Nurses are the ties that bind together the healthcare journey of a patient. They work relentlessly to care and advocate for individuals suffering from illnesses and getting through the whole health and wellness journey.
As highly skilled professionals, the majority of nurses possess a diverse skill set and a diverse range of tasks that change according to the patient. Thus, if you are beginning your nursing career or considering becoming one, knowing the typical nursing duties that nurses do on a daily basis may benefit you.
The Basics of Nursing Care
While a nurse’s daily duties may vary depending on the location, education, and degree of certification, there are certain commonalities among these distinct nursing positions. Understanding what a nurse’s typical daily duty entails will help you truly realize how crucial their role in patient care is. As a nurse, your responsibility will vary depending on your certification and education, along with your place of employment or area of expertise, but there are certain duties that almost every nurse performs during a typical shift.
Moreover, there is no better way to see if your abilities and career aspirations are compatible with everyday activities than by reading more about these five day-to-day typical nursing responsibilities.
1. Administering medication
Whenever a doctor prescribes a medication for a patient to intake, whether in a clinical or hospital setting, it’s rarely the doctor who goes and engages directly with the patient to administer such medication. In most cases they send the prescription to a nurse, often an RN, to visit the patient and provide the given prescription drug. (An LVN can also administer medications, as can an LPN if supervised by an RN. If you’re a CNA—a Certified Nursing Assistant—you won’t actually administer meds, but you might well be the one who persuades a patient to take them).
Nurses may have to consult pharmacists before administering medications. Additionally, they may be expected to contact pharmacies on account of physicians to acquire prescriptions for patients to be taken at home. (Patients often use a discount card when obtaining the given medication in order to lessen the expense).
2. Recording and monitoring patient vital signs
Have you ever been hospitalized? Either way, you might have seen or witnessed a nurse performing their rounds, taking and monitoring either your vital signs or not. This is one of the nurse’s typical nursing duties. They are expected to take vital signs on a scheduled basis, documenting them every few hours to maintain a patient’s health.
Maintaining good health requires regular monitoring of one’s vital signs. Thus, nurses have developed considerable expertise in rapidly analyzing a patient’s status, even when the patient is unaware. This is to warn the doctor of any indicators of severe sickness. Any patient interaction is an opportunity for a nurse to assess for indicators of illness or other concerns, which must frequently be documented following observation.
3. Maintaining a detailed medical record
Each time a nurse goes and checks on a patient provides medication, assists with basic hygiene tasks, or performs a wellness check. Every engagement must be documented. With this, it is evident how vital medical records are to patient care.
Maintaining a complete and thorough medical record is one of the typical nursing duties. It enables nurses and doctors to provide high-quality care while assuring that care records flow without incident from one work shift to another.
4. Drawing blood samples
One of the skills necessary for a certified nurse is the ability to draw blood samples. Blood samples are taken for various purposes, including testing, operations, and diagnosis. Therefore, Phlebotomy is an essential skill for any nurse to have in order to provide exemplary patient care. While drawing blood is not usually offered in some nursing school programs, several advocate that nursing students should take additional courses to perfect such ability.
Phlebotomy teams often conduct rounds at fixed times in hospital settings; consequently, the nursing staff may be responsible for drawing the blood if a lab test is requested promptly as this is an extended nursing function. Indeed, the majority of Intensive Care Units prefer to hire nurses capable of drawing blood samples.
5. Providing emotional support for patients
Finally, nurses play a critical role in providing emotional support to patients. The healthcare system is frequently frightening for patients, even more so when dealing with significant diseases or accidents. In addition, doctors are restrained by time constraints and may be unable to sit and engage directly with the patients as they process the intensity of their diagnosis.
Nurses have been on the front line of healthcare, and each day brings new challenges with a variety of patients appearing with a variety of different diseases. Moreover, nurses must think quickly and maintain their composure under duress to extend their emotional support to patients and clinical support.
Becoming a nurse
Even the most mundane nursing tasks have meaning for a patient (even paperwork and priming IV tubing!) and all come together to build the unique bond that makes a nurse such a trusted figure. There are a variety of nursing employment and degree certifications available. You can make a difference as a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA), a Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN), a Licensed Vocational Nurse (LVN), or a Registered Nurse (RN)—or you can work on a larger scale as an Advanced Practice Registered Nurse (APRN) by becoming a Nurse Practitioner (NP) or Doctoral NP (DNP).
The small town of Bemidji, Minnesota, may seem like it’s a world away from the scenes playing out every day in Ukraine. But at a Sanford Health walk-in clinic in Bemidji, one nurse knows firsthand that a war a continent away can be felt across an ocean.
