Hazed with 12on/12off(x3)dayz

Nurses General Nursing

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Mario is still in a state of grace after completing my second day "solo shifts." For all my outlandish illusions about nursing before I began working, he's doing it in real life (second person).

working 12 hour shifts is tricky because managing your off time is the key :-( No more time for as much allnursing.com and all my funky friends. I still sign in everyday, but have dimished output because all my cognition is input now. Working in a hospital is a dream.

I used to long for the chance to work with electronic equipment, and nursing includes state of art stuff.

The nurses I have worked with on my cardiology recorvery unit are all cool people. All women. I saw one male agency nurse walking around.

What bombed my pea brain was last week when a echo/doppler/ultrasound/cardio computer was wheeled in and used in my unit. The images and views and sounds this machine made floored me. I listened as they took a second of heart recording and broke the information all down. They let me ask questions about the machine (breifly) and I got to watch them work on 2 people that day. The heart sounds and that machine really made an impression on Mario.

I miss making statements here, but, I hafta take in so much, then go to sleep and dream. The shot clock is on, and I hafta wake up in

I love and miss allnurses.com super-friends !

(Mario is behind the wall of sleep)

:confused:

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Welcome to the world of nursing Mario. Where I live we do seven 12 hour shifts every 2 weeks. We do two weeks of days and then flip and do two weeks of nights. IT can be BRUTAL..........but critical care is my thing.........so it is what I do. ICU is worth it to me.

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I work days, from 0730-1930. Working where everyone uses the 24 hour time is great. Nurses and hospital staff don't act all ignorant of the 24 hour clock time. The folks who work night shift hafta be on coffee; I've knowticed my dependence to coffee has returned :-(

Cathy - you have obviously seen one of those multi-realtime-cardio-image machines. Is a wall of motion like a wall of sleep? And is ejection fraction numbers you throw out or something? :-) Cathy - the advice you gave me about getting chores out of the way so I could learn from RN's makes so much sense! This way, nursing can never become mundane to me, and it is always aplesure to learn a new trick :-) Looking at the doppler screen of that machine was the most image producing for me, in my mind. It showed the movement of blood, in scale to the heart, all at the correct time.

I want them to lend that machine to me so I could press that wand to my heart in the morning, and ask someone to think about the squeak. Personally, I need to know (and see) the movements that cause the cute squeak with the lub-dub in the morning. In other words, I want to consider what happens to your lungs when you sleep. Surely they must really relax, like the heart does. Plus, I want to know if that machine can look at the lungs the way it looks at the heart. Hopefully, the hospital will allow me to check out that "echo-cardio" machine.

I imagine making myself a "sleep capsule" with a big clock on it. The clock on my sleep capsule callls me to and wakes me up from sleep. The climate inside my sleep capsule is set for me to sleep, and to wake me up.

Sleep for nurses is the most "not-talked-about" problem. Admittedly, I only received 6.25 (hrs) max sleep working 12's, and that undeniable has a detractionable effect on your movements and actions and (lack of) thoughts.

There are TV's in the patient rooms, and sometimes I look up at them and say "whoa" at the stuff I see.

Yesterday a patient started falling and my help was called. I weigh 160# and the older man falling was like 230#. Two nurses had this guy who lost power in his legs during a 3-4 step trip to BM. My first instinct was to make sure I would get hurt myself. I felt guilt, afterwards, to not have "been a man" and strained the guy over to the bed in one swoop, but that wuda wilded my sacrum fissures and stuff :-(

Let me go now, and I still am in a state of grace. I brag to everyone about my super-friends at All.nurses.com. PLease get enough sleep and dream of sheep :-(

Mario (the delta wave) druid

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Mario

The echo is like a ultrasound of the heart. This is what you see being done at the bedside.

It can determine chamber size and wall thickness, valve functioning, intracardiac masses, persence of pericardial fluid (remember peri means around, so fluid around the heart), and the ejection fraction.

The EJECTION FRACTION is the amount of blood pumped out of the left ventricle per beat and is expressed as a PERCENTAGE of the total capacity of the ventricle. NORMAL is 60 to 70 percent.

Patients with congestive heart failure may have ejection fractions of 28 to 40 percent. In order to be considered for a heart transplant you need to have a ejection fraction less than 20%.

I could go on, but if you really want to know more ......read about preload, Starling's law, afterload and contractility. The heart is the center of the body's functioning.

Later. J.

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JMP - reading your post brought me back in time to last week, when I watched that "machine" at the bedside. What you posted is just the kinds of stuff the two operators were talking about, and measuring. It is an HP machine. They said they can capture various data copy it to video (it has disk and VCR ports).

Thank you JMP for the vocabulary and text images.

"My mama always said if you want to amount to anything in life you have get your alphas every nite" "What does Rapid Eye Movement mean to you?"

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Originally posted by mario_ragucci

......... The folks who work night shift hafta be on coffee; I've knowticed my dependence to coffee has returned...........

I imagine making myself a "sleep capsule" with a big clock on it. The clock on my sleep capsule callls me to and wakes me up from sleep. The climate inside my sleep capsule is set for me to sleep, and to wake me up..............

There are TV's in the patient rooms, and sometimes I look up at them and say "whoa" at the stuff I see.

.............and strained the guy over to the bed in one swoop, but that wuda wilded my sacrum fissures and stuff :-(

Let me go now, and I still am in a state of grace. I brag to everyone about my super-friends at All.nurses.com. PLease get enough sleep and dream of sheep :-(

Mario (the delta wave) druid

You got it.......you have to watch your sacrum fissures and stuff.....sleeping not a problem.....doing anything but sleeping and working, now that can be a problem.....where is the maid.

1500-2330X5.....and more

micro rocks and drinks coffee and saves the knowledge base for a couple more hours from now............it is the brunette in me.....:p :p ;)

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Specializes in Geriatrics.

Wondering where you've been, Mario. Miss your posts...welcome back...now get some sleep!:zzzzz :zzzzz :zzzzz

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Hey Mario, I remember my first "Graveyard" shift 30yrs ago, wow what a trip! Felt like I was King of the castle, all the "Big Honcho's were gone, and it was quiet and peaceful for the most part. Then I had to go home and try to sleep at a time my body was telling my brain, "hey wake him up! (second person) "he's supposed to be awake!! I was torn between being overtired, no sleep the day before, and wanting to engage in my "Off Day" routine. Got approximately 2-3hr nap and had to return to work. eek! More strange than that was that I could only sleep about six hours the next day, before returning to work that third nightshift. However that was nothing(I was a student then) when compared to the 45 straight nights I pulled once upon a time, as a licensed. eek! eek! As Baretta once said, "Keep on Strokin' " Good luck to you in your endeavors. I am eagerly awaiting your eventual Graduation and indoctrination into the nursing field, wish I had the information availability on this site when I went into school :-(

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