shoelace

How do you manage it? Currently, the nurses in our CCU float out to 3 other departments. One of those departments used to float in to help us out, but the nurses who always got stuck floating to us decided that they didn't want to anymore, so now they just don't have to! It's very frustrating for us to not get days off because we have to float to cover other units. It's especially frustrating because no one ever has to float to help us out! When we're short staffed, we hop on the phone and start calling people in, getting people to stay over, etc. It always ends up working out in the end. We know we have to work a little harder sometimes and help ourselves since no else will. We accept it as part of our job and there are lots of people who are willing to pick up the slack. I feel like the other units rely on us way too much. If they know we'll have extra nurses, they don't try to call their own staff in. I'm tired of having to bail them out. We all are. Some of us want to try to make our unit a closed unit. Since no one floats in to help us out, we don't want to have to float out either. Has anyone's unit gone from a floating to non-floating unit? How did you convince management to allow it? Even if your unit has always been closed, what do you do with extra staff? Do they get the day off? Do nurses just accept that they may be forced to take time off during low census? Do some float anyway just to get hours? Tell me how it works.

Currently at the hospital I work at, we can pretty much wear whatever we want. Most of us wear scrubs, some wear a top with scrub pants and jacket, etc. Very few wear "street clothes." And those that do - it doesn't look that bad. It's not like they come to work wearing jeans and a blouse. A committee is forming to "discuss the option" of going to standardized uniforms for nurses. I'm sure there are good reasons to do this, and the transporters and EVS have already switched. I think they look nice, but I didn't really have a problem with the way they looked before. I don't particularly want to wear something mandated by my hospital, but it's not a deal breaker or anything. Some nurses act like it is... like it threatens their very identity as a nurse to have to wear something that they did not pick out themselves. Has anyone else been in this situation, where nurses were invited to go to a committee to voice their opinions? What were most of the opinions? If nurses were against it, how did they change administration's mind?

If you can get some petri dishes somewhere and can go to the classroom about a week or so before your presentation, pick 3 kids to come with youl. Have one run their finger over a petri dish right away. Have another go rinse their hands with water only and do the same. Have the third wash their hands with soap and water and swab the last dish. Put the dishes in a warm dark place for awhile and see what grows! I did this in college as a project for kindergardeners and they LOVED it!

Has anyone experienced this? I had a flu shot yesterday. Last night, about 9 hours afterwards, the injection site became very sore (which I expected). But soon after and since then, my entire right arm down to the fingers has these flare-ups of pain. Sometimes the pain will originate at the elbow, sometimes at the forearm. Sometimes my upper arm. These areas of my arm will start to hurt, last a few seconds, then it goes away. The soreness is almost gone from the injection site, but although the other pain abated somewhat this morning, now it's back to the way it was last night. I asked some people at work about it today and only one person said that their whole arm ached after a flu shot. I'm not sure that I'd describe this as an "ache." It is pain. My movement is not restricted. Any ideas??

Get in there and do chest compressions! It's not mindless work or anything, but you can at least peripherally observe what else is going on and get more comfortable in a code situation. If you're doing compressions, no one can ask you to do meds, defibrillate, etc. Or, if there is no resp. therapist, you could bag the patient. Just until you become a little more comfortable in an emergency.

I had a guy with priapism once. Urology came in and did the same thing - speared the patient's swollen member. He then just let the blood flow out of the needle onto the bed. Nice. Once he let the patient bleed out a couple hundred cc's, he ASKED FOR A TRANSDUCER SETUP to hook up to this guy's member. Yes, that's right. We obtained a CPP on this patient. Central member Pressure.

This isn't a lab value, but I was amazed... We were detoxing a young man from alcohol... giving him continuous IV Ativan and IV Haldol was given every 2 hours. The dose of Haldol was 5mg at a pop. The dose of Ativan was 40mg. PER HOUR. Groggy, but still awake, pulling at restraints. We triplequadruple checked the dosage... sure enough, 40mg/hr.

I bought a magic fairy wand.. It makes "brrrrrring!" noise when you "flick" it at someone. Sure helps to lighten the mood when that thing comes out. :-)

Thanks for posting the link :-) I maintain the site. To the person who said there was only one "nursing student" entry - I've long forgotten the entertaining moments of nursing school... If you have anything to contribute to be posted, click on the Story Submissions link at the top of the site. I'm always up for a good nursing school story :-) Thanks again, glad you guys like it!