Olha Finnelly is an LPN Ambulatory from Ukraine, and her family still lives in the city of Dnipro, about 250 miles southeast of Kyiv, the country’s capital. When the invasion of her home country started in late February, her life turned upside-down.
“I was just crying every day at work. I couldn’t believe that it was happening,” said Finnelly. “I never could imagine that the big brother, Russia, would just attack and start bombing and killing people. It’s not a war that’s happening somewhere in a foreign territory. It’s happening right by our homes.”
“We had to help”
Finnelly’s clinic co-workers noticed that their friend was in distress, and they asked her often about her family.
“She would make mention that she would talk to them from time to time, and then the sirens would go off in the background, and she’d have to get off of the phone and just wait until the next time that she was able to talk to them,” said Erin Petrowske, RN and Bemidji clinic supervisor.
Kim Schulz, a medical laboratory scientist at Sanford Bemidji, said they all knew Finnelly was from Ukraine.
“We’d ask ‘How’s your family?’ One day all of a sudden she wasn’t functioning so well. Very teary-eyed. She was trying to get them out (of Ukraine). When we all heard that, we had to help,” Schulz said. “So we did whatever we could to help her get the funds and anything else she needed.”
Getting out of Ukraine
As the war continued, Finnelly’s father and brother-in-law decided to stay in Ukraine and help in any way they could. But her mother, sister and 3-year-old niece prepared to leave their homes.
“They decided to take a train to go to Lviv, which is the biggest city on the Western part of Ukraine, closer to Poland,” said Finnelly.
They traveled 22 hours by train, sharing a room that was designed to sleep four at a time, with 16 people.
“They didn’t have any luggage with them,” Finnelly said. “The only belongings that they had were backpacks. They brought underpants for the little one. Some snacks, because you are not sure if you are able to get some food. And my sister was able to get her laptop because she is trying to keep her job working online.”
When that was done, they took a small bus to the Polish border, eventually making it to Krakow. Luckily for the family, they had been planning on visiting Olha in the near future, so they already had approved U.S. travel visas from before the war began. Finnelly booked them plane tickets to Minneapolis. The cost: roughly $3,000, all raised by her co-workers. After five days of travel, Finnelly’s family arrived in the United States.
“We were all on pins and needles waiting for the final word from her that everybody was safe,” said Petrowske. “And then when we saw that picture of her and her mom and her sister and her niece, and just the look of relief in her eyes, it was so amazing.”
“Everyone jumped in and tried to help her. And we helped. We got the women out,” said Schulz.
Together again
“Right now I’m smiling because yes, I understand how stressful it still is in Ukraine — and it’s little bit selfish — but the most important three people in my life, they’re right here around the table,” said Finnelly.
Finnelly’s mother Liana Taradaiko, her sister Ksusha Zarubina, and her niece, Masha Zarubina, have been in Bemidji for a few weeks now. Taradaiko cooks food for the family, and has made pierogi for the staff at the Bemidji clinic. Zarubina works each day starting around 3 a.m. to keep her job and stay on Ukrainian time. And Masha? Well, Masha plays with Play-Doh, paints at the dining room table, and dances like a 3-year-old, wearing some of the clothes that have also been donated by Finnelly’s co-workers.
“In our Ukrainian language, we have this saying. ‘Tell me who is your friend, and I can tell you who you are.’ So I’m just so happy with my colleagues. (The) Sanford family in Bemidji … we are really like real family over here,” said Finnelly.
A war is being fought in Ukraine, but in one living room in Bemidji, Minnesota, USA, a family is smiling, happy to be together again.
Poring over historical pictures at the Good Samaritan Society long-term care facility in Algona, Iowa, is a person who’s been pivotal. “It opened in March of 1966 and I began employment in the summer of that year,” says Nurse of the Week Mary Hannover, LPN.
Do the math and Hannover’s service at the Society, still ongoing, adds up to an unheard of 55 years. “Half of my life. Half of my life has been living and working in a nursing home and supporting of,” Hannover says.
Administrator Joe Bartolo says 55 years in one place is “crazy” to think about. “Good Sam is in her heart,” Bartolo says. “She knows the ins and outs of everything from day one in Algona.” Retired administrator John E. Kern adds, “When people in Algona think of Good Samaritan, they immediately think of Mary.”
“We would not be here” without her
When the current long-term care facility opened in ‘66, Hannover split time as a CNA between the new building and the old home down the street.
