Murphy's Law of Nursing

As a commuting nurse, here are a few things I've discovered about fellow commuters and nurses.

1) If you have two refrigerators in the lounge, and you put your bag in an empty crisper drawer, someone will take it out and put it on the very back shelf of an extremely full fridge, and it will be the last shelf you check before you manage to find it again.

2) Your patients manage to wake up and cry, drop their oxygen levels, and generally misbehave at the same time.

3) If you have a badge reader for the parking garage and are running on time (if not a couple of minutes late), inevitably a random visitor won't read the "employees only" sign and will decide to just sit in the entry without asking someone for help or to badge them through so they can get back out again.

4) If "annoying noises" (i.e. rattling cars, squeaks, etc.) get on your nerves, you will be assigned to work next to a nurse who reads on the internet while her babies cry and their alarms ring unattended until either you say something, silence the alarms, or fix the problem.

5) If you have to work nights, you won't sleep well when your upstairs neighbor decides it's a fine day to storm around the house like coming through the joists is a great idea. That and they will go up and down the stairs outside of the bedroom window such that OTHER neighbors who don't live under or adjacent to them comment on the noise of their footfall.

6) In six lanes of traffic, when you're cruising along at a comfortable speed, some random driver will decide it's fun to get in your lane and go 20 mph slower than you. Then, they won't get over when you're behind them and other traffic is trying desperately to get around them. Whatever happened to the "slower traffic keep right" courtesy?

7) If you offer to help out another nurse who looks like they're running behind at the change of shift, you can count on the occasional person who will take you up on your offer. While you're staying late to fix their patient or their IV's, they give report and go home on time, leaving you there to finish with their work. (This is for the poor nurse who gave me report today; I can't say this happened to me personally.)

8) Despite some of the pitfalls of the day/night, you will also work along side of some truly great people; one day in a rare great while will be free of annoying drivers and bad traffic; and the dishes fairy will have done the dishes and taken out the trash while you were away at work.