gets you, it's like, yeah, they feel your pain, but it's almost like, okay, it's part of the job, like, but you could still count on me, you can still talk to me, I'm there for you you mentioned a lot of great nuggets of knowledge here, but a few key takeaways, um, I think the biggest one is just knowing how grateful you are and how really centering it can be as being a nurse taking care of long-term patients or patients that have been there forever, because as a nurse, we're there only for 12 hours and then we get to go home. Yeah, some of your patients are there for 24 hours. You know they can't, especially that patient that was there for weeks and even months on end.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they want to go home. Right, they can't.
Speaker 1:And so just knowing that your toughest days are still not as tough as some of your patients. So remember, as nurses we have tough days, but just remember it's a privilege to have those tough days because we get to go home and our patients don't, and it can be very heavy, so remember to put yourself first as well and talk it out with your co-workers who've been in the trenches with you. Your work wives, yeah, so thank you so much, melanie, for joining us uh today, and where can viewers find you?
Speaker 2:they can find me on cafe con scrubs both instagram and tiktok cafe con Scrubs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, instagram and TikTok I love it. All right guys. Thanks so much for watching. Please don't forget to follow and subscribe and share. And remember, don't let the bedpans bite.