I gave Demerol about a year ago, I got Phenergan IV 7 months ago during my c-section. I think I did a Carafate slurry once or twice but I mostly remember everyone on the giant bottles of the messy emulsion.
One thing they stopped briefly after I became a nurse were chest restraints (Posey vests) How cool were those? Your bedhoppers would be tied in their beds! We also had a class on tying each other up, because wrist restraints weren't considered a bad thing. Now we just have to run everytime the alarm goes off, which is 2 million times per shift. Oh, and full side rails! They got rid of those when someone got their head caught in it.
Soap suds enemas and my least favorite, which I never figured out how to deal with- cloth adult diapers. I mean, I was told to thoroughly wash them out after each patient like a giant baby cloth diaper, but who has time for that? If I sent it to the laundry unrinsed, can they just put it in the washing machine, and will it come out sans poop?
I still have to serve alcohol stored in the med room which we get prescriptions for, really crappy cocktails in little plastic cups.
I remember when gloves became mandatory. I always wear them for blood draws but insist I have smalls. I agree they can be cumbersome. I often feel for the vein without them. Love butterflies for blood draws.
Specializes in Crit Care; EOL; Pain/Symptom; Gero.
Did any other COBs use KY jelly to "glue" the stripe to their cap? It held the stripe in place very well but if you needed to remove the stripe to wash the cap, it came off easily. One of our nursing instructors taught us that trick.
Our caps had a tiny pocket on either side where the end of the stripe (red velvet ribbon) could be tucked in. Sometimes the stripe became droopy.
When we were students, we carried our caps in the clear plastic zipped case with a handle, since nurses weren't supposed to wear their caps outside the hospital.
One day I was taking off my cap outside on the sidewalk in front of the old Misericordia Hospital at 54th and Cedar in West Philadelphia, when a gust of wind took the cap out of my hands, and it went sailing down the street. I went running down Cedar Ave after it, and caught it by jumping on it. Big footprint (from my lace-up Clinic oxfords, the preppy nursing shoe in 1980) on the front of the cap.
No money to go buy a replacement cap at the college bookstore, nor starch to wash and starch the footprinted cap. Used shoe polish to cover it, and was asked, the next day, by my instructor, why part of my cap was whiter than the rest of the cap.
Th smaller picture looks like the autoclave we had on my unit at Grady Hospital back in the early 1970s. It had become defunct but we could heat our dinners in it if we had time. I do remember mixing all of my IV meds on a pediatric unit for kids under age 3. Very small doses from vials mixed up by us using adult meds. We had to do a lot of math, check each other to make sure we did not over dose and measure these minute amounts to add to the IV. This was when H. Flu was running full bore and the kids came in with meningitis that required isolation. We did sometimes heat up Mannitol in the auto clave so we could use it for seizures. The smell of that stuff was unmistakable just like the Mucamyst we gave tylenol ODs. It was wild.
I gave Demerol about a year ago, I got Phenergan IV 7 months ago during my c-section. I think I did a Carafate slurry once or twice but I mostly remember everyone on the giant bottles of the messy emulsion.
One thing they stopped briefly after I became a nurse were chest restraints (Posey vests) How cool were those? Your bedhoppers would be tied in their beds! We also had a class on tying each other up, because wrist restraints weren't considered a bad thing. Now we just have to run everytime the alarm goes off, which is 2 million times per shift. Oh, and full side rails! They got rid of those when someone got their head caught in it.
Soap suds enemas and my least favorite, which I never figured out how to deal with- cloth adult diapers. I mean, I was told to thoroughly wash them out after each patient like a giant baby cloth diaper, but who has time for that? If I sent it to the laundry unrinsed, can they just put it in the washing machine, and will it come out sans poop?
I still have to serve alcohol stored in the med room which we get prescriptions for, really crappy cocktails in little plastic cups.
There are special "sluice" fully and or quasi commercial washing machines that are designed to handle intensely fouled linen (feces, vomit, etc....). These machines do away with having to pre-rinse diapers, bed linen and so forth by hand before the wash.
Basically the main difference in design is that sluice washers have larger dump drains (without a pump) and diameter holes in wash tub. Better to flush out and allow the removal of solids, which are then sent down the drains. Such machines will also have various design systems to prevent the fouled water from backing up into machine. These machines also are capable of washing at very high temperatures (at or >160F for at least ten minutes) to ensure thermal disinfection of linen.
The sluice cycle itself is mostly a series of pre-rinses with agitation (tumbling) with high water levels and drains opened. Grossly fouled linen arrives separated from others and is put directly into machine.
Not much seen in smaller units on this side of the pond, but you can find such machines in care homes, LTC, small diaper services, the lot in UK and other parts of Europe.
For obvious reasons heavily fouled linen cannot nor should not be merely mixed in with laundry which is not. Thus either on the floors, central utility room, or at the laundry such things must be sorted and dealt with separately. So yes, it often fell to nursing staff to "sluice" such linen on the floors before it went to the wash.
However over the years this practice changed for several reasons. First and foremost it was determined for infection control and other reasons the less handling of soiled linen on floors the better.
As commercial laundry equipment and services advanced technologically it was found that either onsite of off laundry equipment could deal effectively with even the most fouled linen without all that human handling.
they were the best for those wounds that needed frequent changing and saved the pts skin so much! Of course, I guess now we just use VAC therapy on this type of wound, but I still miss them.
I MacGyvered Montgomery straps on a patient a couple years back and the new grads think I am Wonder Woman now. :)
One of our older surgeons still used Montgomery straps until he retired not so long ago. The younger nurses just had no clue what to do with them, so when Dr. G. made rounds he would say, "Okay, I need an old nurse!" One day I realized he was talking about me!
One of our older surgeons still used Montgomery straps until he retired not so long ago. The younger nurses just had no clue what to do with them, so when Dr. G. made rounds he would say, "Okay, I need an old nurse!" One day I realized he was talking about me!
Reminds me of the time I was rounding with one of our newer docs. Pt was constipated so we needed a supp order. Doc says "glycerine PRN" and I'm like " no, glycerine is crap. Give me a dulcolax! Works much better"
and shes "oh, I learn so much from you older nurses!" I had to sit down. She tried to change it to "experienced" but too late. Good thing I like her!
CoffeeRTC, BSN, RN
3,734 Posts
What sad is that some of these things are still common in a good bit of LTC facilities and the VA systems.