“We had three levels of residents. The guts of the operation was still in the basement. So, the washers and that. If you walked up the stairs from the basement and did not carry a basket of laundry, you were not well thought of,” Hannover says.
It’s hard not to see similarities to how the Society got its start nearly 100 years ago in a little house in Arthur, North Dakota.
“They didn’t have any elevators or lifts at that time. They’d have to carry food from the basement all the way up to the first, second, third floor. Same with residents – if you had to get a resident to the first or second floor, you had to carry them up the steps,” Bartolo says.
Lifting others up through care is the 73-year-old’s passion. After she grew up on a farm west of Algona, her career got off to a slow start.
“I applied at three different community colleges to go into nursing. I was rejected by all of them,” Hannover says with a laugh. “So I came to town, I got a job and I kept my job.”
First as a CNA, then a licensed practical nurse and finally a fundraiser in resource development.
“If we didn’t have someone like her in our facility for the last 55 years helping get funding and things like that, and being a member of the community and church, getting people to come live here, work here, we would not be here in Algona without Mary Hannover,” Bartolo says.
Proud of Society’s development in Algona
Hannover’s personal mission is to spread the Good Samaritan message and raise funds to support its mission. “I remember going around in the community selling our point of view. ‘Why would you need that? We’ve never had that before,’” Hannover says about the responses she would hear. “I’m kind of proud about the fact that we’ve raised some wonderful buildings here. I always said it’s well worth every dollar that you’ve had to ask for.”
From independent living apartments to a rehabilitation center, she didn’t shy away from promoting the cause.
“Mary would often remind me to ‘never be afraid to apologize.’ She was always about service to others. She was very loyal and committed to the residents, their families and to the staff. She loved talking about the history of Good Samaritan and specifically Algona,” Kern says.
Looking back on all the additions to the campus, she says it’s incredible to imagine the number of lives touched by the Society.
“You talk about someone who is here for the center, here for the residents and not concerned about her time, that’s someone who lives out the mission,” Bartolo says.
“She’d do her Monday-Friday, resource development, and then she would come in on Saturdays and Sundays and feed breakfast. Every Saturday and Sunday, every holiday, she never missed any time unless she was really sick.”
‘Everybody is equal and the same’
Hannover admits her body is showing some wear and tear these days as she nears retirement. Her mind, however, is sharp and her focus the same.
“In Christ’s love, everyone is someone. You can’t help but think that the smallest resident, the largest resident, the most active resident, the inactive resident, everybody is equal and the same. If you don’t have that squared in your thought process, life becomes more complicated,” Hannover says.
“It’s a great organization. It’s served me well. I’ve enjoyed my time. Have I enjoyed every day? No. Nobody does. I’ve had some bad days and I’ve had some very, very good days. Your emphasis is always on life and where you can make life better.”
To see a video interview with Mary Hannover, click here.
The 6 years that have passed since a gunman mowed down her Bible study class at Emanuel AME have been busy for the former prison nurse who was among the five survivors.
When the brutal shooting took place, Polly Sheppard had just retired from nursing after 14 years at the Al Cannon Detention Center in South Carolina. The former nurse has channeled her grief since then by speaking around the country to spread the word about gun violence. Now, with the nest egg she has accumulated from her speaking gigs, our Nurse of the Week is working to address the staffing crisis in her own way – by setting up a scholarship fund for nursing students – particularly those who are interested in a career as prison health care workers.
Prison nursing, she says, is all about caritas: “I learned how to be compassionate. [How to be] more compassionate, and caring. And not assume everybody that goes to jail is guilty. Because everyone is not. You are innocent until proven guilty.” After a year of counseling, Sheppard even found forgiveness in her heart for the man who killed nine of her classmates, and she affirms that “Everybody deserves a second chance.”
But in describing her career, Sheppard does not mince words. She loved her work, but prison nursing is NOT easy. Prison health care facilities were understaffed long before Covid, so the hours could be as challenging as the job itself. “Sometimes,” she recalled, “I would work till 2 o’clock in the morning. Get there at 3pm, working till 2 am. Sometimes double shifts…” All while treating a population that rarely had access to regular preventive care and often were “suffering from mental illness, seizures or other chronic diseases.”
Hard as it could be, Sheppard found prison nursing to be deeply fulfilling and wants to see younger generations fill her place. Hence her decision to invest her post-Emanuel speaking engagement fees in a Polly Sheppard Scholarship Foundation for nursing students at Charleston college Trident Tech. The ongoing nurse shortage in prisons was a key factor in deciding to fund the scholarship: all recipients are expected to work for at least a year treating inmates.
