Night__Owl BSN, RN

I'm not fishing anything out of a sharps container unless a gun is held to my head. I'll get fired, I'll flip burgers instead of being a nurse, I don't care.

IO access is usually only needed in the field, since it's pretty much your only option if peripheral IV insertion fails. In the hospital in an emergent situation, I would expect either anesthesia or the EM doc to be able to place a central line, or a...

The hospital I used to work for was a small private hospital which competed with a large public hospital. One of the ways they helped keep staff was having no-weekend positions. In our ICU, there was a crew of people hired specifically for Friday, S...

I've used a "doc in a box" computer before l, and I strongly doubt that there was "no one else in the room." The tele doc computer cannot "roll into the room" like some kind of android. It's a COW with a webcam. A nurse pushed it in there. Now, if th...

I've got a wild idea. Maybe, considering this man had just hours of time left, the MD did not want to delay his visit whatever amount of time it would have taken for him to physically arrive there. If youve got three hours left, and it takes the spec...

I get it, but at the same time I think it's ridiculous. I use nicotine replacement to keep me from going back to smoking. But every "smoke free" hospital around here, heck even my insurance company, treats that as same as smoking. I'll quit using nic...

What do you think?

I'm fairy certain we had a Clark in the ICU I worked in. A tech who iirc had failed out of nursing school, but had just enough knowledge to be dangerous. Unit Clark went into the room of a vent patient, saw that the IV pump was alarming and said "inf...

Is it possible for you to take shorter shifts? I know there are many EDs out there which have both 8 hour and 12 hour shifts. What is the minimal duration and frequency that you need to sit in order to be relatively comfortable, and not killing yours...

Yes, imagine a pt with VS HR 90, BP 150/90, O2 sat 96. BUT.... they are breathing 45 times a minute over the set rate of 20. It's important information, as is knowing if the patient is never breathing over the vent at all.

I've used both, both are good, but I definitely prefer phenobarbital. You usually don't want any pt on the floor receiving the high doses of benzos, because of the respiratory risk involved. I've seen patients withdraw so hard that if they were awake...

When I smoked, I didn't have a chronic cough (didn't smoke enough years to get one, thankfully.) But I DID have a markedly longer recovery period after getting a cold. Hard to clear it out when you're constantly deadening your cilia with nicotine and...

I was scraping above passing almost every semester. Did not have to tell anyone my grades when applying for jobs, had an offer waiting when I graduated. My overall still looks decent because of how high it had to be to get into nursing school in the ...

It's simpler than this thread has become. If patients want to refuse care from you because of your gender, your age, your race, or because they just don't like the way your face looks, that's their choice, as are the consequences. You just say ,"I ca...

PCU stands for Progressive Care Unit. It's usually an intermediate unit, for patients recently out of ICU, or those who are too high acuity for Med surg, while also not requiring ICU care either.

I haven't taken the CCRN, but I did do some studying on it before I decided to leave ICU. I'll be honest, I think it would be very hard to pass the test with only a written knowledge of vents. Not impossible, but highly difficult. There were also som...

When I was working ICU, there was a strong, unit-wide superstition about flies. More than once in the years I worked there, we would see a big, nasty house fly that had somehow found its way inside, and that was a clear sign that somebody in the unit...

Look, our jobs are not G-rated. These things can be really hard on you mentally, and everyone around you who isn't a sociopath understands that. Don't fall into the trap of trying to place blame on yourself. It sounds like you did the right things, ...

The point of a trigger warning is not to protect people from hurt feelings. It's to be polite to those with PTSD, and physical reactions to certain things which they may not fully have control of. An appropriate use of a trigger warning would be ,"h...

I only worked at the bedside for two and a half years before getting burnt out. It wasn't the patients, it was the fact that the work environment was very nearly slavery. Eating lunch at the desk, having your bathroom breaks interrupted, having the ...

Sorry, I suppose I wasn't clear. I meant that all you had to do was pause whatever was running in for a few seconds, flush adequately and draw a waste tube. I wouldn't draw blood without pausing everything running into the lumens. But I've never had ...

There's a lot of superstition over these types of things. I will say, I've drawn a ptt from a heparin line, as well as a BMP from a TPN line. Never had unexpected levels, which would have been obvious with the BMP. If it's a central line, all you ne...

Sounds like you handled it pretty well on your feet. I wouldn't want to throw any of my coworkers under the bus short of something truly dangerous. After all, if you get into a mess on the floor, it probably won't be your manager there to help you ou...

Let me just say, I am somehow more concerned about the lack of teamwork in your department than you as charge. No hands on deck in a code? RIDICULOUS. Even if every other nurse on your unit is a day 1 new grad, they are competent to do compressions w...

Davey, I don't mean she puts it in his AC vein. I mean she jams it straight into the bend of his elbow as deep as it will go, like it's a shot of epi to the thigh. Also, that scene in Mad Max: Fury Road where he gives Furiosa a direct transfusion of...