TLCinCICU

I do have a wicked little visual I use in reminding patients not to move their leg while a sheath is still in place - providing they need it. I hold up my pen and say "This is that line in your leg." I then take a paper towel and wrap it around the...

You are doing exactly as you should in blowing the whistle. The practices you describe are very bad practice. Those nurses need to know exactly how they are putting their patients at risk. We went to using the 5L premix bags made by Gambro for Pris...

My sickest was just recently. He was a Marfan's patient who arrested while swimming laps. By the time my shift was over, there was a vent and an IABP in his room. He had a PA catheter. He was on dobutamine, norepinephrine, phenylephrine, epinephr...

CRRT/CVVH is 1:1 on my nursing unit and is the responsibility of the ICU RNs, from set-up to dc. We require attendance in our unit-taught class and an orientation period (only about 4 hours) in order to be "competent". The dialysis RNs only perform...

I had one experience where I had removed a patient's wedding band just before we withdrew life support. As I placed the band in his wife's hand, she just started quietly sobbing. It was my second day caring for him and I had bonded with the family....

I've now been an RN a bit over 8 years. Luckily, the only thing I might even call bias or discrimination was during the quarter we covered labor & delivery. I attended a small community college program in west KY. The instructor for that conte...

Our management has passed onto us that sandbags fail to meet Joint Commission standards. They don't allow for the visual check of the site. So we simply aren't allowed to use them any longer.

I worked pulmonary/telemetry as a new grad. I then transitioned to an intermediate care unit, with long-term, vent-dependent patients. That was just enough of a taste of ICU level care that I transferred into an ICU setting. I LOVE it! There is a ...

We pull sheaths nearly every day. Our options are a Compressar clamp, a Femostop, or manual pressure. Sheaths are not to be dc'd until the ACT is This is basically how I pull them now: I position the patient at the side of the bed and lower the ra...

I work in a CICU where the only times we DON'T allow visitation are between 6:30 and 9 am and 6:30 and 9 pm. Visitors always have the potential to be annoying and can exhibit a gift for getting in your way. Information is the most valuable tool you...

I have seen everything the others are listing in their replies. Isolation gear may as well not exist, when it comes to those who use the title "Doctor". The best is one of our newer CV surgeons. He has a higher than desired rate for sternal wound ...

It really depends upon the setting where you practice. I wouldn't have volunteered one iota of personal info while I was a new grad back in western Kentucky. I would have used every "therapeutic communication" skill at my disposal to divert the con...