Charity RN, APRN

Where are you guys working??!! At times I have gone entire 12 hour shifts and not encountered another female nurse. (okay, it was night shift, but still...) From ER, OR, PACU, ICU to the floors, giving or getting report from a guy is hardly an issue....

:yeahthat:

308/120 in an elderly lady in for a routine clinic visit. This was her usual BP! I was a student doing the VS checks. Had started inflating the cuff when I remembered to ask "do you know what your blood pressure usually runs?" while glancing at her r...

Ask them. I like to know about family, patient belongings, unusual positions or tubes/drains that anesthesia may not know about, and how they were pre-op. Everything else I pretty much get from anesthesia.

You have to check your specific policy. In our hospital, it goes by pay period. bi-weekly employees give 2 week notice. Salaried employees give 30 day notice. It is in your employee handbook.

He may have known this family and have been visiting with the permission of the pre-op nurse. His own family member/child may have gone through this before. Not to make him an authority, naturally. But it may not be as "overstepping" as on first exam...

I would look at my official job description. Does it include these other duties, especially first assist (in my state this requires special training and means big bucks)? If it is a generic description, then I would work on a more appropriate one for...

I would get a clarification from my surgeon. He knows how the hospital is. We all know that nurses do heavy lifting no matter what type of equipment we have, but it depends on the type of unit in which you work. My job description says I must be able...

The TPN port should be reserved solely for TPN. BTW, This should not come up on a med/surg floor, but there is a drug, Adenosine, that is given via PIV only. (Not that it hasn't been given via central line...)

I take refusals on a case by case basis. One must not be too quick to judge someone as incompetent, BTW just because they have had meds or are "acting out" in your opinion. Best to err on the side of caution. A refusal doesn't have to be "rational."...

Our PACU is known as "where the ICU nurses go to get pregnant" since so many transfer in and then concieve! Our current charge nurse worked WHILE she was in labor...Came in a 0700, noticed contractions---monitored them throughout the day (everyone u...

From an AORN position statement on Safe Work/On-Call Practices: Lori, You should not have been fired. You should have been sent home to sleep. You were working while impaired...from lack of sleep. The Ambien episode was not your mistake. It was a p...

They get paged back to the bedside, overhead in the OR if need be, and are reminded that I did not get report and that I have not accepted care of the patient yet.

[bANANA][/bANANA] Try using an angiocath: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/114/3/e384

Well, if your hospital wants to upset JCAHO, go right ahead... Our nurses have always come with our patients to PACU (mostly), but since the new 2006 "hand off" safety goals, we now get two reports: one from Anesthesia, and one from Nursing. It has h...

How 'bout this... create a CNA float pool. No CNA is assigned to a certain floor or certain group of patients. Every day, assignments are made according to need after callouts (funny, we call them call-ins) and such. May do away with some of the pos...

The night brace has worked wonders for me. Keeps my foot flexed properly. Reminds me of putting high-top tennis shoes on ICU patients to prevent foot drop back in the day! Am also thinking about giving accupuncture a try. Our pain service offers it f...

My suggestions: A book with test questions and rationales is a big help. Don't forget that the CPAN exam covers ALL types of perianesthesia care: OB, peds, day surgery (discharge teaching? discharge teaching) and complex cases. Its not just "nu...

Why do we keep comparing hospitals to Walmart or the post office? We do have to do things differently. The patient room is THEIR room. They are paying for it (in theory). We are visitors to that room doing a job. That is why we can close the door and...

Not a member because of their position statement on "reproductive rights."

I have had more than one parent get visibly upset at the site of their baby in the isolette with a scalp IV. Because we had to shave or cut the child's hair. And everyone knows that if you cut a child's hair before he/she is a year old, the child wil...

BTW, the application of heat and cold is a nursing action, not a medical one. Many think that it requires a doctor's order, and may in the hospital to get the ice pack "paid" for, but you should be okay there.

State right-to-work laws vary. In my state, only the non-union aspect is true. While sometimes we are told that we are "at will" employees, it is in fact very difficult to fire anyone. (we have tried!). Many of the things that have gotten people fire...

Another firsthand report: initial dose of Cymbalta produced such nausea that I wondered what the he** I had done to my doctor to make him hate me so much to put me through this. But it got better. Otherwise, it is a lot like the Effexor, especially s...

We have online "occurance reports" that anyone can file. If a physician wants one completed, he or she can do it themselves. Our docs do it all the time. If I actually saw an order as you describe, I would call the physician and remind him/her that i...