shocker29

I read it when I first became a flight nurse. It was really good, but really focuses on the urbanized area... I work in a more rural area, so the way our flights work is a little different. :)

I work at St. Luke's in the CCU and love it. A year ago new grads couldn't find jobs to their lives, and now it seems that everyone is hiring again.

A really good ICU orientation will have adequate education, ie: a critical care course that they put you through and several months of orientation. I went to my unit as a new grad and we got a 3 month critical care course, a 5-6 total orientation per...

Her calcium was probably lower because she had gotten 5L of fluid in. Personally, if the first liter or 2 doesn't work (unless the patient is CLEARLY dehydrated) I would have recommended doing something else. 5 liters is alot to bolus a patient who i...

Hypothermias are fun, if done on the right patient. These patients are a 1:1 in our unit until they are warm again. (Supposed to be a 2:1 while inducing, but that never happens anymore.) We have a central line that can be placed that is actually a co...

GaMBA, If a nurse is working a 12-hour shift in a hospital and hardly catches a glimpse of her patient, then it sounds to me like a nurse problem... I hope you get that I am not slamming doctors in any way! Nurses really do spend a lot more time wit...

So, I was going to post this on the critical care sites, but I think its pretty relevant to nursing as a whole. I sincerely hope that no one gets the wrong impression here. I am a very empathetic and compassionate person. I love people and I love he...

GaMBA... you gotta think hospital nursing! (which is where the majority of nurses are based...) The doctor takes about 10 minutes to an hour to admit the person on their first day, depending on how stable they are, and then, omitting crises, about 10...

Doctors spend a very small amount of time with each patient every day. They come, write orders and go. The way I look at it, we are the ones making sure that all day/night long they stay alive to make it to another day. We are their guardians... on t...

Sounds like this guy needs to be in CCU on a dobutamine drip...maybe even could have used a balloon pump to get him over the hump. I've never seen a patient with an EF of 10-15 that was not tachycardic! How tachy is the key! Lasix is really important...

You sound like you are really having a hard time. Take a step back and breathe! You must have stuck through nursing school for some reason! The first year is really tough, especially in critical care... you are learning how to be a nurse and how to b...

Not at first.... I mean, give yourself a year first to learn about everything, and then go review the CD's... they will make much more sense then.

I think that I like the Allow Natural Death thing. Thanks guys. Alot of it is in the way you present. I think that is part of the problem, however as a nurse I always wonder when I am crossing the line when talking to the families about letting go. W...

Awsmom8, You must be an amazing woman :)

Wow guys, thanks for the quick reply! I was starting to feel like a bad person everytime I went to work! Sometimes it is hard to want to give it your all, when you feel like you are prolonging agony. (I always do, of course, I just feel like "this" t...

Shay, Your post was clearly a vent post. DO NOT feel bad for venting. Isn't that why we're here? You sound frustrated because you care! You just wanted this family to experience this death the way that they had said they wanted and you did your best ...

Okay, so this is something that I realized after the first year that I was a nurse, and I am going to go out on a limb and say that this is fairly universal: My entire first year was a complete love hate relationship and there was more than once I sa...

Okay, so this is my honest opinion... It seems to me that male nurses get more respect than female nurses do. If not introduced right away, the patients almost always assume that they are a doctor...(hmmm, I've never had that problem... I must not lo...

I know no one has posted on this one in awhile, but I have to say, who ever said that neuro ICU's aren't real ICU's are nuts! I work in a coronary care/medical intensive care unit. Our other unit is a surgical intensive care unit, but we get neuro pa...

I doubt those meds were strictly home meds since that person had been in the ICU for awhile. Probably monkeyed around with quite a bit, if they even started out on them. Good chance that they didn't start out on dialysis.

I am an ICU nurse, but I won't rush to the title of expert... I understand your thinking. Usually though, in my experience, if someone's pressure is going to take a major dive, it is going to be during the dialysis run. That is usually when we have t...

I understand how you feel... I was in somewhat of a similar situation. I work on a busy critical care unit. Someone who had been hired right around the same time I was, was asked whether or not he'd like to take the charge class. I was talking to the...

Wow, how do they get away with being late every day from management?? 2 minutes late, maybe... but even then, people get irritated. We are expected to be ready to go AT 7pm. Be 15 minutes late without calling once or twice and you'd be having a sit d...

Sometimes you wish you could just put someone's foot in their mouth for them... I had my children when I was 17 and 19. (Husband and father of kids had a 2 year old already too.) People ask me if I am married and have kids, and I get, WHAT?? HOW OLD ...

Having computers in everyroom is priceless-- along with Micromedex (agree with whoever said that earlier). I can look up what is compatible with what in a snap right at the bedside. Also, LOVE having artlines to draw blood out of, and LOVE being able...