At Trident, Sheppard is helping students who know what it’s like to dream of a career, only to find that the necessary education is utterly beyond their means. Shepperd herself has been in nursing for over 55 years. She graduated from high school in 1963 and became an LPN at her school’s vocational center in New York City, then pursued further studies at local community and technical colleges while working in city hospitals. Eventually, she moved to South Carolina and found her niche as a prison nurse.
In 2021, the first Sheppard Scholarship award went to Niki Walker, a 34-year-old mom of two and a former corrections officer. Far from being jaded by her earlier corrections experience, Walker sounds like a future prison nurse after Polly Sheppard’s own heart when she says, “Just because you are in jail doesn’t mean you don’t deserve adequate care. No one is immune from making one bad choice.”
For more on Polly Sheppard—and her first scholar, Niki Walker—click here.
A new study shows that the labor market for the nursing workforce tightened throughout the first 15 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, in a period marked by falling employment and rising wages across the health care industry.
The paper, “Nurse Employment During the First 15 Months of the COVID-19 Pandemic,” funded by The Johnson & Johnson Foundation, The John A. Hartford Foundation, UnitedHealth Group, and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is in the January issue of the journal Health Affairs. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Current Population Survey, the study identified and described the immediate economic impact of the pandemic on registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and nursing assistants across the U.S. from April 2020 through June 2021.
Dr. Peter Buerhaus, MSU Mark and Robyn Jones College of Nursing.
The authors found that the pandemic has had dramatic impacts on health care delivery organizations and the nurse workforce they employ.
Although the research team focused on the nursing workforce, the results also shed light on overall employment in major sectors of health care delivery. Overall employment throughout health care delivery systems – including hospitals, outpatient facilities, home health care agencies, physician offices, and nursing homes – experienced an “unprecedented” decline after the COVID-19 virus was identified and began spreading throughout the country.
But as employment gradually resumed in most settings, the health care labor market shifted. Overall employment in hospitals, home health, and physician offices had nearly bounced back to pre-pandemic levels by June 2021 with two exceptions: employment in outpatient facilities not only bounced back but exceeded pre-pandemic levels by October 2020, and nursing home employment continued a steady decline over the study period.
Nurses and the “Covid-19 Effect” on unemployment
For nurses specifically, the researchers found that in the early months of the pandemic, unemployment shot up in hospitals, physician offices, home health care, and outpatient clinics as patients canceled appointments and these organizations greatly reduced their operations. Between the first and third quarters of 2020, unemployment rates peaked. At their highest, approximately an additional 100,000 registered nurses, 25,000 licensed practical nurses and 90,000 nursing assistants were unemployed compared to pre-pandemic numbers.
The authors noted that unemployment has rarely been a problem for nurses in health care. For example, over the past several decades, the unemployment rate for RNs has rarely exceeded 1%.
“These findings are especially striking regarding the total supply of registered nurses,” Auerbach said. “We have gotten used to the workforce growing year after year – yet these data suggest we may be experiencing a plateau right now. That would have huge implications for the delivery of health care.”
Auerbach noted that nursing unemployment during the first 15 months of the pandemic varied by settings, with increases in unemployment higher in non-hospital settings.
Furthermore, unemployment spikes in the second quarter of 2020 were higher among registered nurses and nursing assistants of color than among white, non-Hispanic registered nurses and nursing assistants.
Real wage growth for the first time in a decade
In addition, the researchers found that the pandemic seems to have positively affected nurses’ earnings. After a decade of virtually no real wage growth, wage increases during the first five quarters of the pandemic were 9.5% for licensed practical nurses, 5.7% for nursing assistants, and 2% for registered nurses. Wage increases were highest in hospital settings and also higher among the lowest-paid registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and nursing assistants.
“These data confirm anecdotal reports of rising wages among nurses and nurse aides in response to staffing challenges in both hospitals and long-term care facilities. It’s important to note regional and state variation in these effects as the pandemic flares locally and regionally in this time period,” Donelan said.
More disruption ahead?
Looking ahead, the researchers plan to continue analyzing monthly data on the nurse workforce through 2021. The team also plans to make new projections of the supply of the registered nursing workforce through 2030, taking into account two factors that could greatly impact the registered nursing workforce in coming years: interest in nursing as a career and retirement plans of older nurses.
