Adrian007

I don’t work on a medsurg floor but we’ve been taking them as overflow so I’m not familiar with any of the surgical procedures/guidelines

I've been working as a new grad in PCU and have been off orientation for 1.5 months. Lately I've had complicated assignments. Sunday I had to rapid response my patient, 4 days later I had to transfer another patient to ICU, and the same day my other patient that was stable all day started going downhill at change of shift. On top of that, I've already been trained to work in ICU and had my own assignment of 2 patients, AND I've already precepted 2 other new grads on orientation for a couple days (there are plenty of senior staff as I am the newest employee) which I'm not complaining because I can handle it, but sometimes I have the fear that I'm doing things horribly wrong and nobody is telling me otherwise. Aside from one situation of gossiping night staff about something I "didn't do", neither the charge nurse or manager confronted me on the situation and I haven't been spoken to about any mistakes thus far. So does my unit just suck, or would you usually be informed if you're doing something wrong?

Yes I was talking about rapid response team in my question

Does anyone here notify the family when the patient arrives on your unit or when they are discharged to a facility? Lately I’m getting calls from angry family members saying they had no idea where the patient was. We have staff specifically who plans the discharges, so I was under the impression she is to call the family and keep them in the loop. Then yesterday I got a post op patient at 3 and listened to the daughter screaming at me my on the phone for 25 minutes at 6pm wondering why I didn’t call her when the patient arrived on the unit, results of her surgery, etc. She claims she told the surgeon to have me call her when she arrived, but there were no notes, orders, and no report from the OR nurse that I had to do that. And during my training my preceptor never did any of those things. I get things are different right now with covid, but I feel like a lot of contacting the family is the doctors job? Does anyone here find the time in the day to contact the family when they arrive/are discharged?

Delete them. To be honest I am the type of person to speak my mind and I know that everyone thinks nurses are supposed to agree with everything and be sweet angels, understanding, and never get angry.....blah blah. I am a person too, but I still would bend over backwards if someone needs my help and I’m good at what I do. Although I would limit myself to what I post on social media in fear of people like you, I would usually just delete my account for a while before I end up offending someone. But I will be honest it is incredibly hard for me to NOT say what I really think because I am a nurse and “not supposed to think that way” but I’ve worked far too hard to lose what I worked for. So really it’s their fault for going off the deep end online, but I would mind my own business and unfollow them. Not everyone will meet your expectations of how nurses should be.

I was just looking for opinions. Sunday I was 15 minutes into my shift finished getting report and my patients BP was 62/36 after the previous RN told me she was dropping to 70’s SBP overnight and got some orders from a Dr. (none of which involved a pressor) so I had to call a rapid response and transported her to ICU (which left me with not seeing any of my other patients until 9:30am). The previous RN did stay to help, and my only real thought was “Why didn’t she check a BP more frequently?” but that was about it because I know things can change. Then today (other side) right after my handoff to the oncoming nurse, the patient I had the last 2 days suddenly had an increased work of breathing when I glanced in the room when respiratory was in there. She had complained of SOB a few hours prior but after minor interventions she was fine (COPD’r, no cardiac issues) Her vitals were stable and sats 97-98% But while I was giving report to a different nurse I overheard the respiratory therapist say to the oncoming nurse (20-25 mins after my report) “she’s in respiratory distress” and put her back on bipap. I couldn’t help but feel guilty in some way although the oncoming nurse already saw the patient and wasn’t concerned because her spo2 was still good. But my patient was not in that condition when I had her. She did not call an RRT though. So my question is what do people really think when scenarios like that happen? Do you sometimes feel like the previous nurse dropped the ball, or let it go realizing that things can change quick and don’t think of it?