Josifek

Give the poor woman a break! She's tired and has paid a lot of money to have the baby in your hospital and would like to use your services of keeping the baby in the nursery overnight. Maybe it's these "call CPS at the drop of a hat" attitudes that keep her from coming out and saying "I'm tired, please take the baby for a while". Instead she exaggerates her religious practices hoping you will be a bit more sympathetic than if she just came out and admitted she's not super mom. Put down your stones and place yourself in her shoes for a moment. Do you want to be reported to CPS when you get tired as well?

When I was in nursing school we had one class in which we broke into seven groups. Each group was given the same case senerio. The senerio was something like "you are stranded in a life boat with seven people... a teenager, a purse snatcher, a rabbi, several other types of people, and finally, an old lady. One of them has to be thrown overboard or else you will all sink, who do you throw overboard?" Would you believe that of those seven groups of future nurses six of them voted to throw the old lady out because "she's lived her life, the others haven't". The instructor mentioned at the end of the class that whenever he does this type of group project, nearly everyone votes to kill the grandmother. To answer the question of the original poster, I'm afraid this mentality is quite common in the medical profession and certainly contributes to the idea that we, as LTC nurses, are worthless. I just look at it like this: one day those with the above mentioned mentality are going to be in the same state as those elderly they currently despise. For their sakes I hope there are still some compasionate souls around to wipe their butts otherwise they themselves may get thrown overboard.

Beautiful article. Too bad we have to go half way around the world to find wives like this nowadays. Oh well, at least some cultures still keep to the way things should be.

The heat was extreme and I could not get a house built w/ a basement for love or money! (Gosh, even willing to pay for it we could not find a home contractor willing to put one in. And I wanted one just in case of a tornado.) I'm afraid this is common throughout the South. I grew up in Mississippi and do not think I ever actually saw a basement until I moved to Penn. in my early twenties. Folks were always suprised that we didnt have basements back home and would ask me "where do you go for all the tornados"? In the bathtub with a mattress pulled over us, where else?

I grew up in Mississippi and can remember driving from Jackson to Las Curces NM (just over the Texas state line) in August. Leaving Jackson was very typical with highs in the mid 90s and what was always a minimum of 75% humidity. This was my first time to be in Texas and I also had the image of desert and cowboys but I remember being suprised that for what seemed like at least a couple of hours the landscape and temp seemed just like Mississippi, Louisiana. Then somewhere past Dallas-Fort Worth the landscape became more like a parire and the humidity was less. As we drove for what seemed like hours in this simi- humid (Much better than Mississippi) but hot prarie, the desert started, or at least the closest thing I've ever seen to a desert. We must have driven for four or five hours through this desert before reaching El Paso and the state line. By this point the temp was 100 but it was the dryest heat (actually the only dry heat) I had ever experienced. It was actually rather comfortable. Much more so than the 90 something degrees of lush and green Tyler. I discoveed that one cannot classify Texas in regards to weather, landscape, or culture. Eating lunch in East Texas I felt no different than in Mississippi but by the time we reached El Paso I felt like in a different world- with weather, landscape, and culture. BTW, I really feel in love with the desert on that trip. Especially as you come into southern New Mexico from west Texas. Most folks say it is ugly and dirty but I have always thought it was a very special place.

Thank y'all for all the responses. It's been a month and a half now since I took this job and I must say that working at the desk has taught me so much. I'm learning so much about different dx, meds, tx, labs, ect. because I'm bombarded with it all for 8 (more like 10 usually) hours a day. At first it looked to me like I'd be just filling out forms all shift but once I was out of orientation and on my own at the desk and the job of calling Mds, pharm, charting, taking off orders, MDS assessments fell to me alone I realised there was so much more to it. I feel like I'm really getting my nursing education now. By the way, I have worked the floor by picking up a few extra shifts so this is not totally unknown to me (although I'm a little slow). Anyway, thanks for all the encouragement!

Hello. I just graduated from LPN school and have taken a job is a LTC facility. The nurse who is orientating me wants me to work at the desk doing paper work. I worked for several years prior to becoming a nurse as a CNA so I expected to be doing paper work but I never thought I'd be sitting at the desk all shift. My question is how common is this to have one nurse at the desk doing paper work all shift. This particular facility has on each hall a CMT, a floor nurse, and a "desk nurse" on this particular shift. I would really like at some point to work the floor but the floor nurses there hate the desk and want nothing to do with it (hence I come into the picture). How are things done is y'alls' facilities? Where I worked as a CNA it seemed the unit manager did a large part of what I'm expected to do at my new job. Thanks for the responses.

Looking on the bright side of things, if you are around something which stinks long enough you will eventually build up a tolerance to it and it wont stink nearly as bad anymore. What are her killer farts today will be a non issue several months from now .

