jemb

Bless you, Sherri. May you find peace in your memories.

Is it 4-10 mg/24hr on a pump via sq site? 4-10mg in one bolus dose is not reasonable even for palliative care.

I wondered when I read your first post on the subject if it was a joke. I mean, where would a radio station get the fflu shots in the first place when the shots are being rationed to actual healthcare facilities and providers?

Sometimes IUDs can cause serious pelvic infections. You need to get to a doctor, public clinic, or someplace to have this checked. While some spotting or light bleeding between periods is probably not serious, your symptoms sound worse than that. You could become anemic from losing so much blood, or you could become septic if an infection has set in. Sometimes an IUD will become imbedded in the uterine wall and cause abnormal symptoms also. Find a county clinic or income based fee clinic that will see you if you are unable to pay for services.

I used to work in a hospital that seemed to have more than its share of people high on entitlement and low on common sense. I would have the following conversation frequently upon answering the phone at the nurses station: Caller: I want to know how my mother is doing. Me: The patient's name is...? Caller: She's my mother! Me: (hoping to get a clue) May I ask who is calling please? Caller: This is her son. Makes you wonder how these people get along in daily life.

Can you pick up extra hours at your other job to make up for the ones you lose when you quit this one? That sort of abuse with no support from the powers that be can kill you!

Do a google search for Lupus.

I would suggest writing an incident report every time this happens. If the charge nurses and the DON won't do anything, risk management needs to hear about it. Can you put the incident report in an interoffice envelope directed to risk management, since the charge or DON might intercept it? I would also put names and dates to indicate that I have informed charge and director of the problem. This is downright stupid behavior on you coworkers part!

I would be furious also, but I don't know what an attorney or the police would be able to do. Maybe you could report her to the BON for impersonating an RN, but actually, I think she was impersonating a 'supervisor' who just happened to be an RN. I definitely would report her up the chain of command at your facility. Maybe I misunderstood what happened. What I understand is that an certain LPN got a personal call from a collection agency. She put another LPN on the phone to pretend to be her supervisor. 'Cubby' is the supervisor, and discovered the phony call when the collection agency called a second time and specifically asked for 'Cubby'. As I see it, both LPNs lied, and unless they are lying to cover up a legal issue, or have taken an oath as a witness, it probably is not a legal problem. What did the collection agency want in the 'second' conversation with the supervisor? If the LPN who impersonated you promised to pay money, gave them your credit card number, or in some way made you vulnerable, the police would be interested. If the collection agency was verifying employment or salary in an effort to pursue the LPN, then you have no damages (unless you can prove that it made you so angry you had a stroke or something). Or did I totally misunderstand what happened?

Tweety, I think each employer is different in the way they handle payouts of unused paid time off. Where I work, they willl pay you for unused vacation but you forfeit any unused sick time.

Our facility is giving free flu shots to all employees who have patient contact.

:chuckle This one will come in handy! Thanks!

Something about the OP's question had been bothering me, and I finally pinpointed it. Since so many facilities now use saline flushes instead of heparin flushes, and many doctors order Lovenox instead of heparin sq, I wanted to clarify something for Rose and any other new nurses that might not be very familiar with heparin. You said that your policy is to flush with 2.5cc of Heparin, but you did not indicate the strength. Generally Heparin flush solutions are marked as such and the strength can be 100 units/cc to 500 units/cc. Heparin which is given sq is generally 5000 units/cc, but might be 10,000-40,000/cc. That concentration should never be used as a flush for lines. I would guess that the OP is using a heparin flush solution, but since she was concerned that the patient was receiving both Heparin and Lovenox, she may not have been aware of the differences in flush solutions and higher doses for medicating.

What a strange situation! I've never heard of such a setup, but there are many things I haven't heard of... I don't know how any nurse could safely leave the assigned patients to go to another location and check out a possible emergency! I would suggest contacting the BON (not just looking on the website) to ask about the situation. I would also contact Medicare to ask about regulations regarding the independent apartments in combination with the assisted living/ LTC. It actually sounds almost like a scam. Those alarms should contact emergency personnel, not a nurse who is already assigned to care for the residents in an adjoining facility! Is there a local newspaper that you could contact to investigate the situation? And, if it were me, I would look for another job.

Most places have no difference in pay for bedside nursing, but a few offer amounts such as 50 cents/hour. Some places require a BSN for certain positions (especially management), but many will accept other bachelor's degrees such as psych, sociology, business management, as long as you have any degree in nursing also.

I understood that when I first answered you.

Wait until you have more experience and he has his degree.

I don't even remember the first time I flushed a port, but I can't imagine that I wasn't supervised. Observing the procedure and doing it are not the same thing. Some ports are not so easy to palpate, depending on their location and the person's size. I would never expect a colleague to access a port for the first time without supervision/moral support from a fellow nurse! The only way that you might not need to be observed would be if the port were already accessed and you just needed to flush the line as you would flush a heplock. That would be no different from flushing a heplock --it would just be in a different location. Even so, if you were uncomfortable doing it without supervision, it is definitely appropriate to ask for somone to go with you.

Not sure what kind of a disability you mean when you say you 'think' you have a disability... I once worked with a nurse who was totally deaf, but she was able to communicate with other staff and with the patients.

Welcome to Allnurses. I would think that the medical/oncology floor with the internship would be the best of the three options for a new grad. It will give you a chance to learn what you need to know to be a competent oncology nurse. I would not recommend going anywhere that 'prefers experience' and offers no formal orientation/ internship to new grads! Sounds like you might be thrown to the wolves! I also would not trust that the small hospital with a med/surg floor that gets all the chemo patients would have enough oncology focus to give you the experience that you need to move into the realm of oncology nursing. The recruiter says you can 'work your way up' to being an onco nurse --how does she propose you do that in a hospital that has no oncology floor? Experience is necessary to be competent as an RN in outpatient oncology settings. There may be some that would hire a new grad, but unless you could get an internship with a preceptor, I would not recommend it.

Locked in state is different from persistent vegetative state in that the person is aware, may have normal thinking processes, but is unable to respond or even let others know that they are aware.

If the meds can be shipped from one corp to another, can't the pharmacy ship it to the embassy and your brother pick it up there? Or ship embassy to embassy? Aren't you pissed at him for waiting until he was almost out of meds to figure this out? I would be if it were my brother worrying everyone like that! Maybe ultimately this will be nothing more than a lesson in planning ahead for him...

I wouldn't ask about a 'church', either, but if they belong to 'an organized religion, and is there anyone from there that you would like to come see you?' Fergus, you must be in a different part of CA than I've ever been! Big variety of religions anywhere I've lived in CA, although, in recent years, the Christian proportion is getting larger.

Trina, I think the point was that these people were being promised that wage when they aren't even attending an accredited school of nursing. The school appears to be offering fraudulent certifications, illegal titles (Basic Care Nurse), and the poor suckers that get taken in by them end up without even a CNA certification. No one is angry with a CNA in another region of the country where the wage structure is different. The school in question is not producing CNAs.

Seems like no one would have a good argument against it if you charted that you asked her "..insert specific question...", to which she nodded head in a yes (or no) response. I don't know why anyone would have a problem with your charting that you asked her to hold up the # of fingers to indicate her pain level, and that she held up 8 fingers. If, however, the charting were ambiguous, such as the patient 'indicated that her pain level was 8/10', without charting how you were able to communicate clearly with her, I can see that there could be a problem. Think maybe you just needed to change the wording?