veetach

you must work for the same company that I work for!! where do you live in Colorado? I live in Colorado too, in our area you would still be considered a "new grad" but the hospitals are stepping up and providing great training opportunities to help new grads break into critical care areas. I went to CN after 17 years of Emergency room nursing, so I had to have ACLS and all of the rest of the alphabet soup to work in the ER. I think taking ACLS would should a good effort towards learning and it sure wouldn't hurt a bit. Have you applied for any OB jobs yet?

I work in a county jail and we NEVER pass meds unattended. It is our jail policy for our pod deputies to actually observe the inmates taking the meds... do you carry a duress alarm or radio?

yep. I have been spit at, hit, kicked, punched, pinched, you name it. Finally the ENA is lobbying for stronger laws regarding assaulting medical staff members.

I think you have been given some excellent advice already. One of the things I see new nurses freak out over, is the order in which to give RSI meds. You do not want your patient to be paralyzed and NOT sedated!!! Talk to the doc, find out what meds he/she will want and make sure you know which one is the sedative and which one is the paralytic.

In our hospital we have a policy that no one goes from inpatient status to outpatient status. The solution to this problem would have been to transfer this patient out to a facility who could care for him.

I work night shift and all of our CTs are read by Rads in Australia, but they usually get the readings to us fairly quickly. In my opinion, 90 minutes for a head CT is preposterous! Especially if the pt has a head bleed! Are there not enough rad techs to handle the flow of the dept? Does this happen on every shift or one in particular? I know at our facility, night shift in radiology is staffed very thin. In fact the CT tech is on an on-call basis. They ALWAYS get called in, I dont know why they dont just staff the position on nights instead of paying all of that call back pay... but we cant complain about turn around time on scans.... good luck! Do you have any kind of computerized system that can track turn around times? that might be a good way to document your problem.

Never heard of this. We use SOB or dyspnea.

Our Rad Techs Bring over the PO contrast, but it usually only takes them a few minutes after the order is entered into the computer. Do you have a 90 minute wait on all patients? We have rapid CTs on traumas and those suspected of having a AAA.

great call! Your hospital is lucky to have you! Give yourself a pat on the back, and be proud that you made a difference to that mans life. I know several triage nurses who would not be able to identify that he was unstable.

Its funny you should mention this, I have worked in Emergency Rooms in several different states and CEN was never required or even given a consideration....I always wondered why.

Ha! you beat me to the post, I was just about to say the same thing.

Valium has been removed from the list of drugs to give down the tube...

learn the acronyms for example: when I first took ACLS about 6 times ago, we had acronyms for lots of the stuff... symptomatic Bradycardia=a trip down every Isle. (atropine, transcutaneous pacing, dopamine, epinephrine, Isoproteronal) meds down the tube used to be ONAVEL (Oxygen, narcan, atropine, valium, epi and lidocaine)and now its something else, I forget. LOLOLOl PEA=push epi and atropine, and of course the shock, shock, shock, everybody (epi) shock, littlem(lido/amio) shock, big (bretyllium-forget this we dont use it any more) shock, everybody shock. ON second thought dont let me confuse you :chuckle ACLS is not pass fail anymore, I am sure many people have already told you that. Dont freak, pay attention and take not when your instructor says "this is important and you might need to know it for the test" good luck!

LMAO Tom... It does sound like you had a pretty awful day. This profession of ours is not glamorous at all, is it? I work in a 24 bed ER, we see between 150-200 people per day, usually holding anywhere from 6-12 patients per day. We do get a lunch break though, we take care of each other, its definately not because management comes out of their office to take our team so we can go though.... Hang in there, I would demand some help if I were you. A couple of days of the "blue flu" might drive the problem home. Someone out there has convinced these MD's that UA's turn up more transient disclosed problems than they can imagine. We have a doc who orders a UA on every pt too. I tell him he is flagging himself for a medicare audit! :chuckle

we have both kinds. Usually those patients with IV's get the gowns with snaps.