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melly

melly

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melly's Latest Activity

  1. melly

    What do you think about dating your coworkers?

    melly replied to BGSUstudent's topic in Nursing

    So far we've been together 9 years, married 5. :) As long as you are professional about it, I don't see that there should be a problem.
  2. melly
    I married a pharmacist that I met at work. It's great. We still work in the same hospital, but different shifts now. Melanie
  3. melly
    I would go back for further education only if it were in an area totally unrelated to nursing.
  4. melly

    If I hear this one more time I'm gonna scream!

    melly replied to nell's topic in Nursing

    Wait. You guys get PIZZA? I'm jealous. All we get is excuses. Melanie
  5. melly

    Do you love nursing?

    melly replied to a-rose's topic in Nursing

    I don't always love nursing, but I can't imagine doing anything else. Melanie
  6. melly

    Rudeness

    melly posted a topic in Relations

    Why are some nurses so rude to each other? Our ER nurses have a horrible reputation for incivility to the floor nurses. Example-last night I pick up the phone. Someone who didn't identify herself asks if room 215 is clean yet. I answer I don't know. I was going to add that I would go look, but before I can finish my sentence she barks," Go down the hall and check". I told her that I would help but that she would have to lose the attitude. She hangs up on me. This sort of thing happens all the time. Mention ER in our hospital and you get the same reaction, everyone comments on how nasty they are. Now I know that they are overworked and shortstaffed, but who isn't? Why make a bad situation worse by being rude to each other? We are all nurses, we are all here to care for patients, why foster hostility by continuing with impolite behaviour?
  7. melly
    I can see how this would happen with a paralytic drug. For several years I worked on a surgical floor and we would rrecieve patients from SICU. From time to time patients would arrive on the floor with MARs from SICUthat had not been amended . I found a couple of MARs that had a paralytic agent ordered prn for anxiety, obviously a holdover from when the patient had been ventilated. A new grad almost gave a dose to an elderly woman one night while I was working. The woman was anxious and the nurse assumed the drug was like Ativan. Scary!! We caught her before she administered the drug and the pharmacy has since removed this class of drugs from our Pyxis machine.
  8. melly
    Most of my friends are nurses I met at work, so they understand. My SIL is a nurse so my brother knows all about our problems and thinks that we should unionize. My husband is a pharmacist who works in the same hospital as me and he will come right out and say that we work harder than anyone else in the place and we deserve to make about twice as much as we do.
  9. melly

    "Nursing" a calling, a career, or a combination of both

    melly replied to wildtime88's topic in Nursing

    I entered nursing school when I was divorcing my ex. and had 3 kids to support. I was browsing the want ads and noticed there were many more ads for nurses than for librarians, which is what I really wanted to do. Turns out that once I started nursing I was really good at it and I ended up enjoying the work. So for me it was mostly a career move to begin with but now I consider it it to be a calling in a small manner.
  10. melly

    Ethical dilemma !

    melly replied to vinona's topic in Safety

    The only ethical delimma I see here is with this charge nurse insisting that you assault a dying man. He has the right to refuse any treatments and as nurses we have to respect that when a patient says stop, we stop. This charge nurse should not have put you in this predicament. Even as a student you can be a patient advocate and explain to this Nurse Ratchet that the patient is refusing the bath and you therefore you feel it is inappropriate to continue. Involve you instructor or the nursing supervisor if needed. Was the family there? If someone treated my loved one this was there would be hell to pay. As far as the pain meds. go, there is only so much you can do as a student. Unfortunately it is a fact of life that terminal patients often have their pain undertreated. With all of the medications we have at our disposal no one should die in pain. We have dealt with this issue in our hospital and if the nurses feel a patient 's pain is not being properly managed we can involve the ethics commitee, but this still continues to be a problem.. Doctors need to be educated on end of life issue. They also need to be more involved in the care of their patients. Many, many of them waltz into the room for 2 minutes and then depart, leaving us to deal with someone in agony for the next 12 hours. You obviously are very caring . Good luck in your nursing career.
  11. melly

    question about shoes

    melly replied to AmyRN1227's topic in Nursing

    I wear New Balance walking shoes. Very comfortable. I live in Birkenstocks when I'm off duty but I've tried 2 different pairs for work and after about 4 hours they start to hurt my feet. Weird, huh? I've also tried Reebok (pretty good) and Nurse Mates (awful).
  12. melly

    Do you mix your own IV's?

    melly replied to deespoohbear's topic in Safety

    My hospital stopped mixing drugs on the floor many years ago. This was prompted by a terrible incident in which a patient had KCL pushed straight into his HL. The nurse mistook the vial for a flush solution. He died of cardiac arrythmmias. Vials of KCL are not kept on the floor, too easy to grab the wrong bottle in a rush. The other major hospital in our area stopped allowing nurses to mix their own IVs several years ago after the same scenario happened to an infant who also died. Now the pharmacy uses the premixed bags of KCL IV fluid unless there is a special order in which case they mix the bag. All of our other drips come in premixed bags with standardized concentrations. My husband is a pharmacist and he just raised the question of sterility. All of the IVs that are mixed in our hospital are done so under a Laminar hood to provide a sterile field. This incudes TPN and any drugs that are mixed for OR use. Is there a hood available for mixing or is it just done in the middle of the med. room? As for being too expensive, all it takes is one lawsuit to justify the cost. I don't recall exactly how much the parents of the infant who died settled for, but it was in the millions . And that doesn't begin to cover the emotional toll on all involved. Believe me , the adminstration at our hospital is stingy,stingy but they haven't even thought about going back to making us mix our own meds.