Please stop! Little things that are just bad practice.

[JBudd]

Little things that are just bad practice.

Like looping IV tubing back into itself (against our policy, and they went to great lengths to hand out caps to carry in pockets). And not even cleaning off the port you looped it into!

Disconnecting a running IV to take a pt to the bathroom.. and just leaving the bare end hanging from the pole. Don't interrupt IVFs ! Take the blinking pump with you!

What are yours?

[SubSippi]

Since nobody else is saying this, I will. Much of the criticism here is quite disrespectful to our nursing peers. I sat for the same boards you did. I'm quite finished being judged and having my skills reviewed. I don't open my mouth when other nurses take hours passing meds, doing assessments and treatments. I don't express my annoyance when nurses babble irrelevent information at me in report (I don't care about problems that arose that you SOLVED!!!) . Every nurse is right in their work during their shift. How do I know? A pretty piece of paper from the state tells me so!

If more nurses took this to heart instead of overstepping their bounds, we would all be better off and happier on the job.

Well...you might want to know about a problem another nurse solved, because it might happen again and then you'd know how to fix it.

[Livingdeadnurse]

1. Not putting supplies back where it goes.

2. Leaving pill papers in the patients room. Throw it away already.

3. Date the dag gone Bp cuffs.

4. people who post on FB the night before they work about how sick they are all day. Then call in the next day. If you are so sick you won't be online.

5. Lazy nurses. Just do your job already.

6. Most aggravating. Stop hovering over the toilet already. All you do is pee on the seat for the next person. For Petes sake your in a hospital there are much worse things you can get from a door knob.

Ok end of rant

[sistrmoon, BSN, RN]

1. Not putting supplies back where it goes.

2. Leaving pill papers in the patients room. Throw it away already.

3. Date the dag gone Bp cuffs.

4. people who post on FB the night before they work about how sick they are all day. Then call in the next day. If you are so sick you won't be online.

5. Lazy nurses. Just do your job already.

6. Most aggravating. Stop hovering over the toilet already. All you do is pee on the seat for the next person. For Petes sake your in a hospital there are much worse things you can get from a door knob.

Ok end of rant

Date BP cuffs?

[Christy1019, ASN, RN]

Date BP cuffs?

I was wondering the same thing lol

[No Stars In My Eyes]

Date BP cuffs?

Add me to that list, also!

[psu_213, BSN, RN]

And I was under the impression that if someone complains of any sort of chest pain when coming to the ED, they get an EKG and troponins drawn to be safe.

Also, I had no idea that at some places a doctor actually had to order an EKG for a nurse to do one.

Just because the person say the words "chest pain" does not mean they have to get a EKG and trop. For example, the 25 year old who was helping his friend move the day before. It is true that most patients in their 30s or older will get an EKG.

As for the EKG order, if the hospital wants to get paid for the EKG, there needs to be a doctors order. In the ED, for a patient who comes in with chest pain, we do the EKG first and ask for the order later. Basically, there is no doctor that wouldn't sign off on it (the same applied when I worked in a PCU).

[psu_213, BSN, RN]

3. Date the dag gone Bp cuffs.

4. people who post on FB the night before they work about how sick they are all day. Then call in the next day. If you are so sick you won't be online.

6. Most aggravating. Stop hovering over the toilet already. All you do is pee on the seat for the next person. For Petes sake your in a hospital there are much worse things you can get from a door knob.

3. I'm with the the last 2 posters on this one. Why? Just curious :)

4. When I am ill, I don't post on FB. However, there are times that I am sick enough to have to call off, yet I am still able to go online. I need something to pass the time on a sick day. AN certainly helps.

6. This one kinda made me chuckle. I have never seen pee all over the toilet seat at work, but it sounds like a problem where you work. Could it possible be guys who aren't putting the seat up rather than women who hover? Just curious. (Then again, it is probably the same female nurses who expose male patients and then stand around and gawk at them ....sorry, different discussion)

[No Stars In My Eyes]

Well, psu_213,

Some women were raised by their mother to never 'settle' on to a toilet-seat that is not your own.

I once posted a note on the back of the stall door:

IF

above this seat

you hover

and splash

wash off the seat

before you dash!

Nothing worse than sitting down on someone else's pee. Some of us are physically unable to hover and dopey enough to trust that the prior person was courteous. UGH!

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

Could you please share why the first one is bad if you've scrubbed the port?

It isn't. But people will claim that you don't know that someone DID scrub the port.

On the other hand, even if someone neatly caps off the IV with a nice little blue port -- acceptable practice in our unit -- you don't know if that little blue port came out of a nice, sterile package or was picked up off the floor.

Good practice is invisible after the fact. You need to work with people whom you trust to practice correctly -- scrubbing the port before looping the IV back on itself or taking the little blue port out of the sterile package before capping the line, not picking one up off the floor, out of the patient's linen or using one tht was sitting on top of the IV pump.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

Huh! This is interesting to me. We recently had a patient who was the husband of a staff member who dutifully wore her gown and gloves every day, and I couldn't help but think, why? When they go home together they're not going to be on precautions. This one has always stumped me. I understand the idea behind not giving all the patients ROs but what about family members who are full time caretakers for that person who are visiting only that patient?

Do they go straight from the patient's room to their own vehicle without touching elevator buttons, door handles, bathroom fixtures, or cash/tickets for parking? Do they stay in that patient's room, sitting on the nice, germ laden sofa in that room or do they step out and use the bathroom, buy and consume food in the cafeteria or sit their now-germ laden butts in the family waiting room sofas? They may not visit other patients, but they come into contact with facilities that those other patients' family members are also touching.

[amoLucia]

Well, psu_213,

Some women were raised by their mother to never 'settle' on to a toilet-seat that is not your own.

I once posted a note on the back of the stall door:

IF

above this seat

you hover

and splash

wash off the seat

before you dash!

Nothing worse than sitting down on someone else's pee. Some of us are physically unable to hover and dopey enough to trust that the prior person was courteous. UGH!

If you sprinkle when you tinkle, please be neat and clean the seat!

[onmiwei]

This is not medically related except for the fact that I have found nurse's particularly to be guilty of it repeatedly over the years: Not replacing the empty toilet paper roll on the spindle with a new roll. If I had a dollar for every time I have gone into the nurse's AND patient's bathrooms and found this to be the case, I would be driving a Rolls Royce right now!

Oy...This has happened every job I have had. I am changing careers right now but when I was in banking I actually got the excuse of "I don't know how..." uhm..ok...