I was reading a thread on "old-school" nursing practices and I'm wondering WHY I am learning to do those same things the same way? For instance, we are learning to do IV Calculations the gravity-feed method, without being allowed to use a calculator (MAJOR issues for some of these girls who don't even know their basic multiplication tables...) having to be able to set the gtts/min and prime the line and watch to calculate drips. Is this a "skill" I'm ever going to use outside of school?? They tell us that the pumps are being used on the floors, but that we may end up "someday" having a situation where we have to use gravity feeds.
What makes me a bit worried is the fact that we DON'T get any practice setting pumps feed rates until we get to clinical. Is this "normal" for nursing college? Learning to do things the "old" way and then having to learn the new technology outside of lab time and on-the-floor with actual patients the FIRST time you ever do it?
Ask if you can put your lunch in the unit fridge. Nothing ticks us off more than getting into work, opening the fridge and it's full of student lunch bags.
Don't assume that you get to make snarky "in" jokes because you've been on the unit for four days. We make terrible jokes at each other but we KNOW each other.
Food is usually a free for all if it's on the staff table in the backroom.
At the hospital I work at (Michigan) pumps are only used for things like heparin, insulin, cardizem and all the other "big guns." Antibiotics and fluids all run via gravity drips. And I work at a LARGE 700 bed teaching hospital. My nursing school reviews nursing math with us all the time. And thanks be to God, because I'm one of those girls with the weak math skills.
I would rather have the skill to be able to figure out gravity feed IV rates and not need it, than to need the skill in a situation and stand there scratching my head because I didn't know how. I have read where someone figured out a rate, counted the rate on a pump, and discovered that the pump was not operating up to par. Always a possibility that an operational pump won't be available.
We are taught drip rates as well, and I have used them. Recently in my OB rotation, I was taking care of a fresh pp mom and she was on a gravity fed iv. I did the calc and found it was running much too slowly.
I just finished school and I've had pts on gravity drips many, many times throughout school. At the hospital I'm at now everything goes into a pump in my hospital (even NS TKVO) except in the OR and OP surgery it's a little extreme.
I did my preceptorship in the ICU and I did at least one manual BP every shift. Luckily, the automatic cuffs are attached to our cardiac monitors in every room so there's no need to fight (yay) we also have a manual cuff on the wall in every room. We do fight over thermometers and glucometers, though
Fiona59
8,343 Posts
Ask if you can put your lunch in the unit fridge. Nothing ticks us off more than getting into work, opening the fridge and it's full of student lunch bags.
Don't assume that you get to make snarky "in" jokes because you've been on the unit for four days. We make terrible jokes at each other but we KNOW each other.
Food is usually a free for all if it's on the staff table in the backroom.