SaraO'Hara

LTC, Subacute Rehab

Member
  • Content

    551
  • Visitors

    10,908
  • Followers

    0
  • Likes

    8

All Content by SaraO'Hara

  1. I'm in the weird situation of being a right-handed nurse who learned to insert Foleys left-handed... it was the way the mannequin in nsg school was
  2. SaraO'Hara

    You Know You've Had A Hectic Shift/Day At Work

    Whenever I use earplugs while sleeping, I wake up disoriented because there are no familiar sounds. One morning, I was dreaming (nightmaring?) about being the only nurse for an entire ICU (and I have...
  3. SaraO'Hara

    Changing needles for injections...

    I always change the needle - a fresh, sharp needle is less painful for the patient. For most IM injections, I'll draw up with an 18g (we don't have blunt needles), then switch to a 22g (smallest we...
  4. SaraO'Hara

    LPN....I'm still a nurse, right??

    That family member is both ignorant and arrogant. You bet your bippy that you're a nurse.
  5. SaraO'Hara

    What was your route to get where you are today?

    Did very poorly in high school secondary to depression (understood the material, didn't see the point of doing homework). Dropped out and got my GED at 16. Attended community college for a year,...
  6. Gee wally cupcakes, if we couldn't do that, patients would have died on me. Who do you think staffs my
  7. SaraO'Hara

    Do LPN's deal with needles?

    Short answer - Yes. Long answer - fingersticks, intradermal, subq and IM injections, with extra certification may start IVs and draw
  8. SaraO'Hara

    What I Love About Nursing Is....

    Occasionally saving somebody's life through catching an early
  9. SaraO'Hara

    Where have all the LPN's gone?

    We're in skilled nursing and long-term care, assisted living, some psychiatric hospitals... not as much acute care out
  10. SaraO'Hara

    Do you wear your nursing pin at work

    On my nametag - it has a special guard to prevent
  11. SaraO'Hara

    I Wish I was a Real Nurse not a LPN

    Ahem. LVN/LPNs are not real nurses? You need to step back, take a chill pill, and think about how YOU view yourself, not how others do. If you stand up for yourself, people will respect you. I'm...
  12. L and D. Childbirth creeps the life out of me. OR would be a bit dull, I
  13. SaraO'Hara

    A typical day in your nursing job...

    Short-term rehab... Patients: Up to 12, 14 if our census is really low and I'm the only nurse. Typical cases: Lots of ortho (hip / knee replacements, fractures), some post CVA, some post other...
  14. SaraO'Hara

    Why am I responsible for the dirty blanket???

    I hear you! If the family is visiting, they don't use the light for the CNA, they come up to the desk to tell me whatever Mother needs, they ask me about what Medicare will and won't pay for (oh,...
  15. SaraO'Hara

    How often do nurses have sex in the hospital?

    Unless being groped by a randy Alzheimer's patient counts... NEVER
  16. SaraO'Hara

    Cna challenge lpn boards

    Oh, quite a bit more. I was a CNA before I went through the LVN program. I had no knowledge of sterile technique, no pharmacology, no wound care, no formal assessment skills, rudimentary...
  17. SaraO'Hara

    Lowest labs?

    WBC of 1.6... once an INR of 11. The most deranged labs come from our renal
  18. SaraO'Hara

    Where do most LVN's/LPN's work?

    I work in short-term rehab - lots of hip and knee replacements, hip ORIFs, and about half medical cases (s/p pneumonia, s/p urosepsis, s/p
  19. SaraO'Hara

    Hygiene More specific facial hair

    Most of the best nurses I met in clinicals were men with goatees... just an odd
  20. Whenever I feel like it..... *stretch* I am capable of sleeping 12 hours, then taking a four-hour
  21. 27 women, 2 men at graduation - started with 28 women and 2
  22. SaraO'Hara

    Tell me what you like about your specialty......

    I like seeing most of my patients go home... I love hearing their stories of the "good old days", the war,
  23. SaraO'Hara

    RN's giving report to CNA's?

    We have a CNA "cheat sheet" with the alarms, mental status, any precautions, etc, printed by the space for the patient's vital signs. If anything changes throughout the shift, I let the CNA with whom...
  24. SaraO'Hara

    LTC/rehab facility: ?'s --LPN Scope of Practice

    Yeah, that. As far as care plans, we use pre-printed ones. The admission "data collection" is co-signed by the DON. I was taught ad infinitum how to properly auscultate lung, bowel, and heart...
  25. SaraO'Hara

    New toy!!

    Birtcher, model 365, single channel ECG. To print a 12-lead, you have to switch through all the leads using the buttons on the machine. It's small enough to fit in a backpack, but computer...