redheadedvixen

I have this patient with dementia who doesn't really have the ability to verbally express his pain. In his life before dementia I am told that he was very stoic and would never complain of pain even if he was in agony. I have found him several times ...

The way I look at it is that I won't be needing those organs so someone who needs them should absolutely have them. I made that decision at 16 and have never waivered in that belief.

wow......I'm thinking I'm lucky... To the doctor of my hospice patients... Thank you for allowing me to teach you new things every now and then, thank you for telling me I'm doing a good job once in a while, and thank you for helping me up off the fl...

Oh and the best supplemental book I ever used was the NCLEX made incredibly easy.....I bought it in my 2nd semester and used it all the way through, bought a new version of the same one to study for the nclex....

I've been out of school for a couple of years but I used a digital recorder in class, burned the lectures onto cd's and listened to them several times. Plus I would listen with laptop in lap and make myself study guides (I'm a little OCD when it cam...

Since my agency purchases the narcotics we are responsible for the disposal and the kitty litter method is working well for us. We bring the bottles back to the office to dispose of them though.

I would ABSOLUTELY recommend a year of med-surg or another type of hospital experience first. I became a hospice nurse after two years of experience in cardiac and oncology and still sometimes I worry that I'm not making the right decisions. You ar...

We are using the kitty litter/coffee grounds method because of concerns about the drugs going into the sewer system.

Ok I'm confused by that statement vs the one in the original post..... " i felt that using roxanol to slow him down did not seem appropriate, somehow."

No tachypnea isn't always an indicator of pain but in a dying person who is otherwise unresponsive it's either pain or anxiety, either way you don't want to leave someone in that state from the hospice perspective. We want them comfortable, it doesn...

I don't want to criticize but I agree with all of the above. In my mind a respiratory rate that fast = air hunger... I wouldn't want to die feeling like I was starving for air.....next time give the meds...liberally and often. When a patient is ac...

Our medical director is just switching everyone to oxyfast....just have to use 1/2 the dose because it's twice as strong.

If I am in a pt's room when you enter please don't ask me to leave, maybe I need to be able to reiterate what you tell them after you leave since I can't read your writing most of the time. 99% of the time the patient is going to ask me what you mea...

I guess I am lucky enough to be married to a man who finds me HOT in scrubs lol. But for myself...to keep my sexy it's all about the panties that only I know are there... I had really long hair, got tired of having to pull it up all the time and cu...

All the docs in my part of the country (missouri and arkansas) tell us to give lantus no matter what their intake status is because it IS the basal insulin. I've given it to many an NPO patient and have never bottomed one out using just Lantus with ...

Yes, both states are aware that I am licensed in both and there are no conflicts in holding both.

Don't know about putting a hold on a license but I do hold licenses in two states without a problem from either one.

How about a small one time dose of IM haldol just to get her calm then getting the roxanol increased to at least 10mg every hour along with some liquid ativan. We use the roxanol and ativan scheduled in hospice and it works very nicely. Once she's ca...

I was taught in nursing school that you ALWAYS clean up a body after death. How would you like to say goodbye to your loved one who is lying in a puddle of their own excrement or covered in vomit!!! I didn't know there were places that don't do thi...

When I was a nursing student I was doing a round in ICU, the director of the unit came out of a room and said we really need you in here, we have a code brown!!! I had no clue what that was even though I was in my last semester... He held my chin a...

At the hospital I work for we DO discuss the DNR option with patients or their family on the day they arrive as part of the admission process. If the patient or their family tells us that they have made the decision to be a DNR we ask the Dr to writ...