In my line of work, “if you didn’t document it, you didn’t
do it,” is a true, if somewhat inconvenient phrase. As such, contrary to popular belief, the pen
not, the stethoscope, or alcohol swab, or needle is the nurse’s tool of
choice. I mean, what good is a
stethoscope, if you can’t document what you heard with it? You might as well
not have one. Since the pen is such a
valuable phenomenon, it is impossible to find one in the hospital without someone
claiming you stole it. As such, I am
always on the lookout for pens in other settings. However, not just any pen will suffice for a
nurse. It must be a clicky pen with the tabby thing on the side still attached
or it is no good, no good at all.
You see when one uses a pen as much a nurse does, one
becomes quite the pen connoisseur. While
other pens may be just as effective when it comes to actual documentation, they
lack certain practicalities that the clicky pen with the tabby thing still
attached possesses. Take for example, the
classic blue bic hexagonal pen with the lid.
A stable for any school child, comes in packs of twelve, cheap
affordable, simple design and very rugged.
Sounds like an ideal pen for a nurse right? Wrong.
The bic’s weakness comes in its lid, the lid is forever falling off with
day to day activities like changing briefs, calming psychotic patients, rushing
to codes, starting IV’s, etc. And when
the lid falls off, the pen falls into the deep recesses of your pocket. Without fail, even though you used it moments
ago, it somehow ends up beneath the alcohol swabs in your pocket, the cheat
sheet you use to remember to do everything, the blue caps, the roll of tape and
God only knows what else. Obviously,
this happens right before you are in a hurry and desperately need your pen,
forcing you to demonstrate to yet another patient how much you can actually
store in one scrub pant pocket. The other
downside to the classic bic model pen is that when the cap comes off you run
the risk of it exploding, a more common problem for a nurse than you might
think. If this occurs in your pocket,
you ruin a whole pair of scrubs. And let
me tell you folks, male version scrubs are hard to come by.
“Ok,” you may say, “You’ve demonstrated why a capped pen is
no good, but what about those twisty pens?
They deserve to be given a fair try don’t you think?” Touché sir, they
do deserve to be given a fair shake. On the
surface a twisty pen may carry the same specs as a clicky pen, no cap means
they can’t fall into your pocket, and the tip can be safely twisted away saving
you the unfortunate risk of yet another pair of scrubs being ruined by
exploding pen syndrome. And, while on
the surface this is all true, the twisty pen possesses one fatal flaw. Its kryptonite, if you will, is in fact, its
twisty feature. Have you ever tried to
open a twisty pen with one hand? It’s not easy.
And when your other hand is busy with so many other daunting tasks, a
one handed operation is a requirement. Particularly
when, as every good nurse knows, using your mouth for any task is 100% out of
the question.
As I have demonstrated the clicky pen is the pen for any
astute nurse, but does any clicky pen do? While there are so many makes and
models of the clicky pen out there, I’ve come to appreciate the heftier
versions. You see, in the business of
everyday tasks, one often forgets to put ones pen back where one got it from. This in turn results in one frantically
searching for ones pen. In the larger
model this frantic search ends more rapidly allowing one, to shrug off the incident
as a mere twitch, or at worst a mild seizure.
With the smaller version, however the dance of the missing pen becomes a
more arduous ordeal, and is thus less easily shrugged off. The tabby thing on the side remaining intact
is also an essential component for any nurses pen arsenal, allowing for a quick
deposit and with drawl from ones pocket
and also ensuring the pen stays securely where it was left. All this goes back to the cap pen, a clicky
pen with no tabby thing is like a cap pen, it easily falls into the deep
recesses of the pocket and is soon lost.
The added benefit of the clicky pen, as anyone who has ever sat next to “that
guy” during an exam knows, is stress relief. And stress relief, however a nurse
can get it, is essential to surviving the day.
Clicking a pen open and closed numerous times somehow alleviates
stress. It’s science.
So aspiring nurses to be, people who have a nurse friend who
is “impossible to shop for,” or anyone who just wants to appreciate their nurse
for their hard work and dedication to the health care system, take a lesson
that took me way longer than it should have to learn; when in doubt you can’t
go wrong with a large clicky pen with the tabby thing still attached
