I just spent three weeks at a hospital giving out COVID-19 vaccines. Or at least trying to. The area where I worked was in a huge building with lots of space to accommodate crowds that didn't show. Fourteen vaccine administration...

I started working as a nurse in 1980. Not even three weeks into my training, I was learning how to assist a difficult-to-work-with surgeon during a challenging case. The process brought me to tears — literally. At one point,...

Complaining is as American as baseball (the games are too long!) and apple pie (the crust isn’t flaky enough!). Many of our problems simply aren’t that serious, but that doesn’t stop us from griping about, well,...

By now you’ve probably heard about the plastic surgeon who decided to make an appearance in traffic court on Zoom … during surgery! The YouTube clip of the hearing immediately went viral. Have you seen it?...

Everyone believes they have a general sense of "what" pain is. We've all stubbed our toes, slipped and fell, had horrible headaches or, worse still, stepped on Legos. Of course, this type of pain is incidental, unanticipated...

As you read this column, I will have been vaccinated against the dreaded virus we've been fighting for the past 12 months and started a new assignment as a travel nurse. I plan to retire at the end of the year, so this gig...

It's often obvious when you outgrow your current space. At one of my former hospitals, the surgical schedule extended way too late in the day, surgeons weren't happy, and patients and staff complained about delayed...

Long before we were in the grip of a global pandemic and surgical masks became fashion accessories, OR nurses were known to stash hard-to-come-by supplies such as gloves and gowns and, yes, N95s. Of course, COVID has...

Random. My 28-year-old daughter, Dani, called to say she'd lost her sense of taste and smell. She's a pediatric occupational therapist in South Carolina. Her colleague has the same symptoms and tested positive...

I've never been so happy to watch the ball drop on New Year's Eve. As soon as it touched down and ended the year we want to forget, I looked forward and focused on setting some self-care goals....

Ah, Thanksgiving. Time for turkey, dressing and pumpkin pie. It's over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house we go — whether physically or virtually....

There's no question major changes have been made in the OR as a result of COVID-19. Of course, changes come with a lot of complaints. We perioperative nurses would...

Many periop nurses who were laid off or furloughed during the Great Elective Surgery shutdown of 2020 have been back at work for several months, but the pandemic...

Like religion or politics, I don’t feel comfortable talking about the reopening of our country. It makes me anxious. I don’t believe we’re ready even though I understand the...

Do you find your energy starting to lag as your stress rises? You might want to take a look at your diet. There's a direct correlation between what we ingest and how stressed...

Now that electives are back on, I’ve become nostalgic for insanely packed days of 25-plus surgeries with four rooms humming, nurses crisscrossing the hall and a waiting...

Behind Closed Doors: Pandemonium During the Pandemic; People cope with the fear of the unknown in interesting ways.

Behind Closed Doors: Full Moon Fever; I'm convinced Nurse Luna is to blame for odd OR occurrences.

Behind Closed Doors; My 2020 New Year's Resolutions

On the 1st day of Christmas my OR gave to me … PTSD from the Devil incarnate of a scrub tech I had to work with every day. I would call her a witch or a female dog...