kimbernurse

I sent out letters to the staff and teachers with the info from the CDC website. I typed up a cover letter emphasizing "Our best defense against this strain of flu is being proactive and fighting fears with knowledge". In other words, wash your hands and quit freaking out!! :) Our asst super was insisting an employee with a sore throat at the DO go home. I joked with my colleague that we should all get N95 respirators and paint pink snouts on them. I know, I know, I'm horrible but its been a long day and that just really made me oink...I mean giggle. All kidding aside, I am just trying my darndest to educate as much as I can. I have been making rounds and just briefly talking with everyone. You know that the teacher that sends a kid just for farting is going to have her whole class up in our offices while all of this is going on. (Deep, cleansing breaths.) This too shall pass.

Everyone has those kind of days...we want you to let it all out here. Sometimes it's not easy to let things just go and most of us understand that!! Usually, once you "yell out loud" it's all better! And anyways, what's right is right and what's wrong is wrong. Probably the reason this world is going to heck in a handbag is because we have been taught just to "let it go". You stand up for what is right!!!! (I am sooooo tempted on a daily basis to correct the incorrect english I hear our teachers speaking while addressing parents or students! Don't think they would like us doing that for them, would they??)Tomorrow is a new start :)

3 second grade girls, all from the same class, all wet their pants at exactly the same time. Couldn't contact anyone to bring new clothes for any of them. All 3 went back to class with wet pants after I cought one in the bathroom splashing her crotch with water from the sink. Argh:madface: Was not in the mood to be used as an excuse to get out of class that day.

Tis the season for allergies! One little girl came in. "You gotta call my aunt. I am ABOUT to have an allergic reaction" When asked to what, she yelled "CATERPILLARS!!!" When asked her what happens when she comes into contact with them "My nose itches a little bit" . Have you touched any? "No, but I saw some at recess and my nose started itching." Go back to class. Please. Gotta love it :) Oh. And there was the one "I am allergic to mayonnaise. I had to go to the hospital one time because it made me throw up". Called mom just in case to ask (was thinking maybe an egg allergy). Mom just laughed and laughed. Said child just doesn't like it. Even after all of that, child still insisted that I call her an ambulance "just incase".

Me too!! How funny. " My grandma told me if I ever have a loose tooth I had to go home" This was a 3rd grader!! Tisk Tisk.

I HATE ringbacks on cell phones "while your party is being reached". I usually use speaker phone when making phone calls so I can have my hands free to multi task, but some of the vulgarity of those songs is embarrasing especially with little kids in the health room. One voicemail " I'm not here yo, but holla back at cha girl". Another " In the name of Jesus I rebuke you, you evil" (I think I may have had the wrong number on that one). People change numbers more than their underwear. I couldn't imagine not being reachable during the day for my child!!

I make the kids that jump off the bus and come straight to the health room go to class first to "check in" with teacher and get a pass. After they do that, then they can come back and see me. I can say that most never return!

Teachers aid wanted bandaids because her "headlights" were shining. HA!

I also try to take my lunch later in the day, between 1 and 2. Noon meds are done then and the influx as slowed some. If it's approaching my lunchtime, I will shut my door and finish up with the kids I have left. If the kids do manage to track me down in the LOCKED teachers lounge (they wait outside the door until some one comes out), I tell them if they are not "dead, dying or bleeding", they can come back to my office in half an hour. Some days you don't get to eat. I can deal with that. But please, give me 10 minutes for mental health recharge and please, LET ME PEE! We have got to remember, if we don't take care of ourselves, we can't take care of others!! Take your legally mandated break!! :)

I just need some reassurance!! I am new to school nursing, been at my school for about 4 months. The thing is I have been sick 4 times since I started and have been out a total of 6 days. Is it normal to be sick so much as a school nurse? All my other nursing buddies say that I have to get immune to all of the "new" germs I'm around. I worked in the ER 6 years before this and I think I was only sick maybe 3 times that I can remember. I have a very high work ethic and feel guilty about missing so much time. I am religious about washing my hands and keeping my room wiped down. I am considering wearing a mask for all those droplets, though!!!!

I have been a school nurse now for about 4 months. When I first started, our 45 day report was done, and the immunization situation in our district was a nightmare. It really made me come close to quitting!! There were over 250 kids with inadequate/missing immunizations. We had Seniors that had never had their 4 yr old boosters!!!!!!! Not to mention all of the missing permanent records that no one, not even guidance had a clue as to where they were. I spent so much time tracking down records, calling parents (who were none too happy that they had to get another copy off imm. cert. )sending letters, blah blah blah just to get these kids current with their shots. There were many kids we had to keep out of school until they got their shots after their 30 days expired. My questions is, what is your policy on reviewing immunizations?? How about when a new student comes into your school? Do you do registration each year for all students? I think our district's problem is that the district office and some attendence clerks have been enrolling students with what ever "proof of immunization" the parents could provide. Thanks for any imput!!

