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Xbox Live Addict

Xbox Live Addict

LTC/SNF, Psychiatric, Pharmaceutical
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Xbox Live Addict has 8 years experience and specializes in LTC/SNF, Psychiatric, Pharmaceutical.

Xbox Live Addict's Latest Activity

  1. Xbox Live Addict

    What do you love/hate about LTC?

    Xbox Live Addict replied to ShiphrahPuah's topic in Geriatric

    It's rough a lot of days. It doesn't seem like it would be as fast as acute care, but it is. You are right, the patient/nurse ratios are much higher; you are much more dependent upon UAP due to the sheer volume of patient care. In my area, one nurse is typically in charge of 20-30 residents as well as the UAPs taking care of them. You need to be on top of your game in a different way than in a hospital - you don't have the resources or personnel available in most hospitals when you work at a nursing home. Sometimes the pace can become incredibly frenetic. Pros: yes, you do get to know your residents over time compared to the in-and-out care of a hospital. Also, you're much more autonomous. The physician is generally only available by phone and comes in 1x a week for a few hours. And if you're an RN, you probably have a better shot at supervisory/administrative positions at a NH than at a hospital; even ADNs have a fair chance at DON jobs, depending on experience and what the competition has to offer.
  2. Xbox Live Addict
    When I'm scrubbing my hands with soap and hot water after an encounter with C. diff or some other nasty biological contaminant, I'm not even thinking about the pathogen itself... I just want to scrub away that "dirty" feeling, and frankly, alcohol-based hand sanitizers don't make me feel any cleaner. My hands would still feel encrusted with crud. Wouldn't it be a point of delicious irony if the nurses on these units, in protest of the use-sensing hand sanitizer dispensers, made a big show of good handwashing... just like I'm sure the vast majority did even before they started this garbage?
  3. Xbox Live Addict
    Don't a lot of hospitals already require nursing staff to carry cell phones and pagers? I guess most physicians by now are used to living by their cell phones and pagers.... Having worked as wait staff in restaurants in the past, having a "pager watch" would make an already high-stress job nerve racking. I shudder to think of what would happen if nursing homes gave their residents push-buttons to buzz nursing staff with pager-watches... and then tracked the response time on a computer.
  4. Xbox Live Addict
    Nice mental image. I agree with you fully about handwashing vs. sanitizer; with handwashing, you're getting the dirt off and with sanitizer, you're just sanitizing the junk on your hands (if that's possible.) My big issue is with yet another employee tracking/surveillance device. Don't we have enough cameras, computer keystroke trackers, and stuff like that in our workplace, and on every street corner in this country? Not to sound like a total paranoiac, but... I'm convinced at this point that democracy will die not at the hands of a one-party government system, but at the hands of corporate plutocrats who believe their workers are their personal property, off the clock as well as on the clock.
  5. Xbox Live Addict
    More surveillance of the poor worker at the hands of the big guy in the office. This may not seem like much... but petty abuses of freedom, privacy, and human dignity like this add up fast. I fear for the American worker of 50 years from now.
  6. Xbox Live Addict

    Mispronouncing a word makes you less of a nurse

    Xbox Live Addict replied to Unique87's topic in Nursing

    I broke down and got unlimited texting. I do wish that cell phone companies would make texting optional instead of an always-active feature that cannot be turned off or refused though. The 15c/message deal is a racket.
  7. Xbox Live Addict

    NO LUNCH??? NO BREAKS??? Is that common in nursing?????

    Xbox Live Addict replied to CleveRN2008's topic in Nursing

    In most jobs, breaks, let alone meals, were a luxury. If I did sit down for a meal, 9 times out of ten an admin nurse or a CNA would be dragging me back to the floor. We weren't allowed to leave for lunch. The same admin nurses would routinely leave for hour-long lunches at good restaurants. I regularly got the old "time management" spiel when I protested. I live and work in a Right-to-Work state which is one of the most union-hostile in the United States. In my current job, which is not in a hospital or LTC, we're mandated to take breaks and will get in trouble if we don't take them, partly due to the fact that overtime is a big no-no here.
  8. Xbox Live Addict

