bethem

In ICU we slam it in stat.

I am a second year RN (i.e. this is my second year out of uni) who has just started in ICU in Feb. I've just finished a night shift. I had the only tubed patient in our little six-bed unit. All was going well, I had everything done and decided to dra...

What do you guys (US) call what I know as Pressure Control Ventilation plus Assist? It's a Draeger mode on the Evita models. It delivers breaths at a set rate, with a pressure limit. The breath is delivered until the pressure limit is reached, theref...

I'm an ICU nurse, so the thought of not knowing my pt's SaO2 is downright scary! Of course there are signs of hypoxia which may be picked up in a good assessment, but why wouldn't you just pop a probe on a finger and make sure?

We've got 2 bad rooms out of 16 beds! Bad mojo in our unit.

We would fill first, then use a more alpha-adrenergic pressor like noradrenaline. Dopamine tends to be used as an addit to norad, and only when the norad is maxed out and still ineffective. The reason you would want vasoconstriction in hypovolemic sh...

We use cloth tapes tied in a particular way. There is some movement to get the EndoTrachead Attachment Device (ETAD) in our ICU which is an adhesive thing - like Comfeel with a zip tie on it.

In my ICU (in Newcastle, not far from Sydney but more 'rural' even though we are a level 6 ICU), we do CRRT and the dialysis nurses do haemodialysis. Hope that helps.

That's what our docs do. They do three days and four nights, each 12 hours, then 7 off, then four days and three nights, then seven off, every month. I dunno, it seems to work for them. They don't make the nurses do that, though. I think 7 nights in ...

We do it when indicated; we have a set of criteria for indicating IAP monitoring. Every trauma gets it, some abdo surgeries and some other stuff that I can't remember - it doesn't happen all that often. I had a guy with a nasty intra-abdominal sepsis...

It has happened to me; we use bite blocks to ensure the patient can't bite, and do qshift tape changes during which we reposition the tube and the pilot line. Good idea to check for snaggleteeth and other hazards to the tube though. If you have arte...

This might sound weird, but... pretend, just during the interview, that you ARE confident. Imagine what a confident person would say and how they would act, and do that! It got me a job in ICU, despite my being cripplingly shy. I was asked a clinica...

Is that that dodgy Oceania University thing in Samoa? Where you do your theory on line for the first year or something and then you organise your own clinicals? Yeah, they advertise in our Aussie journals too, but they say RN to MBBS (B Med/B Surg, a...

My mum had a miscarriage between my brother (now 23) and my sister (now 20). She had two doctors seeing her in the ED. One was all concerned with the paperwork and the dispo. The second pulled a chair up to the bed, sat net to my mother and held her ...

I know some hospitals prefer new grads in ICUs because they haven't learnt any 'bad habits' yet, and can be moulded into the very model of a modern major ICU nurse. I personally think a bit of experience is a good thing prior to going in to ICU - but...

A Cert IV in australia is actually a certificate 4 - the IV is roman numerals, not an abbreviation. Cert IVs come from our technical schools. Don't worry, IV meds are only given by nurses in Australia too! Good luck Matt, sounds like the working visa...

Why would it matter? Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I thought the point of fentanyl patches was to receive a continuous dose of fentanyl (in this case, 75mcg/hr) and that the patch contained enough fentanyl to provide this continuous dose for three da...

:yeah:Awesome! I read your other thread and I am so glad you've found something that suits. I am a little biased, but I love ICU too! I think ICU is 'think deep' vs ED, which seems to be 'think fast' (absolutey not my intent to offend anyone, and I h...

Is this a homework question? What are your thoughts about why you might not want to take blood from a peripheral IV? It's not that it is not possible, but it's not appropriate. Think about why the IV was inserted, what you are using it for and how t...

I hate the unpredicability of neuro injuries. I am totally inexperienced when it comes to neuro pts, but it seems that I can never tell which ones are going to get better and which ones we should never have tried to save. A patient I saw once was a t...

Who needs to flirt with the docs (especially when they're looking rough at the end of their 7th day on in a row) whe you work with some hot male nurses like I do? And you know the nurses won't get called out of your bed in the middle of the night to ...

Wouldn't a NS neb be more comfortable and equally effective? It seems so counter-intuitive to stick water in someone's lungs on purpose. Especially if you don't then suck it out again.

I'll often duck in to the shops on my way to or from work with my scrubs on, but they're not as commonly worn in Australia so not many people recognise that I am a nurse. I like it that way.

If I get into nursing education, this would be the program I'd like to teach! I think the mix of clinical and theory is really important. In my B Nurs, we had no prac at all in the first semester (skills labs with dummies only), three weeks in second...

Susanne is the poster you want, but in the meantime, you need to contact the nurses' registration board in the state your wife will want to work. In New South Wales, it's the Nurses and Midwives Board. You may also like to contact the Australian Nur...