I feel those that cannot get with that idea and racial harmony should get themselves on a remote island somewhere in the Pacific and go live so they won't be bothered with the yankees and others. And those who hate the South as much as you do would probably be better off up north. As far as the racism issue, try living in a big northern city and then come back to Alabama and take an honest look at how well black and white get along in comparison. Maybe you should try to resolve this hatred of you birthplace. Those who hate their roots tend to live a very bitter existence.

Where I live some hospitals are trying to do away with LPNs but keep having to hire them anyway due to the shortage of nurses. Even if hospitals do eventually phase out all LPNs I can't see LTC, clinics, Drs. offices, prisons, rehab centres, doing so. Go to any LTC facility and see how many LPNs there are to RNs. Where I just started working we have something like six LPNs and 1 RN on 2nd shift. If you dont have your heart set on working in a big city hospital then I dont think getting your LPN is a problem. You can always go back to a bridge programme later if you choose to.

I have to vote for my childrens' names: Anastazie Alzbeta Zdislava Anezka Josef Vaclav Kristof Vojtech

I was born and raised in Mississippi. My family has lived there ever since they left Scottland in the 18th century. I am a Missisippian 100% and although I have not lived there for 14 years I still make it a point to retain my accent because it is who I am. I've been around Northeners long enough that I could talk like them if I wanted to but it would be a fake accent for me and I have no desire to play along with that "Southern accent means you are stupid" mentality. A Southern accent doesn't mean you are stupid, it means you are from the South. I have a neighbor who is from New York but lived in North Carolina for 14 years. He used to like to talk to me about how much he hated the South, Southern Rednecks, Southern mentality, and about how amazed he was in North Carolina to find that the most educated people there could speak so poorly, i.e., with strong Southern accents. When I speak to him now, I make it a point to thicken my accent and use so many double negatives that he must think I'm straight off the set of Hee Haw. As far as being a nurse with an accent, please dont worry about it. People like to repeat what I have just said often and use a fake, exagerated accent when they do so but I just ignore them. After awhile they stop doing that when they realise I'm not an idiot. When I was in LPN school up here our president was from Alabama. She had such an accent that there was no question from the first word where she was from (actually, she was such a Southern "lady" that I could look at her and tell). She had her docterate in Nursing and was brilliant. No one doubted her one bit and once you show them that you are no fool, they won't doubt you either. If they continue to doubt, to use an old Southern expression, "Dont study 'em" (translation, pay them no mind) !

If this nursing home has gotten to the point where they are only changing briefs every 12 hours I fear that trying to stay and fight for better care for your mama may be pointless. I worked for a while in a home that was pretty bad. Family members complained all the time but the problem basically came down to this: It was a crapy home with a crapy reputation so crapy folks (nurses and CNAs) who wanted to pull a paycheck and do as little as possible flocked to the place because they knew little was expected of them and they could get away with a lot of garbage. The administration went through 7 DONs and 7 ADONs in a year and a half in an attempt to change things but the problem went much further than the DON. The last straw for me was when an aid (usually smelling of booze) went to sleep on a couch in the TV room of a lockdown unit around 1:00 a.m. and a dementia patient came into the room, walked right past him, and jumped out of a second floor window that was supposed to be bolted but wasn't. He later died from complications. All of this was caught on camera but one year later it is still one of the s***yest nursing homes you will ever walk into (I visited there last week). My point is that family members were constiently raising hell about the poor level of care, state was allways showing up, but nothing ever changed. The place is rotton and needs to be shut down. I have a feeling that a home that changes residents every 12 hours and continues to do so even after a complaint has been taken to the administrater (who denied it could happen) isn't going to change because of one extra family member fighting for their loved one . I don't know what size city you live in but any town of any size should have more choices of LTC facilities so that you dont have to settle for this. Raise hell one last time and then get you poor mother out of there. I know this is a hassle but in the long term she will be so much better off (I dont mean to come off as preachy but this type of thing going on in a nursing home really irritates me- no one deserves this type of treatment) .

This is not a personal experience but in the city where I currently live there was an incidence a few years ago where a CNA met two nurses in the parking lot after shift change and shot them killing at least one. I'm not one to normally go around calling the cops but after this occurence I would say if you feel at all threatened to call them.

This article states that 66% of infected people in the recent mumps outbread were fully vaccinated and another 14% were partialy vaccinated. If these vaccines are so effected then why are 66% of those infected recently coming down with mumps? We had an outbreak in middle school in 1987 in which several of my completely vaccinated friends got mumps. One had to have a gonad removed do to the fact that it hits this region hard after puberty. So far, no one in the recent outbreak has died and I think the numbers are up to 1,600 and growing. Mumps, like rueblla and chicken pox in a healthy child is an uncomfortable situation that passes. I would rather a mild experience with mumps at the age of 6 than a gonadectomy at the age of 35 because the vaccine wore off. Indigo Girl: Keep Questioning!!!