Re: Help-Anybody every been to Long Beach Memorial?
okay i know this is an old post... but since it relates to me i'll add!
i work at long beach memorial. i started rotations there in nursing school clinicals in about 2004. i've worked there since 2005. i started as a pca (patient care assistant) in adult med surge and I HATED it. I can't vouch for adult med-surge nursing because I ended up in peds, but I for sure do not like working with sick adults! Anyhow, just being a pca sucked there because there was so many patients and changing adult diapers are just not my thing.
I currently work in general pediatrics as a pediatric RN. I've been there for 2 years. I hear at other hospitals there are nurses aides or LVNs who take vital signs. We definitely don't have anyone but the RNs do vital signs, unless you have a student nurse working with you. There are no IV teams, but there are usually an adequate amount of people to help you start IVs. FOr instance, we have a coordinator, sometimes a "Lead nurse", and sometimes a procedure/break nurse. All of these nurses may be available to help you out with IVs or other stuff that you might need help with.
We just started computerized charting last year. We were in the year 2008 and still with paper charting. You'd think we'd be up to date by that time!
The hospital is being expanded... the new buildings were projected to be finished in 2008, as they started in 2005. HOWEVER, they are not finished. Seems like there has been ongoing construction for so long. The drilling can get kind of annoying. I think they will be adding more NICU beds in there. We have a level 3 NICU. There is a PICU. There are two general pediatric units, one is called PEDS CORE, and the other is MILLER WEST. These two units are split up. Miller west is WAYYYYYYYYY on the other side of the hospital. It's not even connected to the main children's hospital. THey put heme-onc over there too. There is no inpatient pharmacy there, as there is on peds core, so all the meds are sent through a tubing system. Usually if I have a medication question I can go straight to the pharmacists/technician and get the answer, instead of calling and being placed on hold.
On the core, just this past year we got blood pressure machines at every bed. Before then, there were probably about 5 in each hallway (there are 3 hallways on the core, maybe about 16-20 patients each?). THe nurses would have to find these wherever they were randomly dispersed in the hallway to take the vital signs.
This is a teaching hospital, so residents often cover many of the patients. For a long time it was a dreadful process of finding out which resident was covering which patient because there would be ONE list at the secretaries desk. They just now started adding in the resident's name who is covering that patient for the day in the care plans that are found in the patient profile in the computerized charting.
Does this sound bad? I wouldn't know! I have nothing to compare it with!
There are a lot of helpful nurses around. The school paid for my tuition and put me in a 2 year contract to work there.
I think that the staff likes to throw the new grads in with the sharks once orientation is over!
THere is no step down unit here. Keep that in mind when you get all your MRCP kids with trachs! In general peds, kids are not grouped by specialties. There is no cardiac, resp, gI/gu, halls etc... Instead, we get a mixture of every kind of patient.
There is a really good RT staff who are always on top of their treatments. The lab is great at notifying nurses of critical results, and drawing labs on time. Very seldom I've had to call and request someone to draw the labs.
Any other questions let me know!
Help-Anybody every been to Long Beach Memorial?
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