Mike A. Fungin RN

You could try punching them in the face repeatedly until they let go. It worked for me.

HIPPA!!!

"Elderly account for 70% of healthcare spending and 80% of that is in the final month of care. HealthCare Partners is somehow getting their elderly population to choose home and probably hospice at rates double the national average which is due to either "death panel" decision making or some hefty persuasion processes.Everything else that they do, although nice and all, hardly moves the needle compared to the above. This is probably subsidizing everything else that they do."

Well, don't sweat it, because civilian ownership of automatic weapons has been effectively illegal since 1934. Don't look now, but your ignorance is showing.

That's the problem. Nurses (unless they're former Fire/EMS/LE or part of a flight program) haven't got the training to be "safe" at an accident scene. You don't know what you don't know, unless you know it. How to stage your vehicle at an accident, how to approach a damaged vehicle, hazards that the vehicle itself presents, etc. I could go on. If you're not a prehospital provider, you have no place at the scene of an accident on a busy roadway. All you are is an additional hazard.

Not that I'm aware of. Classes (ENPC, PALS, etc.) but not professional certs. Why don't you want to get the peds CCRN? If you're not caring for adults, you 'll have to let your CCRN adult lapse anyways.

Meh, don't sweat it until you get there. It might not be that bad. I see posts like those here all the time about how people had NO time in nursing school, and that was not my experience at all. I had lots of free time, it wasn't that bad. Everyone's different.

Well, first let's address your question about giving potassium in hyperkalemia. It may sometimes be appropriate, even life saving, to supplement K+ in someone with a high serum potassium. The most common situation that comes to mind is in metabolic acidosis (particularly DKA, but sometimes even in septic pts who for one reason or another are deficient in total body K) since it creates a state of relative hyperkalemia as hydrogen ions displace intercellular potassium. This can get you into trouble when you correct the pH without preemptively replacing K.That said, 5ml/hr of that solution doesn't add up to much. Which begs the question, why is it even in the fluid?Honestly, no one's going to be able to answer your question without a whole lot more information to provide context. It's unfortunate that your preceptor reacted so defensively, and missed out on a teaching opportunity.Hope I at least gave you something to think about. Knowing that tidbit about potassium shifts in acidosis prompted me to question an order that would've killed a pt. last year. Good stuff.

If he doesn't have access because, in his words, "it would be a conflict," and you're circumventing that... how dies that make sense?

It's not a domestic problem, it's a military one.Both medics in the interview had their EMT-B certificates from the military. They can go work as an EMT when they get out. The problem is that they're really functioning as an EMT-P in the military, without the license. If the military had them do NREMT-P instead of B, problem solved.Shows a profound lack of understanding to equate competency in combat EMS with readiness to function as a community health nurse.

None of it is healthcare reform. It's all health insurance reform. As long as both sides are willing to sell out to big insurance by keeping them in the mix, things won't get better.

The great irony is that while visiting this page, I see this at the top:

Should probably add that I had my med/surg and peds clinicals at Kaiser Oakland. I also have a good friend who works in their ER, and have taken my father-in-law there for care. Overall, folks seem pretty happy working there. At least as much as anywhere else.

Don't let Oakland scare you. Like any urban city, there are very bad areas, very nice ones, and everything in between. Kaiser Oakland happens to be (as the previous poster wrote) right on the edge of a really cool neighborhood with lots of great restaurants all along Piedmont Ave. I went to nursing school and lived on campus less than a half mile from there. Honestly, you'll probably be a lot happier with your experience during this assignment if you live in Oakland or Berkeley. You'll save money, getting to work will be wayyyy easier, there's plenty of great restaurants and entertainment in the area (Piedmont Ave, Shattuck, Jack London Square, all super fun areas) and if you want to go in to SF to do something it's easy to do. For the money, San Francisco's a better place to visit/day-trip than to live.

I can recommend you not become a nurse, if this approach to your licensure exam reflects how you handle challenges.