Nurses sound off! Steth belt clip or around the neck?

[vhern246]

How do you carry your stethoscope?

Do you keep it around your neck, tucked in your pocket or do you have the belt clip?

Do you even keep it with you?

Or do you use the (shudder) public, staff use steths?

Also, what kind do you have and what color?

I have a Littmann Cardiology III in Plum. (Thank god it was a dark plum.)

[belgarion]

I have a Littman Model 3000. Works great especially on obese pts. but it's really too heavy to spend twelve hours with it around my neck. I carry it in my cargo pants pockets.

[anonymurse]

In the drawer of my COW.

[vhern246]

In the drawer of my COW.

What's a COW?

[NotFlo]

Or do you use the (shudder) public, staff use steths?

Also, what kind do you have and what color?

.

I don't fine the public steths to be an ewww or a shudder. Where I work we have so many people on precautions that almost everyone has a disposable steth in their room anyway. I wouldn't want to be carrying my own personal one around my neck into and out of precaution rooms and have it dangling over dressing changes etc. I much prefer every pt. to have their own steth. in their room.

[Angel@MyTable, RN]

I put it in my pocket usually, sometimes around the neck!

Light pink (paid a little more for Breast Cancer Support) Littman Classic II LE. Big mistake to get a light color! Will probably get an new one (dark).

[Angel@MyTable, RN]

What's a COW?

"COW" is a Computer On Wheels.

[RescueNinja]

For all of you that wear it in your scrub pants, does it not pull your pants down? We were told to keep it in the leg pocket of our pants in clinical, but it was CONSTANTLY pulling my pants down which to me is 10 x more annoying than a bad wedgie

[angel h]

At the prison we did not have COW to use. Certain equipment was not allowed. Such as an ink pin with a spring in it. So that is why you must view everything as a potential weapon as most items can be in some way.

[Lacie, BSN, RN]

Always wore around my neck until I went to work in dialysis then it went in my pocket of my scrub pants. I was always getting caught on equipment so had to change my usual neck habit. Now I'm out of working dialysis so back to the neck.

[NSJodi]

I usually wear mine around my neck but the occasional patient will grab it. Makes it hard to get away when they basically have a rope around your neck (so I never wear it that way when I am taking care of any prison patients). I use a cleaned community stethescope. I've lost two Littman cardiologies over the past few years. Both to interns (the joys of a university hospital).

[guest2210]

Always around my neck, a Sprague in purple. COWs (computer on Wheels)in some places had to be changed to WOWs (Workstation on Wheels) because a patient's family member over heard 2 nurses talking about a COW, and that family member thought they were talking about the patient. True story.

Barb

[traumalover, RN]

Littman in royal blue. Around the neck. Never had a pt try to strangle me with it, but have had my ponytail pulled so hard I bawled and my shirt ripped in two. both by vented patients!!!!