I love the mass histeria that is so contagious when one student vomits/get sick. It seems that the rest of the class has sympathy pains or something (especially when little Johnny goes back to the class room to retrieve his bookbag and tells everyone else the nurse is sending him home). I hate feeling like I am an excuse to these kids to get out of class. This very real fact was evident today. It was the last day before winter break (a half day). I saw only 5 kids from 8am to 11am. I normally average about 30-40 kids a day. Its amazing how preoccupation will keep kids out of the health room. I didn't know what to do with myself!! I actually had time to do IHPs and prep for screenings! I do love my job, despite the frustration that some of these frequent fliers bring from time to time. I can't help but giggle sometimes....a child's stomach hurt soooooooo bad and he was "vomiting" (per his report) but was observed scarfing down a small bag of mini M&M's he pulled out of his pocket. Back to class you go my dear. HEHEHE.

Just Kidding.

ER nurses definitely have strong personalities! I think you'll pretty much find that in any ER and any ICU. I think we kinda have to be that way, you know, hold our ground so we won't be manipulated and taken advantage of. We have to make snap decisions based on objective info and yes, sometimes subjective info (remembering a patient from a previous visit for instance). We have to be strong. We are also compassionate, and we feel jaded by people that have no experience telling us we are cold and uncaring based on one little vent.

What weirdo has 2 (who knows if there are more) user names on allnurses?? COLPN and COnursingstudent. Any one seeing a disturbing trend here??

I love LPN's. Got some pretty dang awesome ones in my ER :)

Age: 32 Location: Colorado Nursing Education: Nursing Student Additional Education Titles: EMT I Occupation: Lab Aide Gender: Male

So, you're an LPN/LVN??

It is sooo hard sometimes. We had a lady that had esophageal varicies and was spewing blood like a water fountain--we are squeezing in the prbcs as fast as we could until the surgeon could get there to band her bleeders(we are level 3, so no surgeon on site after hours). Well, Mrs. Entitled who was a soft admission for mild dehydration had just been admitted and was waiting on us to take her up. She just so happened to be the CEO's neighbor, so her daughter thought it would be appropriate to call Mr. CEO to get HIM to expidite the patient's transfer upstairs. THe CEO then asked (I kid you not) to speak to the nurse. The patient's daughter then comes in the room and says Mr. CEO wants to talk with you (the AUDACITY!!) My bestest friend from work marches her fanny out to the phone (PPE head to toe) and tells the CEO that Mrs. Entitled is stable and comfortable and that we had a REAL emergency on our hands and unless he would be willing to call in some more help, Mrs. Entitled was going to have to wait!! Man what a rush!! He was understanding and told the daughter she would have to wait. Who'd of thunk it. But I am sure she didn't have to pay a dime due to inconviences suffered in the ER. Even before I was a nurse, if I saw people running in and out of a room in gowns and shielded masks covered with blood, I would have enough sense to know something serious was going on. People have no clue.

I will continue to talk about what I have been talking about I could care less if it's on the news or in the paper. We all know the media would paint the nurses as the devil anyway and the patient as the angel. Anywho... Would you rather me get on a forum to discuss things with my fellow nurses or bottle it up and wait until I'm at work and unload while I'm there. Contrary to popular belief, nurses are HUMAN and we deal with things just like most everyone else. Sounds like the nonmedicals are just getting on this website to maybe gain insight and ammo for their next medical visit... What would you do nonmedicals: You go to work at 7pm. A little 16 month old comes in cardiac arrest and dies despite your best efforts to revive her. You are responsible for comforting the family and trying to hold yourself together. If this happened to you, wouldn't you want to go home?? We don't have that luxury. We have to pick ourselves up by the bootstraps and keep on truckin. In that same night, you get a (listen to this TRAUMARN...) a drug seeker, here for his 3rd visit in a week for the same vague pain complaint that he's had for 6 months who picks up a chair and throws it at you because they didn't get their drug of choice. This is all before 10pm. Then, just as you think the night is settling down, you get a drunk guy that reaches up from his drunken stupor, smiles, and grabs and squeezes your boob with better accuracy than you could ever imagine a BAL of 400 ever having. And to boot, at 6am you get that ever infamous STEMI that looks like dookie and has a pressure of 80 palp. Personally, I don't waste my time surfing, say lawer blogs or whatever, frankly because I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT IT.Why you guys do it is beyond me. YOU CAN'T PASS JUDGEMENT ABOUT SOMETHING YOU HAVE NO CLUE ABOUT. Give us a break and find something better to do with your time besides judging perfectly normal people dealing with stress is a perfectly normal way.

