antihippie

I was in the same boat about a year ago and went ahead and took the INH. I had no problems with it at all other than the doc not telling me that it acted as an alcohol enhancher (hammered on two beers). I never felt any side-effects and am glad I did it for peace of mind if nothing else.

I must be just born lucky, our uniforms aren't bad at all. We wear royal bkue scrubs with a white t-shirt underneath (or long sleeves for me because of tatoos) and I have been wearing low top Chuck Taylors in clinical for the past year with no complaints. They're white but have a red and a blue stripe on the sides. The only real complaint I have is that the brand of uniform they insist we wear have zero pockets in the pants.

I've got large tats on both forearms from the Navy and just wear long sleeves under my scrubs. My hospital doesn't have a policy but I think it makes some of my older patients uncomfortable seeing some inked up guy walk into their room and say "I'm taking care of you tonight." I just pull them up when doing anything messy.

Never had a problem on my OB rotation, I got to see 7 vag deliveries and a C-section and as far as I know was never turned down by anyone. OB was a fun rotation but I wouldn't want to do it for a living due to the fact that I like too see new stuff instead of the same eitiology over and over. As an aside I work on a Gyn/Peds floor now and have only been turned down by one pt for "personal area" care and she later apologized to me and said she felt like a heel. I think it all has to do with showing confidence in yourself and letting the pt know that you are a professional.

I felt pretty much the same way until a few weeks ago. I'm in a 2 year program and even though I work as a tech I felt that I was shaky on Med admin and assessment until This clinical rotation (leadership). Our instructor gives us each 4 patients of our own for which we are responsible and a nurse to ask questionsof/pull meds with. After just a few days of this I feel 100% better about my competency and now feel that I am going to be able to hit the ground with a decent basic skill base. Once I really got into it I realized I'm much better at this nursing thing than I thought.

As a tech I can totally commiserate with the original poster, lazy CNAs drive those of us who do work hard just as nuts as they do the nurses. It not only makes the rest of us look like crap but it makes for more work for the rest of us when the RNs start looking to us to help them with patients that aren't ours when they can't find their CNA or give up on asking them for help. Though I can't speak for all decent tech's I know that I hate lazy workers as much as anyone and wish that there was an easy way to be rid of these people instead of the current system that seems to view any warm body filling a billet as a plus.

I am slightly confused here, so please help me out. I have spent my entire life being told that women are just as tough and capable as men if not even more able due to women "having a higher tolerance for pain due to childbirth." But it seems that whenever something offensive occurs women suddenly become wilting flowers and feel victimized and degraded. How do these two ideas jibe with each other? I just have a very hard time imagining a proffesion that was predominately male spending countless hours and 7 web pages talking about how offended they are by a wait staff somewhere dressing as gay sailors, cops or what have you, much less having a professional advocacy group lobbying against it. Is this image of being weak and so easily offended by something that is really very trivial when put into context really the kind of image that will help nurses proffesional images?

The OP is in the same position I am in, except I graduate in May instead of December, so this is a topic I've thought about alot. One thing that made me finally say forget Med/Surg for a year before the OR is that it seems all the nurses that were telling me to do Med/Surg first from instructors to co-workers had never worked in the OR. While all the OR nurses I have spoken to said you didn't need Med/Surg first it was totally different. I am attracted to the OR by the atmosphere of professional respect that I don't always see between nurses on Med/Surg floors and the actual finishing of tasks/solving of problems that occurs there. Med/Surg has just always seemed more of a maintanence of problems rather than a resolution from what I've seen. No matter what we do on my floor (GYN/PEDS/SHORT STAY) it seems we get the same patients over and over again for the same problems and nothing is ever really resolved. Maybe this is a problem of unrealistic expectations on my part but I like the feeling of actual closure that occurs in the OR rather than knowing that tonight when I go to work Mr. B will be in again for hyperglycemia or Ms. H will be in again for ETOH.

