aila49

I am not a psych nurse. I work acute care med/surg in a rural hospital. We have gone to computer charting. One of the interventions is fall risk, but we do not have a screening tool for this. I have found two different screening tools, but have not found the heinrich screening tool. Any info would be helpful. thanks nora

I have five tattoos. Two are on my upper arms. They have never presented a problem for me. In fact, when one does flash, people lift the sleeve and look at them. I have never had a bad comment about them. I have a mouse with a rose in it's mouth on my right upper arm and a mouse swinging on a daisy on my left upper arm. (my chinese horoscope is the rat, ). I also sport an eyebrow ring. By the way, I have been a nurse for 16 years and am a travel nurse at the moment. I am 56 years old. Nora

Triage RN_34, I am a WA State nurse who is currently in CA on travel assignment. I work ICU, so there is always a set number of patients to care for, which is two. Here we also have the tele patients, which is another set ratio of three. I sometimes float to Med/Surg when ICU census is low. We are expected to pick up six patients. This is without any CNA help. I feel like I do not address the problems of the patients. I am someone to help to commode, give meds, take vital signs, etc. I can go the entire 12 hour shift and only see a patient three times during my shift. This is very frustrating. The law is worded in such a way to be broken. Nursing must have the ratio of 6:1 on the floor at all times. If I go for a break, take lunch, or am off the floor for any reason, there must be another nurse to take over my patients. This is where the hospitals are complaining. They say it is impossible to have someone to care for those patients during the time I am off the floor without calling in another nurse. I have seen those advertisements also about the nurses thanking the governor for changing the ratio. I want to choke everytime I see them. I would love to have the governor, a member of his family, or that cute little nurse as my patient on some night when I have two falling out of bed, one detox, and three that need new IV sites.:angryfire It is not a pretty picture here in CA. I agree that if nursing standards are to be done, they must be confronted on a national level, not state to state. Our money grabbing unions are supposed to be working for us, but I do not see much happening there. I plan to take one more assignment in CA when my contract ends at this hospital, then I am off to other states. I know these other states are looking at CA and the law of patient ratios. It is very scary to think that hospitals are continuing to place patient care below monetary gain. BTW, the census in WA State is 8:1 on the med/surg floor. Nora