august07

Does anyone else call them Rally Packs (not sure why we call them this?)

One reason other women may not be supportive is jealousy. Not so much jealous that you are getting a "break" but jealous because they never had children, or are infertile, or were unable to breastfeed. In other words, don't take it personally, it may have nothing to do with you.

I learned "Roast Beef Sure Gets Lots of Gravy" Red Blue Sst Green Lavender Gray

Depends on the situation. If it's a small mistake that's not a big deal, I wouldn't get the patient all worked up over it. Giving a pt way too much insulin is something I would tell them. I would also tell them if their PICC line was put in the wrong spot, how else would you explain that to the family-"Oh, we always put these in twice!"?? I have been told not to tell a pt. about mistakes made by the doctor. I had a doctor once make a mistake concerning a surgery, but I never told the pt since I felt it was the MD's responsibility to explain it.

Thrown to the dogs. I got about a 10 minute "charge nurse for dummies" pep talk. I've asked for formal training, but they say "just call the nurse supervisor if you have problems." This was after being a nurse for only 5 or 6 months. Basically, they will throw you into it when they're desperate, when all the seasoned nurses are off, especially around the holidays. At night, charge nurses on my floor have 5 pts. No extra pay.

You'd have to work for about 20 years as a nurse to be able to pay for med school. Most people that go to med school cannot afford it, they just get loans and pay if off 10 years later when they're making the big bucks. I think you should decide if you want the nursing route or the med school route and then go for it. During med school, you live,eat,and breathe studying and classes. You barely have time for friends and family, let alone another job. Nursing is not an easy career choice either,by the way. Just try to think about which lifestyle and which sort of career you would prefer.

I work on med-surg and can only push Vasotec. Anything else and the patient has to be on a tele floor.

You always want to draw from 2 different sites because of the risk of contamination. Coag negative staph and diptheroids are common skin contaminents that can sometimes cause false positives. When the lab calls and says there are 1 out of 4 bottles that are positive, that may be an indicator of contamination, whereas 3/4, it's probably a true infection. Also, the sooner you get a call, the more likely it's a true infection. When blood cultures are received in the lab, they are incubated in a machine that flags them as positive when it detects gases that are emitted by the bacteria. Only then is the blood plated out on a dish and worked up. Blood cultures are incubated this way for 5 days, then get thrown out, unless the doctor is looking for some specific bacteria that takes longer to grow. Also, if you ever have only a tiny amount of blood that can be drawn, always put it in the aerobic bottle (the blue one) because that's where most positives come from.

TURP stands for transurethral resection of the prostate. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think they don't remove the entire prostate, just part of it so it's not really a prostatectomy.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------and here's the foreigner asking: What the heck is a "toomey?"Toomey's are those big plastic syringes that hold 70ml of fluid. We use them not only for catheter irrigation, but also PEG tube feedings and NG tube irrigations. You must call them by another name.

We turn all fluids off for 2 minutes before drawing blood from a PICC. Flush with saline, waste 3ml, then collect sample. If you forget to turn off the TPN and draw blood, usually the potassium is the valus that's way off, not the H&H.

How much can a pt.'s hg level rise after two units of PRBC? I had a pt. go from 9 to 13, can that be? Usually it seems to go up only by about 2. Has anyone seen big jumps like this after a transfusion?

Thing I hate about white uniforms is seeing everybody's underwear! I don't need to know if you are a granny-pants, bikini, thong, whatever type of underwearer. And then there are people that wear colored underwear under white scrubs.

What do you do when you get new orders right before you are planning to leave? Do you leave it for the oncoming nurse or stay an extra 15-30 minutes and do them yourself? I feel like I shouldn't have to stay late, but on the other hand, I can see where it would be really annoying to walk into a bunch of new orders.

My old job banned the internet and I thought it was so going to be so terrible, but after about a month, I had totally forgotten about it. You get used to it. I would think if you are complaining about not being able to use the internet, you've probably got a pretty nice job!

Hi I recently had a pt. getting vancomycin through peripheral IV's. She was a very hard stick but someone managed to get one in her hand, and they weren't going to be able get a PICC for her for a few days. So, I hesitantly gave her the vanc through her hand IV and to my horror, it extravasated and her hand was swollen three times it's normal size. I took out the IV and elevated it, but now I'm wondering-what are the chances that this pt. is going to lose her hand or suffer major damage? Does this happen often? I'm so worried.