amblessing

Yuck! I work in an OB/GYN floor and I won't even wear my work shoes in my car! I take my shoes off in the parking garage and change into flip-flops to drive home in. When I drop meds on the floor, I tell the patient that I don't want to give them this med because the floor is dirty and I go take out another med, wasting the original one I dropped on the floor. I have had patient's say that they will take the dropped med, but I insist on getting a new one.

Good! You're patient's deserve no less and remember that it is YOUR license. You worked hard to earn it and you must work hard to protect it. We had a lady on another floor who obviously no one did fundal checks on or bothered checking her I/O's, who fundus was 5+ above on the 4th day post-op (getting ready to go home and the physician discovered it). Turns out they nicked her bladder - she ended up staying, having more surgery of course, and was a very sick lady.

I left the Dynamap in the room for a moment while I went to go get something that the patient had asked for and when I returned, the patient's husband had taken the BP cuff and put it around his neck and was "taking" his blood pressure! When I asked what he was doing, he said he just wanted to see if it would work, and then being the genius that he was, asked why he felt so light-headed? :uhoh21: The scariest part is that these people have reproduced!

This didn't exactly irk me but I thought it was very funny. While in the process of admitting a 15-year old pregnant teenager for hypertension, I asked her if she was allergic to anything and she said, yes that she was allergic to latex - particularly condoms :chuckle The funniest part was that she wasn't trying to be funny - she was dead serious. I had to step out of the room for a moment in order to regain my composure :roll

I work in a very stressful L&D/Mother Baby Unit. We all get along very well - that is the day shift people get along with the day shift and the night shift gets along with the night shift. I have worked there one year and it didn't take too long to figure out that the day shift feels that the night shift is just a bunch of lazy slobs who do nothing all night long and the night shift sits around and complains about so and so on the day shift, blah, blah, blah . . . you get the picture. Well, there is one day shift nurse (I am a "lazy" night shift nurse) who blows up and SCREAMS at you if you ask her any questions pertaining to a patient. She only wants to talk and give you HER report. Don't you dare ask any questions, particularly in regard to the last time a patient had pain meds. Hey, if I have a new C-section mom - I think it is very important to know the last time she was medicated for pain, so that I can prioritize who I need to see first. If she hasn't had meds since 0800, I can bet you she's hurting and probably needs something ASAP. If you even question anything at all, she blows up and states that all she did was run her @ss off all day and she didn't get to eat, didn't get to pee, and wah, wah, wah. I'm sick of talking to her, sick of her behavior, and it sound like she doesn't know how to prioritize her day. You can't talk to her without getting screamed at. :angryfire :angryfire. I have very calmly asked her not to yell and get angry because it is not my fault that she had a bad day. I would love suggestions - I always felt that report was nurse to nurse communication, a two-way street. She must have been absent the day that lecture was given in nursing school.

I love it when you go into a patient's room to start an IV or some other procedure, and the patient's family asks, "do you know what you are doing?" I am so tempted to say, "well sort of, you see they were short staffed tonight, so they just yanked me off of the street corner - hey I clean-up pretty nicely don't I? I love the scrubs!". Or, my personal fave "No, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night!". Geeezzz :rotfl:

Quote from the husband of a pre-term labor patient, "well, she was dialtated to a 4, but now she's a 1, so I guess she must be getting better!"

I graduated last year and I have the same patient load, as the nurses who have been doing this for 20 years. I used to really be overwhelmed thinking that it was highly unfair, but now after doing this for 9 months, I have a reasonable amount of confidence in myself and my skills. Organization is not something that you can teach someone, I think everyone has to learn it for themselves. For some it's difficult and for some it comes naturally. I of course, had to learn it the hard way!:)

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: We have a pole . . .

Well, things are getting better. I think the problem is that we have so many people acting as charge nurses in our unit that some of them don't realize that I am so new and I get really complicated people. I just have to learn that every day is going to be different - some will be good and some will be bad. The best part is that when a patient's husband, boyfriend, mother, or whoever thanks you and hugs you at the end of the shift for being so nice and taking good care of their family member Amazing how something so simple as "thank you" makes it all worthwhile! :) :) :)

I was taught in my last semester of nursing school that new nurse grads need to learn to speak up for themselves in their place of employment if they are feeling overwhelmed and overburdened by their assignments . . . yeah, right! Where I work, if you speak up, you are not a "team player" and not "taking your share of the workload" in other words, they expect you to be a doormat and just take it. I am expected to take the same number of complex patients as the other nurses on my unit that have been doing this for over 20 years - I have been a nurse for 3 months! I'm not trying to use my lack of experience as a crutch for not wanting to do the work - it's just that I'll spend half my night looking for someone to help me do something I have never done before and then that person gets behind, because they have their own patients to take care of. A few of the nurses are very nice and helpful, but some are just downright nasty and refuse to offer assistance of any kind. "well that's the way you're going to learn" is the attitude. Yup, I guess if I end up killing someone, well that will teach me not to make that mistake again! My orientation basically sucked - 2 weeks - that's it!!! and that consisted of 6 12-hours shifts - one of which my preceptor called in sick!

AMEN to that. Personally I feel that they need to take that less than one minute per question theory and throw it straight out the window I took 1 hour and 20 minutes to answer 75 (I guess that is average though) but there were two whiz kids in my class that took 20 minutes - yes, that's right 20 minutes and passed! What is that about 3 seconds per question - geesh! I don't recommend that method at all :chuckle

My employer paid for a subscription to this service and I found it extremely helpful because the questions are written by the people who actually write the NCLEX exam. The pluses are that the questions are broken down into categories (i.e. infection control, communication, pharmacology, etc.) and you can take tests for each particular area. My only complaint about it is that it only gives rationale why something is right rather than why something is wrong. Still, I felt that it was a good supplement. I also used Kaplan (#1 in my opinion) and Saunders which is also very good. I used Mosby's as well, but I didn't feel as though the questions were at the level of difficulty that they should have been, although I felt that Mosby's provided the best rationales, especially for the wrong answers - hope this helps you :)

Jennifer - this is easy for me to say now because I was in your shoes yesterday. If one more person told me that I probably passed because the computer shut off at 75, I was going to HURT them I do now feel that the odds are certainly in your favor, however. I looked up the questions I could remember in my book and I got them wrong and I felt that they were fairly easy questions. I don't remember what I answered on the really tough questions, but I must have done something right. I had a major case of test anxiety :uhoh21: so I figured that I blew it big time. The good thing is that I passed and I have confidence that you most certainly did to. Positive thoughts coming your way :wink2:

Well, apparently not only is it prolonged but very painful - so not a good thing for a man with sickle cell anemia. Thank you everyone for all of your kind thoughts and wishes. I am so grateful that I live in a state where I don't have to wait for weeks to get my results. During the 24 hours that I was waiting, my husband told all of our friends and family that he had me on "suicide watch" :chuckle