catonmylap

The rationale is that then there is no documented evidence that subsequent dressing changes were not performed.

Mom, though she is loving & a good advocate, has no idea. She will not be consistent with his neb drugs & other meds. She often disregards MD orders. No MD orders for sats anyway. I have very little peds or trach experience and am trying to get a better feel for his baseline before the cold season hits. The OT is sure curious, too. He really put the poor kid through the wringer last week. The mom was able to get a machine with a few disposable sensors but she can be resistant about using something if it will mean reordering supplies. I drag so much stuff with us to school, I don't think I can fit another thing on that wheel chair. I was looking for the type you can put in your pocket, but my initial internet search results implied that it is difficult to find an accurate one for peds. Thought you might have used/seen a good one.

Can anyone recommend one of those pocket pulse oximeters? I have one for adults but it does not work on the little 6 year old boy I take care of now. I am his nurse at school & would love to check his sat. He has a trach & his lungs never sound good. His little fingers are quite skinny.

I have worked for about a month as a school nurse, 1-on-1, with a little boy with muscular dystrophy. He has a trach & GT & I ride the bus with him to school. It is definitely low stress. I am very busy/it is hectic, but compared to the nightmare job I left in LTC, it is serene. The pay is bad. I am hired through an agency, officially as a temp with no benefits. But I work days with holidays & weekends off. The down side, beside the pay, is that there is some heavy lifting to get the 55 pound child in & out of the wheel chair. Up out of his bathtub chair is the worst. I am not sure how long my back will hold out. Also I worry about not being very marketable when the time comes to look for another job. I graduated 2 years ago & it was very difficult to get a job with no experience. But the job is very rewarding. The school system's priority for me is to facilitate learning as much as possible and the teacher is wonderful. I just wish I had some early childhood education experience beyond my experience of being mom to my now senior in HS child. I never thought I would work in peds. I am the only nurse in this classroom of 8 kids but I hear that there are other classrooms in which nurses work one on one with more medically fragile kids, ie. they may have many seizures. The classroom aides have said that in one class, it is more like glorified daycare and the nurses care more about the potlucks & not much learning/teaching going on. I don't think I could take that.

I bought my first pair of Danskos at a local clog store. I am hard to fit because my foot is narrow & between sizes. The owner told me that once I figured out what size & color I wanted, he would bring out 5 pairs of that size. Then I should pick out the right & left clog that fit best. It is surprising how much the same size can vary. You can bet I keep buying at that store! Unfortunately they don't make more clogs in narrow.

I graduated last winter at age 52 & agree with many of the previous posts. I did shadow & volunteer many hours but I didn't get an accurate picture of the job or maybe I missed it while focusing on what I wanted to see. 20/20 hindsight! About a semester into it, it dawned on me just how clerical nursing is - I thought I was escaping that to help people instead. Also, I had previously worked in engineering & software. You have a problem, you focus on it - usually in a quiet room, & you solve it. In the healthcare settings, I don't do so well when even the interruptions get interrupted. Some days are pure chaos. I don't think I multi-task as well as I used to. Nursing school was not difficult, though the pace is unrelenting. You keep pounding more data into your head before you get to put to use what you have already learned. Tests are easy - well, relatively - you just study more. It is more difficult to consolidate new things into long term memory than when you are younger. I hope I can retrieve all those unused bits a year or two when some patient presents with those conditions. At the time I finished my prereqs & was applying, new grads could get a position at any hospital, any unit, & any shift. That is what the instructor told us. Plus they were getting sign-on bonuses of several thousand. (San Francisco Bay area.) After 6 months, & many applications later, I finally got a position at SNF, not the OR I dreamed of, or any acute care position that would be or lead to a more interesting position. I am THANKFUL that I have a job but it is not what I went to nursing school for. (You can read very accurate descriptions of skiled nursing elsewhere on allnurses.) Are you willing/able to relocate to a rural or less desirable area where they may be desperate enough to give new grads a chance? There have been a handful of new grad spots near my but 200 people apply for 1 position. Those are tough odds for anyone, but I think it is unrealistic for the employer to disregard age, consciously or unconsciously. Last but not least. I don't think it is the physical work that is so tiring but the stress. I was not as tired after working at the hospital (doing residencies both as a student & as an RN) as I am at the SNF. It is the 9 hours of total adrenalin as I try to go as fast as I can, cutting as many corners as I can, to get those meds out, praying that there are no admits or nothing goes wrong, & god forbid, a resident doesn't need to talk to me. Yes, there have been some rewarding times, but they don't make up for my agonizing over not being able to spend more than a few seconds with the people that are dying.