Cleveland-RN

I recently took a pretty significant pay cut to go into management, but for me it was a good fit b/c administration is where I want to be in the long run. It is a great resume-booster and is only a short-term issue. In the end, after I finish my Masters degree and move up the food chain a little, I'll be making much more than I ever would as a staff nurse. All depends on your perspective.

I realize that this is a JCAHO standard, but in the pt scenario I'm speaking of, the a-line is left in only for blood draws. I'm not using it for anything else. In my unit, if we d/c an a-line then we're utilizing a non-invasive blood pressure cuff at pre-set intervals for blood pressure monitoring. This is the same thing that we're doing, just leaving the line intact.

We actually did, but I was just looking for a little more indepth information than I could gleen from in-house counsel in the middle of the night.

Thanks for the link.

My experience is in Cardio-Thoracic ICU and many of our patients have gone south very quickly. Because our patients are short-stay, anyway, we usually leave a line like this in for any unexpected events to come. I would turn the audible alarm off but leave the visual alarm on and just amp up my personal monitoring of this patient. I can't tell you how many times we've d/c'd everything on a patient just to call everyone back and re-swan, re-TLC, and re-aline. I like to wait until they're stable enough to leave the unit b4 taking everything out.

I would recommend that you truly learn good body mechanics and gravitate toward whatever field you're truly interested in. If it's too stressful on your body then go into supervision/management when an opening becomes available.

Recently, in my facility, one pt assaulted another. The victim chose to call the local police dept, and when they arrived they asked for the information of the person that assaulted the victim. We were told that we could not give out this information b/c of HIPPAA, but I'm wondering if this is true and why? They took a statement from the victim but she could only remember a vague description of the person. I do realize that the person doing the assaulting has a psychiatric illness, but I'm just wondering if this is what HIPPAA was really intended for?

I've purchased many scrubs over the years, and my favorite site is smartscrubs.com ~ They have these great 7-pocket cargo scrub pants that I can't live without.

At my facility, we use D5W for our cardiac output thermistor readings. I recently had an order to make all of our gtts NS for low NA levels. Why couldn't we change this to NS? No one at my facility can tell me why, just that you can't do it b/c it's harmful.

I've seen jobs for case managers to work from home.

RN's pull all chest tubes at my facility.

Thank You. I'll check into it!

Now that I know it's called CV Recovery, I've been able to locate a couple of programs. What's the name of the facility in Naples?

This is exactly what I'm looking for. Thank you for replying to my post.

We do get very difficult cases that other facilities wouldn't dream of touching so I know that complexity is there. I have been here for over 2.5 years and I get the most complex cases available during the shifts that I work. However, after the initial 24-48 hours things can change quite alot. Even with that being said, I don't mind caring for this type of patient for a week or so but after that it is totally not my idea of a fun time. We have several patients that have been in our unit for 1-2 months and this is the pt that I'm referring to. It just seems like it's all we have had for the last few months and it feels like being in an LTAC. The job that I described to you is one that was described to me by a fellow CCF nurse that left for this very reason and she took a position in NY state that was described to me as being the open-heart pacu. She said after the initial 24-48 hours, if they weren't ready to go the floor then they were sent to the ICU while her unit kept accepting the fresh cases. I'll have to keep researching. Thanks for all your input.