Trigeminy

In my facility, nurses have left in droves. My neuro unit went from 26 full time RNs to 6. Everyone left for various reasons. It has happened across the board. Right now we combined 4 units to be able to staff 1 and are offering insane bonuses (extra 75$/hr) to come in extra at times. My unit is now a neuromedical-neurosurgical-general med surg-pulmonary stepdown floor that is utilized as a dumping ground. Administration handled COVID poorly (today your neuro, tomorrow your a COVID floor-here are gowns and masks, good luck). Many older nurses retired, many younger nurses took outpatient positions. My phone rings now almost as it had when I was a home health director. The sad thing is, I see no end in sight before I retire in 16 years 8 months and 11 days.....

I'm currently a neuro nurse who's floor got transformed to the 'back up COVID floor' which filled with COVID patients the day they told us this. Our COVID training consisted of 'here is how you mask and gown'. He have had all covid patients since. All of our rooms were converted to negative pressure. We handle 4-6 positive patients per shift and are lucky to have an aide here and there. Over half our nurses quit so they closed another med-surg floor and combined our staff. We have a ton of nursing schools so the majority of our nurses have less than two years experience and my heart goes out to them trying to deal with everything. We are short staffed daily and our PPE rules are atrocious. We are to wear our gowns from room to room unless soiled and our N-95's are to be worn until they break. We've been lucky here in western PA until the past two month when COVID came down on us like a hammer. I work in a large facility that seems to think nurses are easily replaceable and are starting to realize that isn't the case. Sorry for my rant, but I needed to vent.

I'll probably retire when they deem me unfit to work anymore. I've been in healthcare since I was 18, 6 years as a CNA and the rest as an RN. I see myself working until at least 65. Most of the male nurses I've worked with are younger than me, but the few older male nurses I've worked with plan on retiring between 60 and 65 depeneding on their finances. Hope this helps a bit

Here in werstern Pa I managed to hold on to my fulltime position, but the agency I picked up extra time with sold its healthcare division. Unfortunately, our census has been down and the hospital closed a floor which dispersed the staff throughout the house. This cut down the available overtime to nil. Its hard to believe that as an RN with 17 years nursing experience, I'm having a hard time finding a second job for extra time and money.

Not sure if this will help much, but here goes.... 1. I don't like a lot about our current system (McKesson Care Manager), there's no easy way to chart skin issues, too much mouse movement (instead of being able to hit 'enter' to go to the next field), nearly impossible to edit, and no continuity on what needs charted. The list can go on and on. 2. What would keep me at the bedside more would be a program where you can type your nurses note rather than scrolling through hundreds of boxes to find what you want to chart. 3. Directly related to number 2, you can actually chart whats wrong instead of finding the closest related box and hoping that covers it. 4. Our pain section involves charting many items and then followup documentation 15-30 minutes after charting the pain depending on our intervention. Sorry if this didn't help or sounds negative, but I have a few issues with our program.

My sentiments exactly, good points. After my divorce, I was advised by my attorney and got a second opinion from another attorney to file bancruptcy. Does this make me a bad employee after 17 years? I surely hope not.

"Mike, phone!" Honestly, I spend more time explaining to families and physicians what I'm doing than it takes me to do the things I get called to explain. My favorite two words are "Thank You", although, those two words are getting heard less and less.

1. 11 years 2. 60-70k 3. Diploma 4. 7 years 5. 40-60 6. Both 7. Male

Had the same thing happen with a heperin gtt. Order was to maintain PTT at 60. We have a protocol and he wouldn't budge on giving me a range, so you can bet I called when the first PTT came in a 61.

I personally don't see see a problem with them chewing gum as long as they are able to and they don't swallow it. It is supposed to help with peristalsis and we use chewing gum with some of our colectomy patients, but its ordered by the physician.

I've worked agency at two different Selects and have enjoyed both assignments. Both utilized LPN's by having them take an assignment and the RN's cover. I'm not sure if all Selects are this way though. Hope this helps.