Nepenthe Sea

My hospital a couple of years ago directed us to start saying "My pleasure" as "No problem" or even "You're welcome" were considered rude or not pleasant enough. I guess everybody must have blown this off completely because they haven't said anything...

Oh yeah, and recently had a newborn come to our unit in severe CHF, and pulmonary hypertension (I can't remember what heart condition she had - we are a small regional unit and ship cardiac kids off). Her BNP was over 5,000. Don't remember what the c...

In adults, I saw an ammonia of 300+. The guy had a bad liver and the doctors had been trying to get him on a transplant list forever, and he and his family kept declining. He finally agreed to it, and of course, he was supposed to be transported the ...

I am a relatively new nurse in PICU/pedi (almost one year). We have a 5-bed PICU, and bed pediatric floor. I admitted a 4-year-old to our PICU last week, and mom said something about "I'm going to leave after I get her settled but I will be back in ...

I am a fairly new pediatric nurse. I was just curious as to the lab draws in your various hospitals. In mine, we draw all the labs ourselves. However, if it is our busy season and we have a lot to draw, we sometimes will have lab come and draw on our...

I know it has been almost a year since you wrote this post. How are things for you now? I hope things are better for you. I have to say, your story could have been MY story, almost exactly. I went to nursing school with the intent of becoming a NICU ...

I think we are trying so hard to be "family friendly" that we try to accommodate people as well as we can. There is only room in our ICU rooms for one fold-out bed, so if both parents are staying, one will stay in the recliner. It does get pretty cro...

Yes. We sometimes have a unit full of vents/very sick kids, and sometimes we have one sick kid and some floor overflow. Our acuity is not as high as the other hospital here. We also tend to keep our ICU patients there until discharge, unless we need ...

That was an easy trap to get into. The reason I didn't leave the area I was in sooner was because I liked the people I worked with and knew the doctors and what they wanted, for the most part. I was just comfortable enough to be afraid to make the ju...

I understand what you are saying. That is just the policy here. I can see how it makes it hard for the families. I was just wondering if that is the norm. What do you do with the younger kids who have a hard time staying in a room by themselves? We d...

I love nights and plan to never work days. I don't live on a night schedule at home, though, because it would be too hard with my young children. So I keep a regular schedule like most people when I am off, then the night before I go back to work, I ...

I think it just depends on where you work and what you expect from your career. Anybody who goes into nursing thinking that they are going to make a lot of money is delusional. The money is decent, but you earn every penny, that's for sure. The area ...

I know this is an old thread, but I had to add something funny I aw from one of our patients. She drew a picture of a horse for the nurses (currently on display at our nurses station), and after signing her name, she added in parenthesis "The appendi...

I agree with all the previous posters. I will say, however, that some of my teenagers remind me of the adults I used to take care of, in regard to not wanting to ambulate, not wanting to go use the bathroom, or eat, drink, whatever. I have especially...

The previous posters are correct in that you will be spending a lot of time with these kids. Obviously, with the infants and very young kids, you will be dealing more with the parents (which can be a whole other issue in itself), but you will be educ...

I went to school with the goal of working in NICU or PICU, but there were few jobs available, so I worked with adults, mostly in Med-Surg. I did that for almost two years before I decided to move on with my original plan, and applied for a job in PIC...

Let's see... a guy in Africa claims that Ebola is a hoax, but is transmitted via vaccines. How the two American nurses got the vaccine, he did not say. I actually can't even discuss this topic with my family anymore because they are in freak-out mode...

I work in a small PICU, and our patient acuity is not as high as the other hospital in town. We do get vented patients, sometimes multiple ones, but it's also not uncommon to have no vents or to have some floor overflow, when they are getting slammed...

I work in a PICU in Texas. We have a few male pedi nurses in our unit, and they are great! Go for it!

I remember that in nursing school there were a few people other than myself that wanted to work in pedi. Most of them changed their minds after being in clinicals. They usually cite the parents as the reason they changed their minds.

For what it's worth, I graduated almost 2 1/2 years ago, with my dream being to go into NICU or PICU after graduation (our local hospitals DO hire new grads). I was turned down for a PICU job and it seemed like NICU never had an opening when I needed...

Okay, I have been a nurse for just over a year, and spent a year as a tech in SICU/MICU. I have seen some pretty disturbing stuff in that short time (Lots of trauma), but nothing has gotten to me yet. EXCEPT this one thing. I have had this patient th...

I really have no idea what to do with myself, in regard to my nursing career. I graduated from school last May. The whole reason I even went to nursing school was to work in NICU (my kids are NICU grads). I was a student extern in the unit where I wa...

Pneumothorax, it's not that I don't CARE, it's just not the unit where I want to work, especially with the way things have been there. It's not just me -- even the nurses that have been there for years are frustrated and talking about going somewhere...