Stratiotes

I don't believe gender has any part in getting hired or how you're treated by employers. However, as much as stereotype deniers try to say otherwise, there are situations in which male and female nurses are treated differently. The truth is, while w...

I think that it depends on the context. If I were a patient, I wouldn't judge a nurse's worth by his or her bodyweight. That said, I would have trouble listening to any teaching they might have to offer on nutrition and/or weight control. This would ...

From what I've experienced, even those who have worked as nurses seem to lose touch once they get into admin. I'm not sure it really makes a difference.

I can't answer why normal staff nurses would want to wear a lab coat. They are hot and I would imagine easy to get soiled during patient care. I have never worn one while working as a bedside nurse. I do wear one when I am working as a clinical instr...

I would say a lot of it depends on your personality. I think for the majority of people, it is a better idea to spend a year on a tele or stepdown floor. That said, I've precepted and worked with several new grads who have done great. I have also wor...

I think whether or not people are successful in ICU (or any new setting) largely depends on personality. We mostly get nurses who transfer after a year on tele, but we've also hired on med/surg transfers, and even new grads. Some do well, some don't....

We have the same policy, but as a charge nurse, I generally would try to let the nurse with the CABG take over someone else's patient and have the other nurse take the admit. This depending on the acuity of the new admit. We get a lot of not-so-criti...

I'd say the ICU takes around 3-6 months (depending on the acuity level when you start which I've noticed can be vastly different at times) to even feel halfway comfortable. I didn't start feeling competent until year two! Now I have my CCRN and charg...

I struggled with this for several months after moving to ICU nursing. While I have encountered the rare individual who simply does not seem to learn from experience, most people do. At first, everything in the ICU is so overwhelming, task based nursi...

Sorry to bump an old thread, but I thought I'd throw my $0.02 in. I've done both med-surg and ICU. Everywhere I've worked has a "Critical care" differential. In my opinion, this is absolutely fair. I never claim to work harder than a med-surg nurse,...

Actually, most registry positions around NWA are around $35 an hour. There are also a couple of PRN agencies that pay this. But, these jobs do not come with benefits.

Has anyone encountered this? According to my director and verified by HR, it is hospital policy to not write letters of reference due to liability. It is nice to find this out after 18 months of employment.

I thought I'd made a big mistake by going into critical care my first few months. The fact that you feel the way you do is actually a great thing. It shows that you care about your level of knowledge and want to learn. Soak it up. I posted this one ...

Keep a notepad with you at work. Anytime you question something or feel that you don't fully understand a concept, write it down and study it later. Unfortunately, in my case, I run into these questions at the worst times. For example, when I was new...

Many new grads have been accepted into our ICU, though it is a smallish hospital. However, we do take open hearts and stuff--so it isn't an "easy" ICU. I started after a year of med surg right along with some new grads, and I can tell you that I didn...

I had one nursing school instructor who I felt discriminated a little against men. But, in practice, I've never felt that way.

There is no excuse for any specialty to look down on another. We are all on the same team. That said, for anyone who hasn't worked in ICU, I want to highlight a few things I've noticed. When I worked med/surg, unless I had patients several nights in ...

Everyone else has said it--that is the typical med-surg experience. When I started my first job, I was told I'd never take more than 5 patients. As soon as I was off orientation, 6 was the norm. At my current hospital, I think the med/surg nurses typ...

I left med surg after exactly one year. I started in an SICU about the same time as 3 brand new grads. Except for having a slight edge in knowledge of routinely given medications and time management, I don't really feel that my year of med surg gave ...

Haha... Very good point about the needy "q4 hour vitals" patient. Even if they aren't particularly needy, it never fails that they'll need to get up to the bedside commode or on the bedpan while you are in the middle of some crisis with the critical ...

I'm fairly new to SICU myself. We have a binder with our drip protocols on the unit--always important to check this. I find that the most important thing for my learning style is to know the physiological response to each drip. Does it work by constr...

I work primarily SICU, but float to MICU on occasion. We have a relatively small hospital with only an SICU and MICU. So our SICU gets pretty much everything from immediate post op CABGs to craniotomies. We also get our fair share of medical ICU on w...

Our unit staffs 2:1. 3:1 is only if there is a necessary admit and no nurse to call in to take it. I would never work where 3:1 is the norm.

I am fine with patients. It is the other nurses and doctors that I feel treated the worst by. Doctors who expect you to vacate their favorite seat when there are 3 other empty identical ones adjacent to it. Nurses who act like their world is ending b...

Here is a good thread full of report sheets to download. https://allnurses.com/cardiac-nursing/share-your-brain-266401.html