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Nurses General Nursing

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  1. Finger sticks...

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-Just curious as to what time (5 to-7am) you or assistant nursing personnel, perform your am morning finger sticks.

Day shift does their own glucometers. We used to have night shift do them, but many of us felt uncomfortable giving insulin based on a sugar that was over 2 hours old.

Positively, but that's how it's done in our LTC facility!:o

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Specializes in Psych, Informatics, Biostatistics.

We do finger sticks @ 6:00 we just cover the finger sticks we don't give the daily insulin.

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Specializes in L&D.

I work on a floor nights with 60 pts. I have 6am meds to give..loads of them. So I take my cart down the hall at 4:30am and start the meds and do the sugars along the way. I probably have 10-12 of them. Usually they're lower from them sleeping all night. But if they're high I have to cover them. Its tricky and ONE Of the many questions I have about how to manage nights. I feel quite unsafe actually caring for 60 problems I mean patients LOL. In all seriousness...if I don't start my morning work by that time I will not leave on time. I also have 10 tube feedings too....

am I wrong to think this is unsafe?

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Specializes in Psych, Informatics, Biostatistics.

Wow, puts my job to shame. We have a 25 bed psych unit staffed by 2 RNs. One of us does the finger sticks(maybe 3-7) with sliding scale coverage the other does the meds for 6-7 am( maybe 2-3 patients po meds). Your place sounds pretty unsafe especially with the tubes. Any chance you could get someone to come in @ 6:00 am just to do the tubes and accuchecks ?

I work on a floor nights with 60 pts. I have 6am meds to give..loads of them. So I take my cart down the hall at 4:30am and start the meds and do the sugars along the way. I probably have 10-12 of them. Usually they're lower from them sleeping all night. But if they're high I have to cover them. Its tricky and ONE Of the many questions I have about how to manage nights. I feel quite unsafe actually caring for 60 problems I mean patients LOL. In all seriousness...if I don't start my morning work by that time I will not leave on time. I also have 10 tube feedings too....

am I wrong to think this is unsafe?

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Specializes in Neuro/Med-Surg/Oncology.
We do finger sticks @ 6:00 we just cover the finger sticks we don't give the daily insulin.

:yeahthat: If someone comes to me with a blood sugar @ 06:00, I'm not going to expect they day nurse to cover it two hours later. Besides, if a person's sugar is 300, I really don't want to wait another two hours to treat it. :twocents:

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you guys are so lucky! on my floor, breakfast comes at 7am. that's right, at shift change. at the same time we're sending patients to dialysis and surgery and hydro and GI lab and anywhere else they're going. oh yeah, that's also when we had to give those breakfast meds that HAVE to be given with food (phosphate binders, potassiums, prednisone, etc.) which most renal patients take. not to mention giving report somewhere in there. but i digress.

we take the blood sugars at 6 am and cover if need be. or, if there's insulin to be given with breakfast, we just mix the coverage in that and give it all at once when breakfast arrives.

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Specializes in L&D.
Wow, puts my job to shame. We have a 25 bed psych unit staffed by 2 RNs. One of us does the finger sticks(maybe 3-7) with sliding scale coverage the other does the meds for 6-7 am( maybe 2-3 patients po meds). Your place sounds pretty unsafe especially with the tubes. Any chance you could get someone to come in @ 6:00 am just to do the tubes and accuchecks ?

Nope. They know its a tough unit. But its like all places. They want to get the bang for their buck. I probably have 20 or so meds to pass in the am, besides the sugars ect...

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