Metody

If the patient doesn't even want neighbors knowing they receive care, I bet they think our disconnected and private society is just fine, and don't want to reach out to the neighbors for help. I don't know if it rises to the level of a HIPAA violation, but I can sympathize with them. That said, I would be very cautious about parking some distance away and walking to their home, since that could make you a target.

Sometimes I open napkins a fast food places like I'm setting up a sterile field, if they're folded right.I like to do dressing changes as quickly as possible, so I set everything up before hand - a piece of plastic for the old dressing, pre ripped and dated pieces of tape, vaseline guaze opened, presoaked guaze, creams uncapped, tools laid out. And now when I put on makeup or cook, I lay everything out - eyeshadow open, brushes preloaded, mascara wand on a piece of toilet paper...I wish my constant cleaning at work would carry over to home, though. No luck so far.

Just because a patient is calm doesn't mean they've stopped being suicidal. Sometimes it means they've finally figured out how to do it, and all their worries are going to be lifted. It's very soothing to think that soon, you won't be in any more pain. And just because they appear to be still, that doesn't mean they're safe, either; in nursing school, when we did our rotation in the psych ward, one of the patients had massive scarring on his forearm from when he'd found a paperclip and carved at himself. He'd been in bed with his back to the door and was quiet and discrete enough that no one found him until he'd nearly hit bone. Your charge nurse is dangerous. She knew she was doing the wrong thing, and she was ****** because now there's a record of it. And to address the issue of throwing burden on other nurses: that wouldn't be your fault. It'd be the fault of whoever decided it was more important to have an aide on the floor instead of another nurse.

I'm sure that if it damaged the machine, you would have heard ALL about it! It's kind of impressive that they can handle that much sugar!

Oh, wow. Did they have to recalibrate the machine?

This kind of idea might appear good on the surface, but is the start of a very slippery slope. Once you start forcing your nurses to be healthy, well, why not the patients? Shouldn't we hold them to the same standards of self-care as we hold ourselves? We'd save an awful lot of health care dollars and lower nurse-patient ratios right quick if we refused to treat smokers, the obese, risk-taking teenagers, alcoholics... A person's private life should remain private, and we are long past the days when we demanded that nurses should be paragons of virtue. So long as someone's vices and addictions don't affect the quality of the care they give out, they aren't anyone's business but the nurse's.

Left inner pocket, in an organizer my sister got me: pen, penlight, scissors, credit card, ID, bus pass. Hair pins, too - I slip them through the holes in the accudose envelopes, so I can pin together all of a patient's next meds. Left outer pocket: patient reports, folded in fours. You write the notes you need on the back of them. a very small, very thin notebook to transcribe anything I want to take home with me. Alcohol wipes, adhesive wipes, a couple of flushes Right inner pocket: MP3 player, headphones coiled up and banded to the player so there's no wild tangles to deal with. Chapstick. Right outer pocket: Stethoscope...I used to keep it around my neck, until I leaned forward and it cracked a lady in the face. Since you have to take a BP cuff, you could keep it there and wear the steth around your neck. You should probably keep your inhaler in your coat pocket. I don't know why you need the hand santizer, since there should be a sink, soap, and a hand sanitizer in each patient's room, plus more in the halls. Even if every nurse on the floor needs sanitizer, it takes all of two seconds to use the dispensors. If you need cough drops, keep just one in your pocket at a time, and leave the rest in your coat. On all the floors I've been on, there is either a BP cuff in the pts. room, or you use a dynamap. My school told us to not bring our own cuffs, since they couldn't be sure of calibration. I can't believe they make you carry around a BP cuff! At least stethoscopes, you can clean with clorox wipes. Nothing ever gets that tough fabric of a cuff clean. Ick, ick, ick, ick.

It's a big deal because it's seen as being disrespectful to the person the placenta came from. It might not matter to you, but what if it matters to them? There are people who would be very uncomfortable with a part of their body put up on display for other people to gawk at. And discomfort aside, there are privacy issues, even if the patient wasn't identified. If I found out someone took a picture of something that was removed from me, and that picture wasn't for medical purposes, I would be furious - even if I would have freely given my permission if asked.

