JB2007 ASN, RN

I love working nights. I actually sleep much better during the day then I ever did at night. I usually get up around 3 or 330 when my children get home. I see just as much if not more of my children working night as I did working days. BTW I stay up all night most nights unless I have something really important that must be done through the day. I feel terrible if I have to be up during the day.

Just today I told my 16 year old to get over here. He thought he was in trouble until I grabbed his arm and told him that I would love to start an IV in that vein right there. He just told me that I was not right and walked away. Now even my children think that I am a crazy woman.

My place of employment has a rule stateing that you can only have drinks in the breakroom. The breakroom is not in a centrally located area where it is practical to run in for a quick sip of water throughout the night. I was following their rule for a time and the amount of fluids that I drank throughout the day decreased. Then I started to get frequent UTIs. The UTI started to be so often that PCP told me that I was going to have to see a specialist if I continued to get UTIs that often. I decided that I was no longer going to follow the facilitiy's rule regarding drinks in the work area and started keeping a covered container of water at the nurses station. Since then I no longer get UTIs as often and I fell a lot better at work. I do my best to follow the rules that my employer have set for me to follow, but when it comes to my health I will break that one.

I agree with the other poster. I too have worked in nursing homes that where understaffed to the point that no matter how hard you worked the residents recieved substandard care. I would listen and acknowledge their feelings and then I would tell them where to go to voice there complaints. Do not feel like you are bad mouthing your place of employment by agreeing with the family members. Also I would not feel bad about giving them the names of the people that they need to complain to. The floor nurses can not make the changes that the family members want to see. By the way I quit the place that I was working that was understaffed that way and I am much happier for it. Good luck to you.

Any nursing home that I have ever worked at hired CNAs for weekend only. Good Luck

You did a great job! You noticed the change in your patient right away and was taking the next steps that needed to be done when the patient passed. There are just times when no matter what you do or how fast you do it the patient is going to die. From what you told us in your post you did exactly what you were suppose to do. Good job!

She is a nurse if she felt the resident needed the meds she should have given it herself. I have given morphine when resps are that low if there is fluid in the lungs or if the resident has of pain or even if they are alittle restless (could be a sign of pain). However, I am with you, I will not give it just to speed up the dieing process.

No that is not normal and I would not work for a place that does not have one. Just my:twocents:.

They should have a P&P manual and I would not start working until they showed it to me. That is to cover your butt when something goes wrong you can show them where you was following their P&P. Otherwise they can throw it back on you and state that the problem was not theirs but yours because you was not following their P&P. That pt load sounds pretty normal. Meds that I would brush up on are your diabetic meds and your BP meds. Everyone seems to be a diabetic and have HTN now a days. Good luck with everything!

When you get to the end of your shift and realized that you have not urinated in 12 hours and you need to go now? Seriously I am still waiting to feel like a nurse. Most days I feel like a waitress and a drug dealer all rolled into one overworked package. Fetch and run and give me my drugs that is what I hear all day long.

Hey I love House! He rocks and do not think he would pick his nose.

Are you kidding me?! This has to be made up. Nobody can be that nasty. Love it sleeping on the couch. I have thought about doing that myself or sleeping in my car after a long night shift. Oh well I had a good laugh out of this anyways.

Love it! Still laughing my butt off!

Love this! Guess I will be putting my application in at Wal-Mart tomorrow. "Hi welcome to Wal-Mart! Do you need a cart to do your shopping?" Kind of sounds like the things I have to say at my current job. "Hi welcome to XYZ! If there is anything you need just let me know because I have the time." At least at Wal-Mart I will not have to do hourly rounding.

I would not worry so much about what others think you should be doing with your career. I would worry more about what direction that you want your career to go in the future. As with any speciality if a new grad nurse starts out in that speciality it is difficult to switch to a different type of nursing. I believe that it even more the case with LTC because so many hospital nurses do not look at LTC experience as being "real nursing" or that you will "lose your skills". I would suggest that any new nurse does at least one year of med/surg before going into any speciality. This will make any change that you may want to make in the future much easier. I will tell you from my own personal experience that you do not lose your skills in LTC you just use a certain set of skills and get a little rusty on some of the others. However, the skills that you learned in nursing school do come back easily enough. A positive that I have found is that it is a lot easier going from LTC nursing to hospital nursing than it is going from hospital to LTC. If you think that LTC is the career path that you wish to go I say go for it. However, I would suggest that you do at least some med-surg nursing PRN so that your options will be more open in the future. Even in hospice the med-surg nursing will be very handy. Good luck