There is a nurse on my unit that administers pain meds in a fashion that to me seems wrong. For instance the other day the order was for Ativan and Dilaudid q4 starting at 1400. instead of giving them both every 4 hours she gave the Ativan at 1400, the Dilaudid at 1600, more Ativan at 1800 and more Dilaudid at 2000, this went on all night. It seems to me that the order was very clear that the meds were supposed to be given together q4 not alternated q2. When I pointed this out she became very defensive and stated that she was from a hospice background and that the Dr. didn't know enough about pain control. Does anyone with more experience than I (which means just about everyone) have an opinion ?

I am 3 weeks away from finishing my first Med/Surg rotation and was getting discouraged. I have never worked health care before and I know that just because I will be an ADN graduate in a year I won't be ready to be a nurse, so I have been applying like crazy for jobs as a PCA but never could get anyone to ever call back. Well yesterday the ward manager on the floor I am doing my clinicals on asked me to stay late and come to her office to "have a talk", what did I do wrong now? She asked me if I would be interested in being a nurse technician on her floor (short stay/pediatrics) and I jumped at it. I start as soon as Med/Surg is done and work as a tech all summer, then I am enrolled in their extern program working different units until 2 months before graduation. I spend the last 2 months 1 on 1 with an RN in the department of my choosing. After graduation they send me to an N-CLEX class for a month and upon passing I am automatically hired as an RN in the open position I desire, and if I sign a 2 year contract I get 10 grand!!! I can't believe this fell into my lap just when I was feeling like noone would give someone with no experience a chance to learn some confidence in a safe enviornment (we don't have a nursing shortage in this area). Yesterday was even better than the day I got my acceptance letter for nursing school.:biggringi

My rotation was great, I saw 5 NSVDs, 1 C-section and a tubal ligation. I was also lucky enough that every birth I attended was on a Wednesday so I was able to do the post-partum care on Thursday for the family from the day before. My best was a young couple I caught in triage that was the "textbook" birth, married Para 1 Gravida0, no STDs and no complications. I stayed until 1830 for the birth as these would be my first from admission to discharge and they asked me if I would. The next week they thanked me and the rest of the staff in the local paper and sent a thank you letter to the hospital and the school for "letting" me be there for them. Makes me feel better about my decision to become a nurse.

Why is it acceptable to refuse to allow a nurse to perform his job because of his sex but unacceptable to refuse for any other reason? Why would it be any less acceptable to refuse care from blacks, Hispanics, gays, fat people, Muslims or any other group due to your comfort level?

Just a thought, but I was wounded by a middle-eastern Muslim in Iraq. Does this mean that due to my "emotional reaction" to the event I can refuse to be cared for by a Muslim nurse, how about middle-easterners, or even brown people in general as "they all look alike" and I am emotionally traumatized to be reminded of events in my past. Gee, if one brown person hurt me then maybe they all want to hurt me. Doesn't this sound silly and racist? Now replace brown people with just men in general, sweeping stereotypical responses to an entire group due to the actions of one person on your body are juvenile and repugnant.

I for one chose nursing as a way to help others and be well compensated at the same time. If someone truly believes that money should have nothing to do with becoming a nurse, more power to them. They can graduate and then just volunteer as a nurse for no pay and their salary could be used to purchase more supplies or lower the patients medical bills. That would be the truly altruistic thing to do. But since this is reality I think all of us are at least partially motivated by the money or there would be a lot less grousing about salaries and benifits than there is.

I have to say that I am willing to give the instructor a little slack as she went in twice to check the baby and both times mom was trying to breastfeed, (she was not real sure of herself and we wanted her to keep trying) and the staff nurse told her it was fine as long as the respirations were not elevated. While my instructor is an MSN she has limited OB exposure and took the word of others with more experience, bad move for her but she knows better now. While my chest is a bit puffy I realise that without my instructors guidance earlier I would never have been concerned enough to keep nagging the staff and my student relief to follow up on this so she deserves some credit for being a good teacher if nothing else. But thanks, I don't want to tell any of my other students about this in detail and make them start doubting the considerable expertise of our instructor and staff nurses that seems to have just suffered a break down in this one case, so it's good to get a little validation from someone that understands.