ckalston

Hi, Couple of questions. First I am wanting to find out what a other facilities are doing in terms of nurse:patient ratios on their Acute Rehab units and their Med-Surg units. Second: What type of nursing models are most commonly being used: Prima...

I had several reasons that made me chose nursing. First I wanted something that within 2 years I could make a difference in my salary, get into a field where there would always be work and to be able to help people. After 7 years with my ADN, I pursu...

I recently became nurse manager of a med-surg unit that uses the primary nursing with a so called charge nurse. I say so-called because 21 patients will often have 3 nurses even with the charge taking patients which is simply not acceptable. We are i...

I would like to start a new thread for my question but can't seem to figure out how (call me duh). Anyhow, when we hire a new nurse at our facility we require a medication test to be done. This is all fine and good except that the test that we are us...

I have been in nursing for 11 years, married and have two grown kids. Never have been gay, don't need to be gay (not that I am against those who are). I have to say that I may be dense, but most of the guys I know in nursing are very much into their ...

I was 28 when I got my ADN, 35 when I got my BSN and will be 43 when I complete my MSN/MBA :)

I live in the Hill Country (Kerrville). I use to live by Beaumont, then lived in West Texas (near Abilene) and I would have to say the Kerrville area is about the nicest area around. It does get hot, but we also have cool evenings, beautiful sunsets ...

We are having a discussion about how to properly document a patient who had their airway managed by the LMA vs. the ET tube. Half the group feels that regardless of the LMA or ET tube, the airway was intubated and as such the documentation should ref...

I am working on getting something like that in our computer. We are paperless in terms of charting and most of our charting is canned text (of course we can type patient notes). Right now our choices for airway include: Extubated, Never intubated, ex...

We recently started labeling our IV pumps and other equipment used by the nursing units with large pieces of paper tied to a rubber band indicating that the equipment has been disinfected and ready to use. While the idea is sound, to take the time an...

Our hospital has been utilizing computer charting for the past 3 years in the OR, PACU, Nursing units and now in the ER. In the PACU and OR setting, we utilize MSM documentation while the remainder of the hospital utilizes Meditech. After the short a...

In our facility, our phase 1 and phase 2 and our preop staff are all the same. We have on average 4 nurses on duty per day and tend to 14-19 surgical patients from preoping, holding, recovering them and if necessary discharging them. This is a inpati...

We are looking at the OB nurses doing the after hours recovery of C-Sections. They don't scrub in for the surgery and there are criteria. The biggest criteria is if a patient recieves general anesthesia, then the Recovery room nurse will come in and ...

I am interested in knowing what different places do as far as having medications available for After Hours recovery. For example do you have Recovery Kits holding multiple medications or do you have to pull medications for each patient? I would like ...

I have no problem when I see ICU nurse sitting outside patient's rooms doing whatever. My problem only occurs when I (as the house supervisor and on call recovery nurse) ask the 3 nurses sitting behind the nurses station playing games on the computer...

We had an incident where the patient was on the OR table and the MD happen to look at the CXR report which said patient had pneumonia. This was a patient that had been preoped as an outpatient, results had been called and faxed to the office, on admi...

We start ours in the preop area by the RN. The anesthesia department actually gets a bit aggravated with us if we have not at least tried. On pedi's they will start those once they are put to sleep. Otherwise we very seldom see anesthesia start a lin...

I had one instance when doing sedation for a patient that the MD asked me to help the tech with something. Ordinarily I don't mind doing things like that, but at that moment I was pushing drugs, montioring respirations and documenting my vital signs....

We have a RNFA in our facility with one more completing their education shortly. I think the problem they are having is with reimbursement. In other words who pays. The hospital feels that the nurse chose to get their RNFA on their own and should not...

I agree with you kyti. Very good point.

I hear you Janet. It is hard to understand where one is coming from unless we walk in their shoes. We also cover all surgeons that are on call, so regardless of when your on call, someone will be doing surgery. We also have to cover for simple things...

Thank you Dave, I was reading some of the criteria for admission to CRNA school and it reports that a minimum of one year acute care experience is require (it is up to the program what they call acute care).

Hi Janet, We are just now getting to par with enough staff to lighten the overall call. Prior to now, we had 3 nurses to take call for recovery room. That was over 10 days a month of call at time. Getting the overtime just was unavoidable. Those ...

Thank you Janet. I had not really looked at this as a risk managment issue, but can see that your correct. I will look into things from this angle.

Hi, I would like to know the thoughts of the room on a RN with multiple years of PACU experience as opposed to ICU experience. Do you know if this experience is considered good enough to apply for a CRNA school.