New nurse help

As a person with a usually unknown medical condition, I say involve your pt. Ask them about their condition. I have taught many doctors and nurses about my condition, what it is, what I need from them and so forth.

All the time, to this day. Research and ask your seasoned colleagues questions :)

Sure, they're coming out with new models all the time. When I'm doing shift report and I hear an unfamiliar diagnosis either in the admitting diagnosis OR the patient history, I say "refresh my memory about this one." Then the off going nurse can (hopefully) give me a quick description of the relevant points, those mainly being the patient''s baseline plus any special complications or risks to watch out for.

I have a child on my caseload right now who has such a random combination of illnesses that everyone thinks she has an underlying syndrome or genetic disease but no diagnosis has ever been made. The 2 genetic diagnoses that I know have been considered- Beckwith-Wiedemann Syndrome and Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia- I never heard of before and I've been a pediatric nurse for 11 years. I looked them up.

On the flip side, some of my colleagues have patients with diagnoses they've never encountered before (like SIADH and diabetes insipidus) that I'm very familiar with because I spent 5 years in peds neuro and these disorders onset after pituitary surgery a lot.

What you know depends largely on where you work. If you work in peds cardiology, for example, you'll see the rarest of the rare cardiac defects but there will be adult diagnoses that may even be relatively common that you won't know because you don't work with adults. I frequently have to remind my own mother of this when she wants to ask me about Gout or Total Hip Replacements.