I currently weigh 250 and I'm 5'4, which puts me well over a BMI of 40. I'm a 200 level student, which means I'm only halfway through. I've been going to clinicals for about a year. So. Some things I've learned: Get some really good sneakers, and get some Dr. Scholl's gel pads to put inside. There is absolutely no way to avoid being on your feet all day, so nice, comfortable shoes are worth twice their weight in gold. You are almost certainly going to see your feet swell up. This is not limited to overweight nurses - I have a classmate who's a hair over 100 pounds, and her feet still swell up. When you go and get your uniform, buy support hose as well. These are socks that go all the way up to the knee, and fit very tightly. They'll prevent the swelling. They'll also cost about six bucks a pair. I don't use mine for anything but clinicals. You are going to be up and down constantly. You should start doing exercises now to strengthen your knees, like squats. They suck, but they help in the long run. My knees hurt all the time until I started focusing on exercising them. Work out your upper body, too. When it comes time to shift an obese patient, no one is going to care that you're obese too. What they care about is whether or not you can lean across the bed, grab that pad, and help haul the patient onto the gurney. Student scrubs are built on the boxiest, least flattering lines possible. They cost a buttload, and they shrink the first time you wash them. Make sure the top is big enough that you can swing your arms all around and still have some looseness across your breasts. I've got a great big belly, so I also made sure that my top was long enough to cover it, which is especially nice when I'm swollen up with my period. Also, make sure you can squat down in your pants. If you're lucky enough to observe surgery, you'll have to borrow surgical scrubs. Get a size larger than you think you need. I spent my first hour of surgical observation praying that no one realized how *tight* my pants were. As for how people regard you... Some people are going to be horrible. They'd be horrible anyway. If your weight is your most noticeable feature, they'll focus on that. If you had extremely bad acne, they'd focus on that instead. Some patients are going to dismiss your advice because you are overweight. They're ignoring the fact that you're not speaking as an overweight person, but as a nurse. Dismissing advice because the adviser is overweight is just as stupid as dismissing it because the adviser is a woman. Being fat doesn't magically negate your education. Being a nurse doesn't magically mean you're a healthy person. The important thing is that you be able to do your job and take care of your patients in a safe, efficient manner. I've never had a problem doing this.

My school allows lab coats. I wear mine to every clinical, just in case - its nice for the warmth, too. It's long enough that it covers my bum, which makes me feel much more secure. Beyond that, I wear a night-time tampon and a great big boat of a pad. I also carry tampons in my pocket, so I can change them at every opportunity. I was afraid of the wrapper showing up, so I cut the white pocket lining out of an old pair of jeans and ran a piece of string through the mouth of it to make a simple little drawstring bag. It's opaque enough that it hides the wrappers. Seriously...white. Such a sucky color.

If it helps any, accomodation looks kind of like the eyes are slightly crossing and the pupils are getting smaller as the finger or pen moves closer to the bridge of the nose. It's best to wait a second or two after shining the penlight before testing for accomodation, just because the pupils might already be constricted when you start if you don't wait. We were taught to check for equally round and reactive, then do the test of the ocularmotor muscles by holding the pen and moving it right to left and up and down, and then move it towards and away from the patient, just to give them that moment.

Because of a nasty combination of weather and miscommunication, I missed a test in pharmacology. I've done very well otherwise - I got a C on one test, but all the others are high Bs and low As. I'm pretty good at pharm! But. I missed that test. And the end result is that if I miss more than 3 points out of the 51 remaining, I will fail the class. And even if I do pass, I'm going to get the lowest grade you can get and still pass. I'm stressed beyond belief because of this, and my other grades are suffering. I'm struggling, and the best I'm going to get is Bs. Will this ruin my chances of getting into a BSN program someday? If I do pass, would it be better for me to just retake the class anyway so as to prove I'm not a complete idiot? I want to be a nurse practitioner someday. Should I give up on that because I'm just not going to have the grades?

I've never heard of drug testing with a buccal swab and I can't find much information on it online. Do you know what they were testing for? It sounds a heck of a lot nicer than getting blood drawn or peeing into a cup. I will never be used to handing a stranger a little cup of my own product, ever.

We peed in a cup. Then they tested it right in front of you by dipping a sort of sheet of different strips into it. Instant results! It was kind of cool, actually, despite the embarrassment of oh-my-god-that's-my-pee.

I think I would consider why the person is struggling first. There is a big difference between having problems because you have no grounding in science or haven't taken math since the early nineties, and having trouble because you genuinely can't comprehend the material.