Any allergy nurses out there?

Too funny, this is my first job after being home with my kids for almost 8 years. I used to work in a recovery room. Definitely did not want to go back to the hosp., did not think I was ready. My daughter goes to school with the office manager's daughter so that is how I got the job. I just work two days a week, but there is only myself and one other nurse that work together. She is full time. We pretty much do everything, allergy testing (adult and peds), vial making and giving the shots. My only real experience with asthma kids was in the recovery room and we either gave racemic epi or albuterol TXT's. Lots of stuff to learn. Did you ever do shots when there was no doc in the office? Also did you make your patients carry an epi pen with them after their shots? So glad I found someone with a similar background. Also I am not very good at this website yet. I've been on it for over a year, but I think this is my first reply

Hi there, we both do the intradermal testing and we do a multi prick test for the peds. I read the intradermal ones usually without any problem, but do have the Doc look at the multi test for the kids. I'm not sure if it is because he is an ENT surgeon and not an allergist that he lets us do more. We do the PFT's also with a pretty sensitive/picky computer program. I'm still trying to learn all about those. You just don't deal with all these things in the hospital. I actually had to load the whole program on the computer and learn how to get it up and running. Not like in the hosp. where you could have some IT guy do that. So much more work in the doc office on top of the nursing. I really like it though. We pretty much run the allergy area on our own and just go to him with questions. . I do like working there, but would love more training. He is so busy, he brought on another ENT surgeon to his practice and they opened a second office about 20 min. away. They are taking vials there with them and giving some shots. Not enough patients yet to bring a nurse over there. Did you ever get any outside courses or was it all on the job training? We pretty much tell our pts if they are sick not to bother coming into the office for a shot. If they sound at all wheezy we don't give a shot. Did you ever to peak flows before shots, we do not. Also, how long did you keep your allergy shot vials. We give 10 doses and then discard due to insurance coverage which is fine for a weekly shot pt. But some patients are on q3 week shots so that could be 5 months. Those vials are mostly concentrates so I am assuming they would be good for 6 months. Did you make up intradermal testing boards? Hope I am not boring you with all these questions I feel like I'm attacking you with questions. Thanks, Jenn

I hadn't even heard of Xolair till I saw it in your email. We do not give it in our office. I mentioned it to my coworker today and she said they did give it in her old office in Missouri. She hadn't been trained yet to do it though when she worked there. She worked in a large Asthma/allergy clinic. I kind of wish I worked in something like that now so I could get more training. I do alot of internet searches to get info. We don't do a lot of patient teaching right now, I do the PFT and then the Doc talks to the patient. We don't do peak flows before shots at all either, which is something I find odd.

Ooooh another question here, did you do vitals on patients before shots? We do not. If we have problems we will do them, but not normally. Gave one shot last week to a patient just to check for a positive reaction to Histamine. She hadn't stopped taking her claritin before the test dte. With about a 3 second warning she passed out cold. That was the first time I'd had that happend since I have worked there.

Okay, another question here, did your allergy shot patients make appts. or did they just walk in. I'm trying to get our schedule organized better since we do a lot of testing at the same time. We end up getting some shot patients just walking in when we are both really busy. It seems like it is either dead quiet or extremely crazy busy.

Thanks for all the info...........Jenn

Hi there,

Our office seems to run the same way. I tend to do all the testing when I am at work and the other nurse does the shots. She really doesn't like to do the testing, which I don't mind. But they have started to have both of us testing at the same time, which gets a little hairy. Our shot patients are supposed to make appointments but a lot of them walk in when they are around the area to see if we can give them a shot. I have a feeling we will be on our own soon though when they need a nurse at their new office one day a week. I just dread that we will have to do the testing and shots on the same days again on our own.

I did the same thing though, worrying about work all the time even at home. The full time nurse left for a month but then returned and they gave her her job back. But all of June I was on my own. I worked three days a week to help out but it was crazy to test and do shots all day long. Not too mention try to make the vials somewhere in the mist of all that. We got really backed up. I was whipped when I got home. I finally said to myself "Slow down, you don't make anymore money for the amount of work you do, the doc does " I was just afraid I'd make a mistake because I was so rushed. I had the girls up front doing all my arms checks for me, because I didn't know which end was up. All I did was run. The doc was very helpful though and when I got backed up he would do some shots in his exam rooms for me.