Is nursing like this everywhere?

I think that's the way it goes on medical floors? At least they were all breathing at the end of your shift? I hear some real horror stories here and it makes me grateful for where I'm at. I've been off orientation for 6 months and I've survived relatively unscathed. It does get easier!

Are you in medsurg? If so, yep, that's a typical scenario. Hang in there. It will get easier, and you will become better and faster at prioritizing care. Get a solid year or two in med surg, and you will be more able to try other specialities, or even travel later if you wish to do that.

Sounds pretty crazy for a surgical floor! My unit can be busy but we have a lot of frequent flyers and pts who have been with us for months at a time (whipples). I'm glad I can do 12hr shifts so I'm only there 3 days a wk. I work nocs too and it's much mellower than days.

You're going to encounter nurses that you won't want to follow. Those are the ones that put minimal effort forward and leave things for the night shift. That's normal for the floor you work on. Some nights will go effortlessly...some will seem like they are never ending. Go with the flow and you will be fine. Good luck in your new career!

Certainly the low urine output on the one and the uncorrected low K+ on another patient needs to be reported (to more than just the physicians), and frankly, with that many emergency issues coming on to a shift, it's pretty obvious that the prior nurse was unable to handle her patient load, for whatever reason, and the nurse manager needs to be aware so that the issues can be investigated and resolved.

Was the medication incident reported? If catapres was given and the patient was unarousable with a systolic of 80, this is a med error and needs to be reported as well.

You will find that there are nurses who when you get report from them you say to yourself, "I am going to die." Its horrible what some nurses won't do for 12 hours!
But yeah that is med-surg for sure. And you will figure out who you do want to follow and you will figure out how to always get those people. I for example let the charge nurse know that I always follow these 2 nurses. They let me do it too because they know that if I have a shift that I can control I go around and help everyone and that is always a plus on an understaffed weekend/night.

I can't say it's that bad on our floor. Most of our staff has been really well trained. We would not usually let K levels go like that, nor BP's. We really hammer it home to our new grads what to watch and what to do -- how quickly we need to call and address things.

That sounds like really sloppy nursing to me. I deal with leftover messy rooms, but not much else. The pain pts -- well, they are always like that no matter what you do.

Just dont' BE that kind of nurse yourself. Set a good example. ASK and challenge any co-worker that does not address these issues. Do it sternly.

We are very STERNLY question and grilled over things we let go like that.

We had a float nurse one night who left me 2 charts of unchecked orders. My dayshift after that was a living nightmare. I will NEVER allow a float nurse from any other floor to go until I've checked her charts with her/him. I just dont' allow people to leave me messes like that anymore -- but they have and I've paid for it.