Kerrigan 06

Of course it's allowed. I wouldn't recommend contacting the nursing board over this. Let us know once you find out if you passed. Good luck!

The A-line tubing in reference - the SafeSet - is actually very handy to have around. It's basically a 12-or-so mL syringe built into the tubing. This only applies to arterial lines as far as I've seen so far, but I suppose it could be used for a CVP...

I had a job lined up in October, graduated in December. Not helpful. I know. Don't give up. :-)

First important lesson I learned in the ICU: Make sure there is plenty of slack on the ventilator, chest tube, IV, monitor, etc. tubing before you turn the patient away from them! :-)

I thought of this later on regarding the saline flush... Remember, with arterial lines, we do have the constant slow-flow of heparinized or normal saline, but those also get fast flushes of saline every few hours for maintenance. Sometimes after a bl...

Meh. Next time make sure you don't need an ABG before you pull it out. ;-) Probably didn't cause any more damage than an intentional arterial stick does. The important thing is you realized your mistake and fixed it immediately! Especially - before i...

A few nights ago I had an IV pump that kept on going off for various reasons - I guess I had several drips, or tiny air bubbles, I don't remember. After I'd gone in a couple of times to fix the beeping, the patient's family member commented, "I bet y...

In the U.S., I don't see why not - unless you plan on having sex with your patients. Otherwise you oughta be okay. (Obligatory Universal Precautions reference here.)

Me? I'm staying up all night 'cause I work tomorrow night. Somebody's got to take care of the patients after the day shift leaves!

I can't think of a reason that having a foley catheter would prolong life in a patient who has already been sick enough to be placed on comfort measures. If there is, I bet the comfort that it provides in lieu of incontinence and frequent turning/cle...

It sounds to me like if you were satisfied with the MA's explanation of her experience, you may well have stopped there. The onslaught of accusation about MA's who portray themselves as nurses was unnecessary for your purposes. I would be very upset ...

When I was starting, we were instructed just as vaguely to wear all-white uniforms, and not scrubs. Turns out they just meant they wanted our scrub tops to be button-down.

It sounds like this might not just be me. Frequently when I'm dreaming about being at work, I'll either wake up, or alarm clocks will wake me up, but I'll be so disoriented that I'll try to go back to sleep because in my dream, I'm much too busy work...

If you're talking about arrogance, physicians and nurses/other healthcare workers are really not in the same class. Shoot, some surgeons deserve a class of their own.

I swab. If I have swabbed in the last few minutes and I find myself to be out of swabs, I skip it. I think I've only pushed one drug during an actual code, and I didn't swab that time. When we switched to the Alaris IV pumps back in April, we got an ...

Instead of giving myself a checklist, I just want to live better. This includes, for me, things like losing weight, reading my Bible and praying more, being nicer to people when it isn't a professional job requirement, keeping up with current nursing...

Solid, usually brightly colored scrubs that get the dryer-iron treatment while I shower. My hair is long and thick, and I usually wear it up in a ponytail. I've worn it down maybe 5 times at the most in the last year - and usually on nights when I ha...

I thought I would never want to work in critical care, no matter what, up until my last semester of nursing school. I got placed for the entire semester in a medical ICU. I had excellent preceptors and the staff on the unit were wonderful. Nobody eve...

Apparently we're using the Chitoseals wrong, from reading this thread. You hold it over the puncture site immediately after pulling the sheath, along with the manual pressure? Do you wet it with saline first? Our nurses hold pressure until bleeding s...

From my understanding, physicians "officially" have 24 hours from time of admission or consult to physically see the patient. Usually it takes nowhere near that long. In the meantime, we make liberal use of the answering service, using our assessment...

I started in a cardiovascular ICU - including open hearts - right out of graduation. I had a 13-week internship in which I attended critical care classes for a month, and worked with a preceptor on the floor. I've been "on my own" since April, and I ...

It's always hard to see a patient die. It's especially hard if it was not expected and provisions hadn't already been made to let them die peacefully (of course this is not always appropriate!). I'm a CCU nurse for almost a year, and I've seen and he...

In my unit the two are used interchangeably. We deal with both areas that suanna mentioned: cardiogenic illness and pre- and post-op cardiac, thoracic or otherwise vascular surgery.

Ours is similar. Our patients fresh from the cath lab, sheath or no sheath, get vitals q15min x 4 sets, q30min x 4 sets, and q1h x 4 sets: 7 hours' worth. If they come with a sheath, the process starts over post-sheath removal. Our standard post-cath...

I'm a 6-months-new nurse and I work in a CVICU. Last night, I was taking report on a post-cath patient. He'd had a CABG 8 years ago, and his first cath showed all of his vein grafts to be heavily occluded. Some were repaired at that time - this was l...