“Regarding entry into the nursing workforce, it is unclear whether the pandemic will lead to increased or decreased interest,” Buerhaus said. “With regard to exit from the workforce, an estimated 660,000 baby boom nurses are still working during the pandemic, the vast majority of whom are expected to retire by 2030. If substantial numbers of these older registered nurses exit the workforce earlier than they had planned, the size of the nursing workforce could decrease more quickly and disrupt nursing labor markets throughout the country.”
The exit and entry questions bear careful watching, Buerhaus added. Buerhaus’s co-authors include Douglas Staiger at Dartmouth College; David Auerbach, external adjunct faculty at MSU; Max Yates, a recent MSU graduate; and Karen Donelan of Brandeis University.
Jennifer Grubb, our Nurse of the Week, is a military veteran who is now deploying her hard-earned experience to help others as a nurse.
The PA native started her career in 2003 at the age of 20, when she served in Afghanistan at the height of the post-9/11 military action. Grubb was a combat lifesaver and worked security details in a place where saving lives was often impossible, and no one could afford to feel secure. She saw comrades die in attacks, witnessed the wretched collateral damage suffered by civilian adults and children, and picked her way through minefields.
Like so many soldiers, she struggled as her psyche attempted to process things that most people are not meant to process. In an interview with her hometown Pennsylvania newspaper, The Daily Local, she recalled, “I saw so many gruesome sights. I just hated where I was and decided my best route was just to feel nothing… I started writing less, I started calling less, I started eating less.” Finally, after Grubb had lost 80 pounds during her quest to seal off the horror of war, the Army medevacked her back to the US with an honorable discharge. Then, again like so many other soldiers, she found that even 7000 miles somehow failed to provide a safe distance from the war. As she describes it, “you don’t fit in in your own life anymore. I was always looking over my shoulder. The slightest thing made me jump.”
The nightmares were so intense that they seemed to taint her waking hours, so she tried her best to avoid sleeping and numbed the trauma with drugs. Eventually, she slid to one of those make-or-break low points: “I was just going to use drugs until it killed me. I had one moment where I had a glimmer of hope, and I prayed to God to save me. Two hours later, I was pulled over and arrested for possession of crack cocaine.”
Things began to arc upward when the court allowed her to enter a drug program, and Grubb’s new therapist diagnosed her with PTSD. “I wasn’t Jenn anymore; I was PTSD, with all of my symptoms, and allowing it to really consume my entire life.” With the help of her therapist, though, and treatment at her local VA medical center, she says, “I started to smile more. And the nightmares became a little less. And not every social situation I was in made me jump out of my skin. And I just tried to stay sober, just one day at a time.”
In 2015, Grubb’s life asserted itself as being on an upward swing when she was invited to a women’s vet breakfast with then-first lady Michelle Obama and Jill Biden. During the gathering, Obama noted, “So much of your rise had to do with that reaching out and realizing that there are so many folks out there that are ready to just take your hand.” Grubb realized she was in an ideal position to help other vets sidestep the pitfalls of the self-reliant military ethos and the notion that “we can do anything by ourselves, and I don’t need your help.” She adds, “And there’s such a stigma attached to reaching out.”
As the urge to serve and help others is part of her nature, the recovering vet soon sought ways to do that. While PTSD is chronic – Grubb will always do her best to avoid crowds and can only tolerate sitting in an auto passenger seat if her trusted husband is driving – the treatment allowed her to acclimate. “PTSD is not hopeless,” she says. “There are ways to make it a part of you rather than have it define you.” Once she felt that her demons were tightly reined in, Grubb became an LPN, then a director of patient services at an SUD treatment facility. When the latter’s lack of resources had her teetering on the edge of burnout, she then found a position at the VA center where she first received help herself, the Coatesville VA Medical Center.
Now, the LPN, Almost-BSN is caring for fellow vets and helping them navigate their own trauma ordeals. The military connection is powerful. “These guys and these gals, they’re my brothers; they’re my sisters. There’s a closeness and a bond even with strangers that I can’t really explain to the rest of the population. There’s a level of trust that comes with it.” Deciding that she had a calling to pursue, Grubb earned a BA in Psychology, then entered Immaculata College’s accelerated BSN program, where she will graduate in 2022.
Becoming a nurse came naturally to Grubb. She was moved by the nurses who cared for her when her daughter was born, and realized, “When I left the service, I missed being in service to people.” Today, she’s finishing her BSN program and working as a communications specialist at the Coatesville VA, where “I’m good at my job because of the personal connection I have to it. With the veteran population, they want other veterans to be their caregivers. They want people who really get it.”
For more details about Jennifer Grubb, see the excellent Daily Local article here.