Okay, guys. Bottom line here is we have a CNA and a nursing student telling us we are a bunch of uncompassionate witches. What I don't think they are getting (and why would they, they have the combined experience of like 4 years and don't work in the ED as NURSES)is the WAY THE ER FUNCTIONS. OUR MAIN FUNCTION IN THE ER TO TREAT ACUTE CASES, THEN CHRONIC ONES. THE ER IS NOT THE MOST APPROPRIATE AVENUE TO TRY TO MANAGE CHRONIC CONDITIONS. I do not lack compassion. I am not a narc nazi or anything. I will gladly give dilaudid to anyone writhing in legitimate pain, chronic or not. Keep in mind, however that your ACUTE pain is more worrisome to me than your chronic pain is. LOOK UP THE DEFINITION OF TRIAGE. The sickest people that can be salvaged will be treated first. I am sorry if that means your mom has to wait 2 hours in the lobby to be seen. LIFE OR LIMB--that is the attitude ER nurses must have day in and day out to preform our jobs. We are really concerned about your mom, but even more so about the acute pain someone is having that may mean you're dying or may loose body parts. And unfortunately there are people out there that do abuse the system. The doctors have to be on guard, as someone else said in their post, because the DEA is monitoring what and how much narcotics they are prescribing. We are venting about the frequent flier drug seekers that verbally and sometime physically try to abuse us if the doctor doesn't give them what they want. I think you both may need to read back through this thread because I don't ever remember it being an "anti-pain medication" thread or "if-your-in pain-your-a-drug-seeker" thread. You make it seem that all ER nurses hate all people complaining of pain. Give us a break!! And again, when you become an ER nurse, you can then judge our levels of compassion.

Didn't we all know it would just be a matter of time. Someone who sees the world through rose colored glasses is going to set all of us horrible nurses with no compassion all straight. We are such horrible nurses Are you a nursing student?? I bet you think that all urinary caths on 400 lb. patients in the ER are completely sterile, too (hehehe). Listen, if I didn't like what I did, I would no longer be doing it. I became a nurse because I like to help people. Have you ever had your life threatened by a druggie that didn't get his Demerol?? I have. Not fun. Sorry if that makes me a little gun shy about being nice nurse nancy to people like this. I also don't appreciate doing my best to save someone's granny with CHF, on bipap, sats in the low 80's and having some ding dong COME IN THE ROOM and tell me I need to hurry up and get him some pain medicine for his toothache. People have a HUGE misconception about how the ER works. Read your critical care books, especially the part about triage. Also, get some experience in the "hot seat" and then you can judge my level of compassion. I love most of my patients--even some of the frequent fliers. If you spit at me or threaten MY life over the DOCTOR's decision, you're dang skippy i won't have time for you.

I am sorry that you and your mother suffer true pain. However as a NURSE, it is indeed my responsibility to judged people's pain. Not everyone is verbal or even conscious. You ever heard of nonverbal pain scales?? How do you think we evaluate babies pain, obtunded or intubated people's pain? Also, vital signs clue us in on a lot! If you're 10/10 and heart rate of 65 and normotensive, I am less likely to get excited about your complaint of "the worst pain of your life". And besides, if you have chronic pain and you are properly following up with your PMD and are compliant, you are less likely to be in the ER anyways. TheER is the EMERGENCY room. Chronic pain hurts, but is not an emergency. You need to understand that when we have critically ill patients, ie: people that are trying to die on us or evenpeople in acute pain from, say, an open tib-fib fracture, these things are ALWAYS more important than someone coming in with chronic complaints. Does this mean we are insensitive and don't care? Absolutely not. It just means that we will get to you after the sickest people are taken care of first. And please don't cop an attitude when I am busy trying to save someone's life.

The log book off of the crash cart. Who knows? Also our ortho room seems to be a pretty popular room for browsing and shopping. I once had a family that I caught stuffing their pockets with kling and 4x4's. We do room assignments and stock our own rooms. You better believe I took inventory when they left and charged them for every bit of the supplies they stole. I also had to call security on a crazy lady that insisted on taking the multi-use pack of adult wipes for her 12 y/o daughter that had one episode of diarrhea last week "just in case she had an accident in the car" PUULEEASE. If her diarrhea is that bad lady, those wipes aint gonna take that smell out of your seat fabric.

Some nights are just sooo busy and bad, you don't have time to mess with the "trolls" (as one of our MD's would say)and just give em what the want to save yourself the strife. LOVE the policy about Dilaudid. One of our MD's wrote an order for Dilaudid 2mg and Phenergan 25mg IN 1L NS over 1 hour. Boy was that FF migraine lady M-A-D. She was gonna call admin. but what would have been her complaint? We offered her narcotics, didn't we? (HAHA) I think the worst part of it for us nurses is that we are the middle man. The MD evaluates the patient, tells them "we'll get you some pain meds" without specifying what kind. So WE get blasted when we come bouncing in with Toradol 60 IM. I am now requesting that my MD's personally go and talk to the patients if their medication orders don't meet patient expectations. I refuse to be the go between, and I hate being cussed out for the MD's discretion. It is not my job (oooh forbidden phrase..hehehe) to justify the MD's pain medication orders for BS complaints. I no longer allow myself to get stressed out by these dindongs. The language starts flying at me, I walk away. Seeing these people makes me truly appreciate my life. What a sad way to exist.