marcicatherine

This thread is along the lines of patient lingo, but I have to share complaints I have heard this week. Girl comes in and states "I stopped taking my birth control pills 3 days ago and now i'm bleeding"....... Elderly man chief complaint "I had leg c...

Hello Arkansas! The best place in the world to work. How bout them Hogs!:chuckle

I had a patient come in the ER a few days ago. CP, diaphoresis, vomiting, SOB, and ST elevations through the roof. We did the whole nine yards on her, NTG, Heparin, and Retavase. Finally by the second dose of Retavase she started to reprofuse........

In our ER, we wear surgical scrubs which are provided to us. Get a pair off the cart, change, work, change, go home. It is very convient, especially with body fluids flying on a daily basis. We have the option of 2 colors, surgical blue or surgica...

Today I was called into the nurse managers's office. She had received a complaint from the director of a nursing home. They had sent us a patient several weeks ago with a head lac 2nd being pushed out of her wheelchair. I was not the patients prim...

Helicopter brings in a 27 y/o OD on a Saturday morning. Pt took undetermined amount of Xanax, Lorcet and Methadone the night before. On arrival pt was intubated, he had aspirated huge amount of vomit. His lungs were about 3/4 full. We did what w...

Ok, man comes in today. C/O shortness of breath. I ask him if he is taking any meds. "Yes, I am taking an anniebioctic for my problem with barnacles" ??????????? Barnacles, barnacles, what the hell are barnacles? Daughter walks in, i ask what the...

I had another one of those extremely unsafe days in the ER. Trauma 1: acute MI, bp too high for Retavase, needs NTG and heparin and prep for the cath lab Trauma 3: Severely dehydrated elderly man, BP 60 by doppler, needs fluids and careful monitor...

I'm been on both sides of the fence. I worked ICU before I came to the ER. Yes, there are lots of skills and monitoring done in ICU that we seldom do in the ER. There are also lots of skills that I do more of (and better for that matter) in the ER...

We rarely have residents in the ER. My post is, I witnessed a bad incident when a nurse gave succs and the doc couldn't intubate and the pt died. From that moment on I vowed to only give succs if the anesthesiologist is there to tube and maybe a sel...

When I transferred to the ER from ICU I was terrified of starting IV's on children and babies. There were other skills that I wasn't that confident in either....NGT, foley caths, and believe it or not IM injections. We just didn't do a lot of those...

Thanks for the support. Actually my nurse manager did get a laugh out of the complaint, she was just trying to get a point of view and wanted to know what I remembered about the patient. And your comments are exactly right. If I complained everytim...

Not to worry! I just guide the starving patients to our lovely assortment of crackers.....we have regular saltines, low sodium saltines, graham crackers, and for the high society clients who are accustomed to fine dining...we have club crackers. So...

That's a great policy in a perfect world and a perfect ER. Our policy is....if you or your family asks for food, you get it. Otherwise we are stretched too thin to feed all the nursing home patients that we hold everyday. My point was...we provid...

I totally agree Magik Girl. When I first started working in the ER, I babied the difficult patients. I talked them into tests, blood work, taking meds, staying for treatment........Needless to say, that lasted about 2 months. I'm a little slow, it...

Along the same lines...a few years ago when i was still working in ICU, I was helping an elderly woman (78) take a bath. She let me do most of the scrubbing. When it came time to wash her genitals, she said "here let me have that rag, you don't wa...

I think on my last day in the ER I would: Tell the parents who think it is OK that their 14y/o daughter smokes a pack a day (and they buy them for her) "get the h&*# out of my ER The parents who don't give their baby Tylenol because they wanted ...

If management put phones in all of our rooms, I think I would have to find a new job. What a nightmare!!! I shudder to image the problems that would create! With the availability of cell phones today, it is nearly impossible at times to get the pa...

We currently have pamphlets at triage and in other areas of the waiting room entitled "What to expect during your visit to the ER" They seem to be pretty imformative, (if people take the time to listen) We also have magnets in the shape of hands th...

Just as annoying as the 30 visitors in a room is the massive volume of calls we get from caring family requesting to speak with the patient or a family member. We don't have phones in the room. Luckily ACC clerks don't transfer these calls to us, t...

I am soooo going to use the word "cabulance" on a daily basis now. I LOVE IT!!!:rotfl:

I feel for you. I went to school full time and worked full time at a turkey processing plant (2nd shift) cleaning up guts no less. I was a part-time mom for 3 and a half years. The guilt was unbearable at times. I was a single mom and I knew I had ...

Finally a thread I can sink my teeth into. I did low carb, when low carb wasn't cool. I have been following the Atkins "way of life" since October 2000. I say way of life because I learned better eating habits that I have been able to maintain. I...

I also agree with Julie. In a code situation, paramedics are extremely valuable. That is what they know, that is what they do best. We also work on a RN/Paramedic triage system. Again, the paramedics often spot little things that sometimes a RN m...

It may sound cruel, but when parents tell me (of their 2 y/o) "you won't be able to get him/her to take that medicine". I usually just say..."well, i'm bigger"