Nursing in the stone ages

Yes back in the stone ages ...I am truly dating myself...in looking back to when I was a staff nurse..things were soooo different. First of all the attire...white uniforms, white stockings, white shoes, nursing cap, nursing pin and name tag....As a new grad you had the choice of evening or night shift. (3-11 or 11-7) we didn't have 12 hour shifts...you had to earn in seniority and experience to work on day shift..work schedule was predictable...worked every other weekend. if you worked Christmas or New Years one year you had it off the next year...You had 2 weeks vacation.
Primary care nursing was just coming into vogue..but it was by districts. You were assigned a group of rooms...you had these rooms for 3 months then you rotated to the next set of rooms. On evening shift ( the shift I chose to work) I had a 8 patients. I had these patients from admission to discharge. The shift started by getting report from the day shift nurse who had the same set of patients. We did walking rounds..That means verbal one to one report outside the patients rooms then going in and inspecting the patient with the off going nurse...checking IV's IV site, intake and outputs, dressings, cleanliness of room.....once report was finished...we went through the kardex to check on the nursing and doctor orders...then we would pre pour meds for the whole shift...we did not have computers. we had med cards handwritten with the name of medication, dose and time the meds were to be given. we poured each medications into a med cup for each patient for the whole shift....we had certain times medications were distributed...We signed off the when medications were given in the med kardex.Then we actually went in and did a physical assessment on each patients. head to toe...and then wrote the assessment into the chart....Once dinner was completed and visiting hours were over...we passed out nourishment and gave back rubs...we also sat with the patients and provided patient education on whatever they were in for or whatever surgeries they were going to have the next day....We didn't have infusion pumps for IV's we actually calculated the drip rate and counted the drops of the IV to make sure it was running at the rate it was ordered....We called doctors with abnormal lab values...the doctors didn' get labs from a computer ....We respected physicians and gave them our chairs when they entered the nurses station...We were expected to help the doctors with bedside procedures...i.e chest tube insertion, spinal tap. the unit was quiet...no yelling in the hall from staff to staff...We charted every shift on every patient. Every patient got a bed bath and had their linens changed daily. No one under the age of 18 was allowed to visit.... We didn't have blood glucose machines..we checked urines for sugars instead..we didn't have sliding scales...The sickest patient on a med surg unit was someone who just had gallbladder surgery or a TURP....patent's who had wisdom teeth removed were admitted to the hospital....Patent's were admitted the day before their surgery to have preop blood work....We mixed our own IVPB and TPN...metal bed pans...sippy diet (for GI bleeds milk and maalox alternating every 30min). Someone with a colostomy was a complicated patient. We had vetilator patients on med surg floor for months...no social workers, no case managers, no DRG's, no time limit to when the patient could go home.....