    Mispronouncing a word makes you less of a nurse

    Xbox Live Addict replied to Unique87's topic in Nursing

    Any of my professors (I'm working on my B.A. in English) who caught a student texting in class would have a cow - "See me after class" with a threat that if it happens again, the student will be flunked for the semester. A lot of colleges are banning notebook computers in class because students use them to check their Facebook or MySpace pages. I used to use my notebook to take notes in MS Word. Plus, in Thailand and a few other countries in Asia, it is illegal to use cell phones to cheat on exams. It's prosecuted as computer fraud. Several students went to jail at a Thai university some years back for setting up an elaborate system to cheat on exams via cell phone. I took 10-stroke typing in junior high years ago, and it stuck with me. I can type 50 wpm blind.
  9. Xbox Live Addict

    Mispronouncing a word makes you less of a nurse

    Xbox Live Addict replied to Unique87's topic in Nursing

    Given the horrible limitations of the cell-phone keypad, I can understand why people who text use "texting language." What I never got was the appeal of texting itself. I'm an old dinosaur and need the full QWERTY keyboard to express myself on screen. Plus, the whole 15 cents a message to send AND receive a text message, whether you want it or not, kind of killed any enthusiasm I had for texting... especially after my wife's 15 y/o daughter ran up a $650 cell-phone bill for texting.
  10. Xbox Live Addict

    Mispronouncing a word makes you less of a nurse

    Xbox Live Addict replied to Unique87's topic in Nursing

    Ah, but anyone can spell anything correctly nowadays by Googling it... provided it's something professionally written. I double-checked it. Bragging on it and then spelling it wrong would make me look quite the fool... Although, I must confess - I was a spelling bee champion in the halcyon days of yore....
  11. Xbox Live Addict

    Obama likes nurses

    Xbox Live Addict replied to vashtee's topic in Headlines

    The problem is is that so many people like nurses in the same way they like their servants - or pets. This goes for management and patients. As long as they're getting pampered and the nurse is attentive to their every whim, all is good. But once the nurse is perceived as no longer being at the beck and call of their managers, or certain patients, that's when they get whipped like recalcitrant puppies. People are too quick to turn on us when things aren't going their way. And recalcitrant behavior all too often includes protesting against overly heavy work assignments where safe care is compromised, or requesting improved conditions for the nurse's well-being so they can continue to function at full capacity. Being "liked" is nice; being respected is golden.
  12. Xbox Live Addict

    Mispronouncing a word makes you less of a nurse

    Xbox Live Addict replied to Unique87's topic in Nursing

    Heh... my medical director was impressed because I was the first person he'd ever seen that wasn't a physician who was able to correctly pronounce "Creutzfeldt-Jakob". "Dulcolax", oddly, is frequently mispronounced around here.
  13. Xbox Live Addict
    We don't have grocery store or drugstore NP clinics in my neck of the woods yet, but that kind of walk-in clinic would be great for routine illnesses; a cheaper alternative to urgent-care clinics.
  14. Xbox Live Addict
    Most physicians I know are compassionate in what they do, as well. There are jerk physicians, but there are those of us who don't have great bedside manner, too. But when it's night at a hospital or a LTC facility... it's the nurses at the facility that are watching you and directly intervening in case of an emergency. And in many other venues... home health... occupational health... plasmapheresis centers... just to name a few... it's the nurses who will be providing your care in an emergency. More articles like this need to tell it like it is with regards to nurses.
  15. Xbox Live Addict

    Nursing in a Blizzard---what does your hospital do?

    Xbox Live Addict replied to Riseupandnurse's topic in Nursing

    My own contribution to this is: I live in the lower Midwest. We don't have blizzards here, very rarely does snow get more than an inch when it does fall, because the climate is too warm for blizzards. Our climate is too warm for full blizzards, but instead it causes ice storms consisting of freezing rain, which forms a casing of ice on anything it hits - the roads, trees, power lines, etc, and turns the roads into black ice, making any expedition dangerous. Cross-country skiing is not an option here. Nurses are expected to literally risk getting themselves killed on the roads or getting their cars totalled to get to work.
  16. Xbox Live Addict

    Concierge Emergency Rooms in the Future?

    Xbox Live Addict replied to Anxious Patient's topic in Headlines

    I am against this idea myself. Triage will be based on who has the fatter wallet, rather than who is more seriously ill.