HamsterRN ADN, RN

At least in my hospital, we can use a port-a-cath in the place of a peripheral IV with an MD order, we usually would not use a perm-a-cath.

The new CMS guideline is 30 minutes on either side of the scheduled time. ISMP is strongly opposed to the new guideline has just put out their most recent protest of the rule: CMS 30-minute rule for drug administration needs revision This is just ...

At my hospital, our Foundation (fund raising department) has started what they call the "Circle of Caring". You become a member of the "Circle" by donating $10,000 or more to the Foundation. One of the perks of membership is "Healthcare Navigation ...

We "carry on the healing mission of Jesus Christ". Even though we are a Catholic not-for-profit, we have a history of questionable business practices, enough to catch the attention of high level courts. Our responses to these apparent contradictio...

The replacement of pre-hospital IV's, or "field start" IV's, on arrival to a hospital was once common practice, but doesn't seem as commonly accepted as it once was. My hospital is currently reviewing it's policy on pre-hospital IV's. I know of one...

We've made attempts to educate, although it's not as cut and dry as you make it seem. There is no single best practice recommendation, and the typical sources (the CDC and Joanna Briggs) say to scrub for the site for amount of time recommended by th...

I think you missed my point; nurses are hardly perfect in their compliance so assuming that a nurse placed IV is safer than a EMS placed IV is naive. For most floor nurses, 30 seconds seems like an eternity, spending the same amount of time scrubbin...

They've been careful not to put this down in policy anywhere. A lawsuit is unlikely since the fact that a patient was escorted by a Foundation rep is not recorded in the permanent record. If a patient who stayed in the hospital at the same time as ...

It appears that there once was a time where EMS practitioners did not practice IV insertions to the same level as hospital based providers, and this may still be the case in some areas. In my area, both groups practice to the same "best practice" st...

We're a not-for-profit healthcare system run by a group of nuns. (Reading that I realized it sounds sarcastic but I'm being serious).

In terms of legal issues, there are people who specialize in this and, at least in my area, they give talks fairly regularly (legal nurse consultants). The most interesting thing I learned at one of these presentations was that it's rarely a minimal...

I noticed the same thing when I was looking through the studies since searching "prehospital intravenous access" mainly gives you a whole bunch of studies that question the placement of pre-hospital IV's and the benefit of pre-hospital IV fluids and ...

What is it that we think is going to happen exactly by discussing this?

I agree that we shouldn't question orders to avoid work, but we should question them when they put other patients at risk or when they waste resources without any justification, and I'm surprised with how emphatically we've argued that we should foll...

I appreciate the responses, GreyGull in particular went above and beyond. It's interesting that the issue of CMS reimbursement was brought up as a reason for changing out pre-hospital IV's since our concern is that changing them out unnecessarily a...

Over-documentation does not protect your butt, it's usually what gets nurses in trouble in court. When the hospital I work at switched to a documentation by exception EMR, the staff was worried this could possibly put us at risk for legal trouble. ...

If textbooks and instructors were sufficient for every student then tutoring centers would not exist. It's hard enough for students who need help to ask for it, particularly nursing students, the last thing they need is to be harassed for simply ask...

She didn't actually specify either way, and if she did, you are still free to answer her question by explaining a process that could be used to find the answer, as multiple posters did here. I'm sure next time she'll be more careful about how she p...

The half life of amiodarone is highly variable, but it's usually listed in terms of days or weeks rather than hours, so holding the amio while you infuse the diflucan wouldn't really be of any benefit.

That's what she's trying to do. The above statements would make a good sign for the door of a tutoring center, it should would keep the crowds down. And they say nurses eat their young.

You can also think of it in terms of ratios with an unkown (x) to solve for: You need to infuse 100ml in 45 minutes (100ml per 45 minutes or 100/45) and you want to know how many mls that is for 60 minutes (x ml.'s per hour or x/60). You can solve ...

Double rooms (AKA "semi-private")

This is similar to a current thread (I'm allergic to....(laundry list)!), but I didn't want to hijack the thread. There seemed to be some agreement with separating allergies and intolerances in that thread but when we tried this where we work we h...

Tweaking how the allergies and intolerances are entered is what we are trying to do, the problem we are running into is that there are nurses who don't feel comfortable entering reactions as either allergies or intolerances, but instead want to conti...

When the proposal first came out, a 'help screen' with an algorithm to help differentiate allergies and intolerances was part of the plan. Unfortunately it didn't seem to help.