How To Tell You’re Riding With A Nurse

This article was republished with permission from SCRUBS Magazine.

My Maserati, if I had one, would not do 185. I do get rubber in all four gears, though, when I get my motor running and head out on the highway.

Herewith, then: how to tell your driver is a nurse, from her driving style to the assortment of items in her car.

1. You’re going really fast. Like, bugs-in-your-teeth fast.
Nurses tend to work hard and play hard. Part of the “playing hard” involves driving fast. I have a nurse pal who works critical care and can push her Prius up past 90 mph without batting an eye. Don’t ask me why this is. You’d think, with all we see, that we’d be the white-knucklers going 55 in the slow lane.

2. Scraps of paper crumpled into every open space.
When getting out of work is on your mind, you tend to leave your Brain (that bit of paper on which you write everything) in your pocket instead of slipping it through the shredder. An archaeological examination of a nurse’s car will reveal details of every patient she’s worked with in the last six weeks.

3. Chip wrappers, sausage-egg-and-cheese packages and Diet Coke cans.
Not that we, as a group, roll out in motorized trash bins, but we do eat in our cars. When you’re leaving for work at 0500, the gas station’s version of breakfast sounds like a good idea.

4. Odd medical implements, most of them scary.
This falls into the same category as “How you know it’s a nurse’s purse/backpack.” I shove things into my pockets, like IV needles and syringes, that sometimes don’t make it back onto the patients’ counter before I leave work. You could probably perform minor surgery with all the stuff I’ve inadvertently lifted from my hospital.

5. An extra pair of scrubs in the back.
If a nurse lives where it floods—or tornadoes hit or ice falls from the sky or people poop—she’ll have an extra pair of scrubs in the car. Those might even be the extra extra scrubs; the good ones live in her locker.

6. Change for the vending machines.
This is particular to night-shift nurses. Need I say more?

7. Wire-bound textbooks, PowerPoint presentations and notes from their last CEU class.
Nobody ever takes that stuff into the house, because then they’d have to do something with it. Instead, we leave it sitting in the car, piling up, until it begins to affect gas mileage and handling.

8. Two cans of Fix-A-Flat, a set of jumper cables, chock blocks, cat litter, flares, a flashlight, a gallon of water, extra antifreeze and oil, a full set of tools and a better jack than the one that came with the car.
Because we have to get to work.

9. A selection of cards.
One to get into the employee garage. One to punch in with. One to wear as an ID (perhaps more than one, if the nurse works in more than one hospital). One to get lunch with. One to get into the other employee garage. And the frequent flier card from the liquor store that entitles the member to 10 percent off any purchase.

10. A bottle of wine.
Because, really, what else are we gonna do when we get off work?

What would you add to the list? Share in the comments section below.


This article was republished with permission from SCRUBS Magazine.

5 COMMENTS

  1. Traded my truck in on a “spur of the moment” thing and had not cleaned out the miscellaneous “just in case” stuff. Salesman helped by getting me some bags so I could load it all in to the new truck. Part of the haul was an unused mortuary bag, zip ties, and duct tape along with a well stocked jump bag full of emergency medical supplies. Of course I had bolt cutters, jumper cables, knives, tools, shovel, lights, etc. Fortunately he was prior military as am I and we both were laughing about what a policeman might have thought about the contents. Needless to say I have culled the herd since. Semper fidelis

  2. Hi James. Using the pronoun “them” is grammatically incorrect. To fit within the insane rules of the English language, the writer must choose a gender. In a more male-gender centered society, we tend to refer to both genders with the the male pronoun, so you’re probably more used to seeing that. However, since the majority of nurses are female, I can understand why this article (and a website devoted to a female dominated industry) was written with the female pronoun usage, rather than the “he” or “him” that is often in the common vernacular.

    That having been said, do men not drink wine, carry tools in their cars, have extra scrubs, or raid vending machines at 2am on nightshift? Seems a pretty gender neutral article.

    Go on amazon, cafe press, etc. There are a ton of products that are gender neutral or geared towards male nurses. Speaking as a woman who’s not over lot fond of pink, I’m glad to see more neural colors and less “girlie stuff” geared towards nurses.

    BTW…I don’t care what your gender, color, erhnicity, orientation, etc., is, as long as you’re a great nurse. Once you step foot into the clinical setting, who you are doesn’t matter, beyond “nurse.”

  3. I’m no snowflake and I’m not one to scream sexism, but when are articles about nurses going to be more mainstream as in inclusive of the ever growingmale nurse population? I see t-shirt companies making pink emblems and women centric verbage. I understand marketing, and I understand the small percentage of male nurse isn’t good risk management as far as product sales go. Certainly there must be better representation for the male counterparts in this career field. I can’t be the only male nurse that feels this way, or could I be?

    Please shed some light on my quandry .

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