RainbowSkye

I've been thinking that it might be a good idea to make hydrocodone available over the counter. Right now enormous amounts of health care dollars are going to pay for patients using ERs to obtain Lorcet. If we could make it available kinda like alc...

I work in a really small ER in a really small town which does not have an open pharmacy from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning. We don't have a pharmacist available to dispense medications. Any of y'all in a similar situation? We used to just...

Ha! I work in the boonies and take care of plenty of crackheads and mh patients. There was even a poor little kid who died this past weekend who had ingested mom's crack. The problem with mental health patients out here is that it takes the menta...

Check this out: http://www.emedicine.com/emerg/topic41.htm

I worked telephone triage for several years and although it's not as difficult physically, it is a job which requires a lot of concentration and communication. It's like trying to do ER triage with no vital signs and your eyes closed. Dont' be fool...

Okay, I'll give it a try. -suction bottles that are full or that have been removed for emptying and not replaced -the person who used the last (fill in the blank here) and did not bother to replace it -activated charcoal -- in all honesty has anyone ...

I certainly understand what you did, and I hope the family will come to understand as well. However, your supervisor really should have made you aware of this patient's dementia as that is a crucial part of of his care. Also, I odn't think anyone wou...

I've been working in various ERs since 1979, and yup, there is a lot more testing. But golly, back in 1979 we didn't have: ct scans, mri scans, we didn't even have an ultrasound in our hospital at that time. We didn't have ck-mbs, troponines, bnps,...

Okay, I'm dating myself, but in the old days (1970s in my case) we frequently "mainlined" drugs. I can remember drawing up the undiluted medication in a syringe (often fentanyl or morphine), accessing a vein, mixing the medicine with a little blood ...

Okay, here's my experience. And please feel free to disagree if it's different for y'all. Paramedics are trained/educated to provide pre-hospital care. Their license allows them to provide very specific (and complex care) and give medications under...

Okay, here's what worked for me: Birkenstock shoes. They are the only shoes I wear these days. Work, play, exercise, going out... Never going barefoot. Never. Doing exercises to stretch the tendon in my foot. Patience. It took me over four years,...

WARNING: NEGATIVE NURSING POST (and these are my experiences only): I've been an RN for 31 years. My experience has been that although hospitals pay great lip service to respecting nursing, they do not. And, unfortunately, I think this is true in e...

WHY does it irritate a Nurse when a patient states they are a "hard stick"? And, the patient tries to help by informing the Nurse what type of needle and where to try? I still don't understand why it angers a Nurse, because no was has really answer...

Sorry. I meant to say that sometimes you're the only RN in the entire hospital (with responsibility as the supervisor and the pharmacist as well as overseeing the LPNs on the medical unit).

I work at an itty-bitty rural hospital. It is quite a different thing to be the only RN in the ER when you get a bad trauma patient. No anesthesia, an oncall RT, no surgery, maybe two or three units of O- in the lab... sometimes you're the only RN...

I am very sorry for your experiences. I just hope in all the time I've worked in the ER I've never treated anyone in the way you've been treated. That being said, if anything will cause me to leave the ER after 25+ years it will be the drug seekers....

I've been starting IVs on both adults and children for over 30 years, and yes, even I miss sometimes. So no, I don't do it for fun, I don't do it for "practice", I don't do it to torture patients; I do it because the patient needs it for whatever re...

I agree that phenergain iv is a nasty drug so I always dilute it with 10ml of NS before giving it either through a saline lock or an IV with fluids running. I also give it very slowly. I haven't had anyone tell me it caused burning using this metho...

Aaarrrggghhh!!! The family members who feel they must tell you how much worse their kidney stone, laceration, back pain, whatever is than the patient you're triaging. I especially enjoy the ones who want to tell me their entire medical history. I al...

Here's my thought: driving a car or riding a motorcycle is not an inherent right; it's a privilege. And if wearing a seatbelt or helmet is part of that privilege then so be it.

Some boards of nursing require that you notify them when you're taking certain medications or you have the possibility of losing your license.

Interesting that you feel the need to protest that you're not a drug addict when not one response mentioned anything about substance abuse. My personal opinion only (I don't know what your state board of nursing allows): You should not be working on...