Doesn't It Make You Want To Scream, part two

Specialties LTC Directors

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Specializes in Gerontology, Med surg, Home Health.

Patient says he wants to die and has a plan to kill himself. Psych is called and the decision is made to send him to a geri-psych unit with a section 12...involuntary committment. The nurse manager tells me and I ask who is with him now? No one she says....we didn't think it was necessary or serious. Really? We've decided to commit him. It's serious enough to take away his rights, but not serious enough to make sure he's safe.Then they say....suppose he doesn't want to go? What about INVOLUNTARY don't you get?!? Seriously I am going to scream one of these days.

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Specializes in LTC, Hospice, Case Management.

Yep - there are those days. Breath! Remember it really is illegal to kill 'em just because they are momentarily stupid.

Hope tomorrow is better.

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Specializes in Med/Surg,Cardiac.

Sometimes it seems common sense is nonexistent in some people.

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Specializes in Gerontology, Med surg, Home Health.

Nascar...if it were only momentarily I might be able to over look it. I fear these nurses have terminal stupidity.:arghh:

I've given them skilled charting guidelines...don't have to think...just document on what I've circled. I couldn't have made it easier for them but am still getting "Alert, pleasant and responsive, ate well. Call Bell in reach, safety maintained, will continue to monitor".

Who gives a flying fig if they are pleasant? Since we aren't running a COMA unit, responsive is a given. It's not a skill to hand them their call bell.:no:

I think it might be time for me to hang up my stethescope. Between dumb nurses, more regulations every year, and the feeling I'm beating my head against the wall :banghead:....not to mention the investigations about abuse and falls and and and.

I fear when it's time for me to live in a nursing home, it might as well be self serve since most of them seem to know diddly squat despite months of orientation and teaching/training every week. :spit:

For sure I'm voting a resounding YES on Questions 1 and 2 on the Massachusetts ballot....assisted suicide and medical marijuana.

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For sure I'm voting a resounding YES on Questions 1 and 2 on the Massachusetts ballot....assisted suicide and medical marijuana.

I know you are frustrated but I do have to say that made me crack up! I am frustrated right now as well over know it alls who are too busy to actually look up the correct way to do things and will not accept suggestions. I am helping them climb out of a crater they have dug for themselves yet one is fighting me all the way.

Maybe we old nurses will just have to find a way to take care of each other to the best of our abilities!

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Sadly, I have been in this EXACT situation! These ladies and gentlemen do not understand how lucky they are that I have such a good filter because they would be shocked and horrified if I said to them what I really thought sometimes. If it makes you feel any better, I had to schedule my entire nursing class for an entire day of classroom education to reeducate them on how to pass medications and when and how to wash their hands. These were things I got cited on during annual and the problems were so widespread, it was the only way to correct the issue.

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I'm with ya on this one.....and some days I too think "What the H...?" Just go back and work the floor and be done with it....Go home and not think about it all the time......and then I pull myself up by my boot straps and remind myself I have started a new project and I have to see it through.....LOL!!! Keep the projects going!

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Specializes in acute care and geriatric.

On our Alzheimers unit we had a sweet but disturbed Holocaust survivor. I was called one evening to his room as he tried to slit his wrists on the shards of a broken mirror. As I took care of the patient, (the unit nurse and 2 other CNA's were freaking out and had to be sent on a time out)- I sent the CNA to check the room for left over shards and anything dangerous. The psychiatrist was in the building by chance so he was in the picture.

After the room was checked I went in to double check. The patient has 2 thin paperback books under his pillow and I found more shards carefully hidden between the pages. I showed this to the CNA who answered, "Oh, I didnt think to check there" , she also didnt think to remove the glass framed picture from the wall. Sometimes I feel so alone.

Story number two, I caught a nurse who neglected to change a dressing. She admited it but then asked, "maybe I just added saline to the dressing and didnt change it, that would be ok, wouldnt it?"

They obviously didnt hire me for my pretty face.

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Does make you wonder where people's common sense goes sometimes doesn't it?!

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Wow! You do not have to be a nurse to know not to leave someone unsupervised, who wants to commit suicide!!

This is not a myth: people who talk about killing themselves will not go through with it!

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Specializes in Gerontology, Med surg, Home Health.

Resurrecting this old thread:

Norton Plus...easy to do...easy math right? Wrong!! I have nurses who subtract 4 from 19 and get 17! My administrator tells me to do some education...really???? Isn't this covered in the second grade?

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Resurrecting this old thread:

Norton Plus...easy to do...easy math right? Wrong!! I have nurses who subtract 4 from 19 and get 17! My administrator tells me to do some education...really???? Isn't this covered in the second grade?

WOW! Unbelievable....

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