HamsterRN

HamsterRN ADN, RN

Psych/CD/Medical/Emp Hlth/Staff ED

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All Content by HamsterRN

  1. Paying for priority

    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...
  2. Paying for priority

    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...
  3. Field Start IV policy

    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...
  4. Field Start IV policy

    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...
  5. Field Start IV policy

    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...
  6. Paying for priority

    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...
  7. Field Start IV policy

    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,...
  8. Paying for priority

    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
  9. Charting... tips

    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...
  10. Field Start IV policy

    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...
  11. What have you done without a Dr. order?

    What is it that we think is going to happen exactly by discussing
  12. Over riding a resident?

    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...
  13. Field Start IV policy

    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...
  14. Documentating too much??? My agency doesnt like that

    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...
  15. iv infusion

    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...
  16. iv infusion

    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...
  17. amiodarone-diflucan contraindication?

    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...
  18. iv infusion

    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
  19. iv infusion

    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...
  20. Things that should be banned in acute care.

    Double rooms (AKA
  21. 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...
  22. Allergies/Intolerances, and Scope of practice.

    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...
  23. Allergies/Intolerances, and Scope of practice.

    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
  24. Absence of Teamwork

    It seems to vary widely by unit and even by shift in a particular unit. In my experience on my unit, night shifts seem to work better as a team than days, which might be due to the support available...
  25. Should I join the ANA?

    Actually it's both. The ANA is made up of many constituent unions, including the one that represents me. There is a layer that separates the ANA at the national level from front line collective...