F.E.R.N. BSN, RN

I can't speak to every BON and every state, but I agree that we are required to act in what we feel is the patient's best interest, and at some times, that certainly means questioning an order, or seeking a new order to cover a new status. At least ...

Where I work, it is stressed that a nurse cannot legally hold or otherwise adjust any medications, including insulin, unless given specific parameters and instructions in the orders. If staff question giving a med as ordered, they are instructed to ...

My staff education department has an unexpected windfall in our budget, giving us the opportunity to purchase additional educational equipment/supplies this year. I'd like your suggestions for items you've either used and loved, or things you always...

Good suggestions. Even with the money there, sometimes we still have to answer the question from admin, "how often would you use that?" For many things, the answer is, " I don't know; we've never had one." If I had a Ferrari, I bet I'd find more p...

It's all of med-surg,.

Not sure what else you had to say. If you think of something that is either helpful to nurses or to patients, people would probably read it.

I'm also curious about policies regarding monitoring of patients given narcs. We have an area that has no monitors, but where PAs like to give morphine and such (kind of a high-grade fast track route). I'm not comfortable giving mind- or VS-alterin...

Oh how I wish that those bedside monitor readings could only be viewed by someone wearing special glasses! Maybe like the ones out of the cereal box that let you read messages written in the "invisible pencil" that came with them

This was not a CHIEF complaint, but it was a complaint...Patient is resting comfortably, watching TV in bed, DC pending...man stomps out of the room to the nurses station and loudly asks, "Is anyone paying any attention to my wife's diastolic pressur...

Please don't whine. You can complain, ask for help, or tell me you're not ready for this next ambulance...but don't whine. When you get the problem patient, the next one that has to go in the hallway, the drunk, the trauma you don't feel ready for....

While I can't really speak for this individual ER, if it's any comfort, the tech is not usually the person who knows all that is going on with the patient. If you had ever been to that hospital before, they would probably have already pulled up rele...

I work in a regional level 3 TC, with many outlying rual areas and two major highways going through our town, brining in lots of out-of-towners...here's how things work in our area for unresponsive/confused patients: Our 1st responders generally do...

Actually, in the ER, we often force people into treatments they don't want. Saw this many times on the neuro floor, too. If you are suicidal, for example, you are not given the choice to refuse a lavage if the doctor declares (1) you are trying to hu...

I've wondered that, too. There seems to be agreement that if you are being seriously threatened with injury to life or limb, you can react with force to protect yourself, but I've never heard of it spelled out in any hospital policy, and who defines...

At our facility, if the patient is on antibiotics, whether prior to arrival or administered by ED staff, we simply make a notation of what they've had and order the cultures as a FAN. The lab has never told us the FAN cultures are any less usable fo...

I'm doing a little research for some of our new hires who are learning how to triage in ambulance patients. We don't train nurses to triage at the front triage desk until they've been here at least a year, but they will have to class their ambulance...

We send our nurses through a course before they can do front desk triage, but not until they've been working for at least a year. New hires are still expected to triage ambulance patients arriving directly to rooms. I was really just wondering if o...

By that I mean to change the triage classification of a patient.

I did the 5 online tests and I think I passed all but one, but my scores on 2 of them were very different than on the other three. I kind of reminded me of trying to imrpove my SAT scores or my NCLEX practice scores...reviewing one area brought that...

to the OP: yes, I felt that the ENA practice exam was very helpful. I did both the first one and the set that gives you five exams. Well worth the money, and I passed with a good score. I used the ENA Core Curriculum book and Sheehy's emergency m...

Interesting posts from all sides. OP, if you're still reading this, regardless of individual staff attitueds, I think your biggest frustration may end up being that many hospitals just don't have a job category that fits your exact skills and traini...

I like the idea of having a nurse assigned to check on waiting room patients, although I'd hate to be the one doing it How does you facility determine how often to check a patient? Are they all checked at the same time interval, or differntly, de...

How do different ERs handle meds given at times when staff will not be watching the patient afterward? For example, patient's being discharged home or sent back to waiting areas where they are not directly visualized or on camera. Our ER has no wri...

I PASSED!!!! :rckn: Everyone at my house is pretty happy, too...I might act like a regular person again. To anyone reading this, wondering what/how to study, I would highly recommend the ENA Core Curriculum and the ENA practice exams. I had the li...

Thanks for the info! I'm taking my last 150 question test tonight, then studying a little more and taking the 2nd 175 practice exam tomorrow. I took the first exam today and got 76%, the highest of my 150 practices with the rationales has been 85% ...