DIALYSIS! I am new in the field and feeling very discouraged

[angelmp228]

I am loving dialysis but I am so scared that I will never get up to the speed expected of me. I have made the mistake of leaving the saline lines unclampedd 4 times now in just a month of being out of training. The lines were saved once but the others were wasted blood and all. My patient left with more weight than shecame in with. I would like to say that I will NEVER do that again but that's what I thought the first time. I know i need to slow down but I don't have my system or organization established yet.Therefore time management is at its worst for me. I feel so rushed. Does anyone have an organizational system that they would like to share? I hope that will help me slow down and save time? In training we didn't really get a chance to watch others from start to finish it was pretty chopped up. during trainingwi only treated two patients at a time and day one out of training i had four at a time. I have three shifts Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and two shifts on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Other tech's and nurses help me here and there but it almost feels like that throws me off more. I'm love staying busy but not being rushed! Any advice is greatly appreciated. I just hope they don't let me go before I can prove myself.

[GeauxNursing]

My habit is: turn off the blood pump, clamp the 2 big lines on the patient end as I'm about to connect the patient, then immediately clamp the saline line. Clamp, clamp, clamp. Detach the lines from each other, and hook up the patient.

[GeauxNursing]

In that case, you are not doing assessments, you are doing data collection. You shouldnt have to asses heart or lungs. The rn does that. You are just checking temp, edema, asking for shortness of breath, documenting heart rate, and presence of thrill and bruit. The machine will tell you the start time, you can go back and look that up later. I honestly start the tx, write down weight, start time, starting bp, temp and then move on to the next patient. Do your machines not automatically carry over the blood pressure lines to the computer? That saves time, too. On ours, once the bp takes, it generates a whole line of bp, art and ven pressures, tmp, uf removed. Then you can go back to it later and type a note. If youre in the middle of something else. .