Smokey9283

There is nothing wrong with doing your LPN first then obtaining you RN. The benefit is you gain nursing knowledge and experience while you are working towards your RN. And you can take a little longer to get your RN too. Why would I want to take a little longer to get my RN? Because you gain a lot of experience as a nurse and can use your experiences to ease your training in RN classwork. You will also have true clinical experience to rely on, not just the mamby pamby clinicals that you are in throughout nursing school. LPN school focus more on skills, ie, cath insertion, head to toe exams, wound care, enteral tube care plus a whole lot more. They also have a theory component so that you can recognize when something is amiss, what to expect when treating and monitoring a problem. RN classes are (from what I am told by LPN - RN co-workers) nursing theory based. There is so much to learn about disease processes, that it's difficult be able to focus on skills to the extent that you can in LPN courses. BTW the best nurses that I work with were LPN's first.

I think that a good nurse manager needs to have at least 10 years experience in med/surg staff nursing. Nurses that go straight into management after school tend to not have a realistic appreciation of what it's like to work in the trenches. You also need to have experience in the area of nursing that you end up managing. It wouldn't be a good idea for a nurse from med/surg to try and manage the OR. Just my 2 cents.

Lots of work, not enough people, but rewarding and at the end of the day I love feeling like I earned my money and helped someone. Some of the posters say that they don't get to take their breaks. Well here is the deal, studies have shown that people that don't take breaks actually are more unproductive and get less accomplished then people that do take their breaks. Take your breaks even if you feel like you have a mountain load to do. You need it to function at your peak.

oh yeah

LPN's can do a lot more than a CNA can, They can do head to toe systems exam, then can insert foleys and tell you why they are inserting the foley and why it's a sterile procedure, they take orders from doctors, they go to nursing theory classes, pharmacology, child bearing, gerontology, mental health, then they do at least 2 semesters in clinical learning how to implement the nursing process and link the classes with the practice. LPN's learn the nursing process and the ABC's of assessment, They learn human anatomy and physiology, often times the same A&P courses that RN's have to take to finish their schooling. My point is that I had to work dang hard to become a LPN. I took 3 semesters of training. The first semester I took 19 credits of theory classes, 2nd semester 22 credits between theory and clinical, and third semester 24 credits between theory and clinical. And I had to maintain a average percentage of greater than 80%, (which I believe is the norm in nursing) Let's not belittle the nurses that had to struggle through education and a system that sets LPN's to fail by allowing a CNA to challenge LPN boards. They should have to go to school just like anyone else that intends to advance their education.

Nothing makes me angrier than EMS coming into my LTC facility and telling me that how I'm doing my job is wrong. One incident I had was when a Paramedic came in after I called 911 because I had a resident acting unusual, slurred speech, increased anxiety, increased confusion and a pronounced facial droop. When EMS arrived, they performed their clinical exam and told me that I was wrong and that none of the things I reported were evident. Well, they took her to the ER and she died by 1700 that day of a massive cerebral hemmorrhage. My point is that LTC nurses are judged by EMS and ER Nurses every day as being incapable idiots. EMS needs to realize that those nurses see those resident every day and they know when something isn't right, even if it isn't out right evident. And do you really think that yelling at the NA about administrating a tx is going to solve anything. last I remembered NA's weren't trained in clinical examination, e.g. lung sounds. They aren't able to make decisions regarding the administration of medications because they don't take pharmacology. The puzzled look was probably because she was baffled about how to react to your abuse in front of a patient. Probably on the verge of crying d/t embarrassment. Shame on you!

The Urgent Care that I work at is attached to the ER and we have problems as well. The triage nurses will sometimes triage a patient to Urgent care because they refuse to go to ER even if the triage nurse feels that they are more appropriate for ER. We also have problems with patient flow. Our patients are seen by emergency certified physicians and often times will have to wait for 2+ hours to be seen depending on what's going on in ER. There is no perfect system, so we try to make due as best we can. I wonder what happens with patients that are having chest pain and schedule a appointment in the clinic. I would assume that those nurses also need to call 911.

FYI:THIS IS NOT REQUEST FOR ADVISE!!! My wife has already made the decision that this surgery is going to happen.

My wife is undergoing a partial pancreatectomy. The MD is unsure if they will be doing the Whipple, Mesopancreatectomy, or Distal pancreatectomy. My question is, Have any nurses on this forum seen a good outcome with the Whipple, I really would like to here something positive. A Little backround. Approximately a month post c-section my wife began having back pain accompanied by severe nausea. I insisted that we go the ER since it could be a complication after the surgery. A PE study was performed and that is when we found a 3 cm mass on her Pancreas. It was calcified, so we were really worried much. We followed up with an MRI which showed us less than the CT, so we followed up with a gastroenterologist who recommended a endoscopic ultrasound with small needle aspiration of the pancreas. The biopsy showed that the mass was benign, however it was obstructing the pancreatic duct. The tumor is a pseudopapillary tumor. The GI doc recommended removal of the tumor d/t the nature of it's location and they are finding that these are turning into cancer in some patients. So here we are, facing a partial pancreatectomy. All of this has happened within the last month. Please give me some feedback, I want some real answers not the surgeons smiley, everything is going to be ok attitude. (I do expect everything will be ok)

Ditto: it is every nurses and nursing staff's responsibility to perform all basic nursing care.

Perfect

When any nurse in the ER sees "Breathing problem" or "Difficulty breathing" they tend to react pretty quickly. So I truely believe that if those had been the chief complaints that service would have been faster. Additionally in those complaints Breathing is in them alerting the nurse instantly.

The "potential" is always there.

No one is perfect 100% of the time. The point of triage is to visualize your patients during the time of assessment. The system certainly isn't perfect either. When the triage nurse needs to see 20 patients it's not always easy to determine the first patient that needs to be seen, furthermore, regarding her laughing and joking with other staff members. I find truely hard to believe that you working LTC never find time to build repore with co-workers even when you have 20 patients waiting for there meds before bed. Additionally, did she state to the patient that she had called ahead of you, "Is it all right if I see this one first." Perhaps she was trying to assess whether or not to take him first. And I can say from experience that is it not fun to tell a patient that you just called that they will need to wait a little longer. Especially if she has been waiting for 20 minutes already. This almost seems like a case of horizontal violence to me. Your child was seen and care for appropriately and the triage nurse listened to you.

As an LPN I know that I take my direction from the RN. Regarding not knowing what is going on with a patient, it is the opposite in our hospital. The LPN's float the floor and do various tasks for each RN ie, hand IVPB, dressing change, insert IV, parts of an admission..... The difficult thing about that is that we aren't getting any report on patient's. We are expected to blindly do these tasks. What's even more frustrating to me is when a patient is c/o pain and i don't know what the patient has been getting, and what the plan is. I would be able to simply give a percocet, but it takes 20 minutes because I have to locate the RN then get the med. In your situation it sounds like the LPN's are afraid of loosing their title. If they are having to be accountable to someone other than their patients, then they will feel like less of a nurse. In our hospital LPN's are not referred to as nurses, but support staff. It's a nasty hurtful term. I get fired up just thinking about it. Just food for thought.