She is absolutely beautiful. Make sure you visit the NICU with her... nurses like to see the fruits of their labor :-)

I started out as a new grad on med-surg, working nights. The morning I put in my transfer to ICU came after a night where I had 3 admissions, making 10 patients. It was the night from hell; very sick patients. I did med-surg for 6 months and have done ICU for the last 6 years. I have never looked back.

Wow!!! What an excellent thread!! So much of what I've just read resonates very strongly with me. I was dx with depression in high school, was put on and off Prozac during first few years of college, then totally hit the bottom junior year and was started on Wellbutrin. While that helped, my grades were still awful (even though I am a smart gal!) and during one appt with the psych doc, he noticed that I simply did not stop fidgeting. He went through a checklist, and put me on Ritalin. I hated it; one pill did squat, but two pills zoned me out big time for a few hours, then wore off completely. There was no "medium" setting to it :) Tried Adderall and Dexadrine, and I could tell they helped on some level, but had too many weird side effects. Finally we tried Cylert, and that stuff has been amazing! By the next semester, I was on the Dean's list until I graduated. I, too, kept forgetting to take my 2nd Wellbutrin and recently switched to XL and it's working out better than I would have ever imagined it could! As for symptoms of ADD/ADHD, I am very fidgety, and if I forget to take the Cylert and go to work, I can pretty much guarantee a miserable day. Usually, I can't wait to go home. I can't concentrate, I can't sit still, I can't quiet my head. The auditory overstimulation is unbearable (for an ICU especially). When I take the Cylert, I can remain focused and I'm not so antsy to flit from one thing to the next. I also have trouble telling my right from my left (always thought that was due to having to chart according to the patient's right/left, so I get confused when it's MY right/left!) and my boredom level is extremely high. My brain constantly has to be working on something, thinking about something, but then again, I can easily spend HOURS playing stupid computer games that are practically mindless, but somehow they're enough to keep the background noise at bay. The auditory overstimulation is the worst, though. Before anti-d's, loud noises would send me into a rage. I remember in HS, I was in band, and before we started practicing, everyone would sort of play their instruments randomly. It would literally hurt. The drums were the worst for some reason. I would get so angry (but never show it of course; that would have been freakish). Now, with all the sirens/intercom announcements/alarms, etc in ICU, I make the perfect nurse... I simply canNOT let an alarm continue on without making it go AWAY. I can't understand for the life of me why someone can just stand at an IV pump while it's beeping and not want to silence it! I often go into rooms where a nurse is already fixing an alarm (but hasn't silenced it) to reach over and hit the "silence" button while he/she is working on it. It's intolerable. Not to the point of job dissatisfaction... more of an annoying quirk. Most nurses silence the alarms now :-)

Well, I have much the same situation. I think the admins are asking for suggestions on a broader scale, like hospital-wide. I work in CCU, never have more than 2 patients, and our charge is almost always free to help out, co-ordinate admissions/transfers, AND we have a "break nurse" from 11a-3p (usually picks up patients at 3) to help out and give breaks. I'm not sure that our particular unit is having problems, but I think it's a problem on med/surg floors. As for teamwork, I simply could not work in a better unit! We help each other out splendidly. Maybe other units are missing the teamwork... hmmm... and I know for a fact that other units give their charge nurses patients to take care of, in addition to staffing, etc. Interesting thought.

ICU and ER at my hospital gets along fairly well, but there is bad blood related to a few things. Awhile back, several nurses offered to cross-train to ER to float there when our census was low. Almost all of those nurses now refuse to go to ER because some nurses there are so rude and unpleasant to work with. They keep trying to give our floats pedi patients, etc... when we don't routinely ever work with kids and aren't familiar with dosages, etc. (for example) ER is chronically understaffed (probably influencing their attitude) and seem very unappreciative when we help them out. Furthermore, they never help us out and you know how that whole one-sided float thing goes. But as for transferring patients... there's rarely any problems at all. We overall have great communication and they certainly pull their weight and get a lot done before sending the patient over.

Ok, so I was kidding about the cheese part. Sorry. I'm looking for input. My hospital is looking for ways to reduce medication errors, specifically errors of omission and "late" meds. We have a computer-entry system that prints out orders for us. Our care plans are all printed out and have the meds highlighted for the shift. Couldn't get much easier, but for some reason, we're still not giving the meds on time. We have a Pyxis. The wait time to get meds doesn't seem excessive. I've been racking my brain here. I'm good at thinking outside the box, but am not having any luck coming up with solutions. I was wondering if anyone out there had some special ways of reducing med errors at their institutions. Thanks!