marygirl

Hi everyone. I am a resource nurse, aka float pool. I began my career on the cardiac unit and now work 9 different areas of the hospital. The other day, I was working on the ortho floor and I began with a delightful group of patients. One patient had...

I think that for every person you know that lost weight effectively with exercise and not dieting, there might be at least a thousand that it doesn't work for. I was one of the "healthiest" >300 pound women that you might ever meet, aerobically f...

I work the "float pool" but at my hospital it is called "the resource team". RN's are paid $2 extra an hour to work one cluster, $3 to work two clusters and $4 to work three or more clusters. Right now I am working med-surg and tele clusters and am...

My parents are retired. My mom was a postal carrier and my dad was a millwright and I have a vague impression of those jobs, not something I know well at all.

New Year's day, I had a patient about my age. He asked me personal questions every time I was in the room, like if I was married, if I had kids, etc. Nothing out of the ordinary, lots of people do this. By about noon, he started coming on a lot st...

Hi, update, yes I'm okay. I worked the day after that happened, then had a day off and then worked Friday. The hospital I work for has 3 campuses and I work on all three. I was placed on another campus both times I have worked since the incident. ...

Here is my biggest pet peeve as a nurse: patient condition phone calls. Not referring to me contacting a family to let them know their loved one's condition has changed, I am referring to the daily onslaught of calls from family members, sometimes ...

I do think that in general, hospitals are discharge happy. I admit people every day who have been home less than 3 days, one man less than 5 hours. Believe it or not, he also had a PE and was discharged off of the Pulmonary floor! Some people get ...

re: HIPPA, all of the local hospitals in this area assign the patient a PIN# and if the person has the PIN, they can get the information. I wish our hospital had a couple of extra policies. The one where only one person can call would be ideal, th...

As a resource "float" nurse, I rarely challenge assignments. There is a mentality that I can take a heavier team or go over assigned limits due to my position and I may have more general knowledge than alot of the floor nurses especially if they ha...

There may not be a law that says a hospital has to give you a break, but the one where I work automatically docks my time in the assumption that I took a break. If I don't get a break, I used to mark it down and then tried to figure out if my pay wo...

at our hospital most of the staff is required to wear the tracking devices. Most of the docs don't, however, but they are not employees of the hospital. The hospitalists do wear them, but they are employees. See the difference? Agency nurses and ...

okay, correction. it is $8.00 per hour on top of the time and a half for over 40 hours. Pay in our area is not great but we do all right. My hospital is the only one in a decent driving distance that offers any incentive for extra shifts.

I'm the $8.00 an our incentive person. I just heard through the grapevine that the hospital is considering squashing the OT incentive. I don't know quite how they'll staff the hospital. I get a call almost every day asking if I can come in to work...

smilingblueyes, enemas during labor/before birth used to be a common practice. when I went to the hospital in labor 20 years ago, I was first told by the nurse to "show me a contraction" and when I couldn't produce one, was told to go home and retur...

Our hospital uses a walkie-talkie device called Vocera. It is helpful to locate someone, say if there is a condition call on the line and you don't have time to hunt down the nurse assigned the patient--you can just call him/her on Vocera and tell th...

Hi. I haven't been a an RN very long but I have been happily collecting and sewing cute cute scrubs. I recently went on vacation in Florida and of course found an adorable scrub suit while I was there. I couldn't wait to wear it when I got back. ...

As far as I know, only the nursing staff will have to wear the navy and white. Also, several of the housekeeping staff members always wear navy. I think the best way to handle this would be with our badges. Our current hospital badge is white with...

Hmm, I think you should find a nurse who can mentor you on the floor. As a new grad, I have found that some of the aids on our tele floor will actually try to get the new nurses to do some of their assigned duties just to see what they can get away...

Okay, I'll try. I used Saunders a bit, but not exclusively. I had several different test question CD's and didn't focus so much on the scores as I did they type of question and reading it appropriately and hopefully deducing the answer. As far as ...

At the hospital where I work our "extra-shift" incentive is $8.00 per hour. Since we don't typically work 40 hour weeks, we don't get time-and-a-half until we hit 40 hours and OT such as working an hour or two late doesn't qualify for incentive pay....

Hmmm, I had a patient the other night who put her call light on as I was at the bedside of her roommate. I wasn't aware it was on, because it doesn't make a sound in the room and I was a fair distance from the desk. She then sighed and said we were...

The hospital where I work gave out a bonus this year, not sure if this is common or not since I am a newbie. It was based upon hours worked from the fiscal year June 05 - July 06 or something like that. I got $100, but the max amount was $200. I d...

One for the NCA, as well. New to our floor, this NCA asked me to come and assist her to get a patient back into bed so he could get onto a bedpan. I go into the room and I see there is a bedside commode in the room and that the patient is sitting i...

I have a good one to share but it wasn't a nurse who did it. You know the old adage about never getting sick in July because the resident MD's are all too green to do you any good? I'm thinking since it's October, we're safe from moron residents bu...