mustanggirl

mustanggirl has 10 years experience and specializes in long term care, med-surg, PACU, Pre-Op.

Latest Activity

1. From the Other Side of the Bed Rails - When the Nurse Becomes the Patient

   mustanggirl replied to tnbutterfly - Mary's topic in Spirituality

   Thank you so much for this blog. Unfortunately over the past few years I have had many experiences with being a patient. First when our daughter was born early and in the NICU (she's doing great now, thank you everyone for all her great care) and c...

2. Am I Being Unrealistic?

   mustanggirl replied to pcbnurse's topic in PACU

   My heart goes out to you guys that sounds like hell, I feel exhausted just reading your posts. I work in a non Union Magnet hospital and we have 4 CNAs during the workday into PMs to do transports and stock and help out with patients. We have two be...

3. Opinions please re: Phase I

   mustanggirl replied to sharann's topic in PACU

   We have strict protocols that there must be 2 RNs in the PACU whenever we have a patient. From my understanding this is ASPAN's written policy. Sometimes this means making anesthesia or the circulator stay with us until the other nurse gets there.

4. 18 gauge insertion

   mustanggirl replied to Murse7's topic in Emergency

   I've found that often once I get the catheter in, sometimes it helps to turn the IV fluid on wide open and float the catheter in the rest of the way with the fluid pressure once you have pulled the needle out.

5. You might be a PACU nurse if...

   mustanggirl replied to mustanggirl's topic in PACU

   The floor nurse calmly says, so "is this your only patient"after you have been put on hold for 30 minutes and held the patient already for an hour because they supposedly didn't have a bed but one miraculously opened up after shift change.:angryfire ...

6. Pyxis, Omnicell, Accudose Comparison

   mustanggirl replied to jkarras81's topic in General Nursing

   I've only used Pyxis, which I did not mind too much at first, until we got the stupid fingerprint access. :angryfire It sounded great until we got it. It seems impossible to get into at times because for some reason it will not read my fingerprint w...

7. Holding overnight (or even days at a time)

   mustanggirl replied to RNPamP's topic in PACU

   We have only had to hold patients overnight a few times a year and when we do administration is notified and they usually come by in the morning to see how we are doing. If it is an ICU patient we usually provide the staffing, but if it is a floor p...

8. If you could do it over again, would you choose nursing?

   mustanggirl replied to jollyjenny's topic in General Nursing

   Yes, as any job it has its ups and downs. It is one of the few degrees where you can find a job and have decent wages right out of school. Although radiology sounds interesting also, you could always work as an RN in radiology, although usually you...

9. Nursing Assistants in PACU

   mustanggirl replied to mustangsally1988's topic in PACU

   Our CNAs do a lot of transporting and stocking. They also help settle a patient when they get to PACU, helping to put monitoring equipment on, call the floor to let them know the patient is in PACU and put orders in for labs and x-rays as instructed...

10. Applying DVT prophylaxis in PACU

    mustanggirl replied to gentle_ben_RN's topic in PACU

    The majority of the times antiembolism stockings and venodynes (SCDs or sequential compression devices) are started preoperatively and patients are also given lovenox preoperatively (depending on their surgery). If they order them postoperatively an...

11. Whoa! Crazy ProTime/INR

    mustanggirl replied to Roy Fokker's topic in General Nursing

    HOLEY SMOKES! God bless you floor nurses because you are so resilient. You need to pat yourself on the back for surviving that shift. These are the kinds of days I try to block out of my memory from when I worked on the floor, but heck they are th...

12. What nursing school did everyone attend?

    mustanggirl replied to SoontobeAdrienneRN's topic in General Nursing

    Viterbo College (now Viterbo University, as they now have masters programs) in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. I thought it was a wonderful school, with good preparation and lots of clinicals (we started clinicals our Sophomore year!). My best memory is probabl...

13. PCA's in PACU

    mustanggirl replied to cthorn518's topic in PACU

    We start then in PACU, at first we thought it would be more of a pain thatn it has been. We give anesthesia ordered pain meds until the patients get comfortable or as long as we can safely give them and put the patient on the PCA as we send them to ...

14. PACU Staffing

    mustanggirl posted a topic in PACU

    Does everyone out there work at a hospital with more than one PACU for inpatients and how do you staff it? For example having a separate PACU for vascular/thoracic cases and another PACU for everything else. How do you do call in this situation. T...

15. Does anyone really enjoy LTC?

    mustanggirl replied to ihollie's topic in Geriatric

    LTC was a wonderful place to start out. A lot of times it is downplayed as a god place to work, but I disagree. Especially while going to nursing school, you name it you see it in long-term care so it was interesting to learn about the different di...