Hi All, kinda new and feel frustrated for flubbing an interview ? - page 2

Congratulations! Does that mean you got the job?

Agree with Jess. Give them the incentive spirometer and instruct them on its use. It has amazing working qualities. But yes, you are a newbie. Low grade temps are normal after surgery. Treat the pain first if all other systems are ok. It takes years to figure all this out so don't stress.

I agree with llg. Just because you blew a scenario doesn't mean you blew the interview, they want to know how you think, and what YOU prioritize as most important. They also want to know what you learned in school.

Having said that, let me stress for me, Pain is a huge concern because infection or not, Patient Comfort is number one with ME. First thing I take care of is my patient, then I handle the problem. If his pain level is a 7-10 I need to manage that first because anything I do for the infection or anything else could drive his pain scale even higher. It all depends on the scenario.
For my school, Pain is a huge priority followed by infection, then everything else. Once the pain is managed, then the infection can be managed. Being it was 100.9, and not 101 or higher, Pain would be my choice followed by inspection of the incision site, followed by inspection of the lab values (hence assessments) to see if the pain is being caused by a infection.

I also agree with llg, getting one answer "wrong doesn't mean you blew the interview. You are new, you are not expected to know everything. But, the employer wants a sense of your critical thinking, how you apply logic, are you someone who is willing and able to learn, and does your personality match the culture of the unit. Your answer is not nessecarily "wrong", depending on how recent the surgery is etc. Considering infection is an important patient safety issue, and pain management is extremely important as well. One thing I would recommend for any interview - write a thank you note and send it in or drop it off right away. Very few people think to send a thankyou note after an interview. It gives you an opportunity to highlight your positives, and perhaps clarify anything that you felt you "flubbed". It makes you stand out from other applicants that won't bother to send a thankyou to the interviewers. Good luck!

First of all I would like to say congratulations on passing your Boards and surviving your first job interview. Please keep in mind that while you did not get this position, it is not really clear why. It may not have anything to do with how you replied to their clinical scenario. Nonetheless, I wish you all the luck in the world on the next interview. Now, I would like to take a moment to offer you and the others reading the post some pain management knowledge that I am not seeing come out in the posts.

I should provide some background on my experience... my graduate work was done in pain management and I was very fortunate to have worked with some pretty influential people in the field of pain management. I spent over 700 hours working with the inpatient clinical pain service in a large teaching hospital, prior to my pain management education and clinical experience I spent 16 years working in all areas of critical care, trauma, and CV-Surgery.

It is estimated that in the United States more than 76 million people suffer from pain both chronic or acute pain, such as post-surgical pain as is likely in the scenario given during your interview.

On January 1, 2001, pain management standards went into effect for Joint Commission accredited ambulatory care facilities, behavioral health care organizations, critical access hospitals, home care providers, hospitals, office-based surgery practices, and long term care providers. The standards require organizations to recognize the rights of patients to appropriate assessment and management of pain. These rights include assessment and management of patients for pain during their initial assessment and, when clinically required during ongoing, periodic re-assessments of pain and, furthermore, educating patients suffering from pain and their families about pain management. Most importantly, however, if a patient is experiencing pain, appropriate care should be made available immediately and should be followed up with post-care re-assessments.

While it is important to pay attention to a patient's temperature, pain is known as the fifth vital sign and should take precedence over fever. Granted this was a low grade fever and is common following a surgical procedure, it did not require immediate treatment, pain should always be a priority when considering which non-life threatening symptoms to treat. There are also many non-infectious causes of fever one of which being inflammation.

Inflammation is both common and likely to cause pain following surgery. Furthermore, many of the oral drugs used to treat post-surgical pain are combination drugs i.e. vicodin (hydrocodone/acetaminophen), vicoprofen (hydrocodone/ibuprophen). Therefore, while you are considering the possibility of infection, you may want to consider treating the pain first and foremost. In doing so you may find that not only do you decrease the patient's pain, but giving a combination drug with acetaminophen or ibuprofen, you not only decrease the inflammation (the likely cause of the patient's pain) you are likely to lower the patient's temperature. However, if the patient's temperature remains elevated or continues to rise, then it is time to begin to consider seriously that the patient may have a post-surgical infection.

I wish you luck in your future career endeavors and urge you to make yourself familiar with The Joint Commission Standards prior to any future interviews. It is likely that many of your clinical scenario questions asked during interviews are going to center on these standards, especially if you are looking to obtain employment in the hospital setting. I also cannot urge you enough to take out private malpractice insurance.

I am also a new grad and I have two interviews under my belt. I have also mulled over my responses considering if that is the reason I haven't gotten a call back. I'm thinking it's better to forge ahead, spend time to review the unit before applying (and definitely before the interview), and anticipate those "what would you do if..." questions. Good luck on your next interview!