allthesmallthings

I have an interview to work on a bariatric surgical floor (not the OR itself) on Thursday. I'd never considered bariatric - I'm trying to get back home to my home city, so I've been applying everywhere there. My dream job is ICU or stepdown or ER, ...

I have some trouble inserting Foley's in women by accidentally inserting it into the vagina. I expect I'll get better with experience, but to help me, is it okay to put an empty 10-mL syringe in the vagina at the start to mark "not here" (insert the...

Jaw drop. 20K???? Did you just typo in a 0 in the 20K? Sign on for how long a commitment?

I live in Midtown Atlanta in a 100-year-old building, and I'm doing a travel nursing job 3 miles up the road at Piedmont Hospital. I'm sorry, I can't give you any advice on high-rises, or downtown. My 2 cents: are you taking/have you heard of MARTA...

I hope so. The LTACH job would be easier on me, yes. I worked there last night, and was thinking about how much my peace-of-mind is worth.

Hi, there. I found out today that I may get "let go" from my ICU job, and I'm wondering how to best position myself to ask to go full-time at my prn LTAC job. Background: After 4 years of med-surg nursing, I got into an ICU residency (for RN's wi...

Funny you should mention a lawyer, HarryTheCat! My roommate is a liberal New Jersey journalist, and he got pretty darn fired up (as he does about many workplace issues), and offered to have his father, a federal attorney, look over the contract. At...

Hee hee. A wow is a cow, w/ a politically correct name. Anyway: workstation on wheels = wow; computer on wheels = cow. (Often spelled in all caps.) One of those computers w/ a little work/desk area, rolled around on wheels. Probably not all f...

Rather embarrassing to say, Hygiene QUeen, particularly to someone w/ your screen name and your cheery signature, but I don't think I've seen anyone at my hospital wash their stethoscope...and washing their cow/wow? Nope...have never seen it at my p...

Do you pay for those wipes personally, or does your hospital supply them? My hospital has "purple wipes" (I'm sure there's a name for them, but we just call them that because of the color of the lid on the cannister).

I just use the alcohol swabs. Sometimes I dump on a glug of alcohol gel from the dispensers that we use for hand hygiene. Plus, I just use disposable stethescopes (after multiple stethescopes that I'd bought for myself disappeared), so every few we...

I had one guy who did that 2 nights in a row. During the day, he was oriented, but around 11pm was the witching hour. In the morning, he'd be all owl-eyed - "Wait, miss, you say I did WHAT?"

lol...

I'm glad to have students w/ us. At my hospital, we're having last-semester ADN students. They're very polite, respectful, eager, earnest students; most of them are probably 20's or 30's in age, some maybe in their 40's, and I think a lot are eithe...

My managers have had a similar discussion with me. I guess they'd say that I'm good at the science...need to work on the art. Thanks for the article. That's good deductive thinking, by the way - those examples of figuring out the link between a Pt...

Thanks for posting this! After 3.5 years of nursing, I'd never heard of this until just last week at work, and was very skeptical at that time. However, after reading the linked articles, I'm considering converting to back-priming, after checkwing ...

Oh, wow, I'm not the only person that's happened to?! (Twice.) I didn't know if it was intentional or just a typo/secretarial-administration miscommunication.

This article helped me re-evaluate my perspective on "little things" and the attitude with which I perform them. You know, "Argh, they're asking for ice chips while I'm trying to do x-y-z important stuff, don't they know I'm BUSY?" Yeah, sure, I'm ...

You may want to check w/ your pharmacy, the MD, or your charge nurse, or the other nurses, to see what the hospital rule is, or the "floor culture" is, to make sure you're not flying rogue unknowingly - but, personally 1) if a Pt has been having tro...

I tear-ed up a little when I read this - and I'm not a tear-er upper.

lol. i do love holmes and watson.

Disagree. Watching someone "access" a port using a Huber needle on a teddy bear on Youtube was instructive for me. (Not kidding; if it works, go w/ it.)

Had a Pt today who had a colectomy due to intestinal volvulus, was in surgery/PACU from about 1115, 1130, to about 3, 330 pm. Got back to my floor at 3:30, BP about 106/50, pulse 115, after he'd been SBP's 115-120, pulse 80's, all through surgery an...

THanks for your responses - it's late, so I'll review the links later, thank you - but I did go check out the Pt in ICU this morning, half-expecting him to have passed away, and, thankfully, he was awake, alert, oriented, pleasant, with NORMAL BP and...

It sounds like they were being catty, or maybe just goofing off. Like some previous posters have said, sitters can be good as gold in their warmth and care of the Pt, or they can take the "sit" part of the job seriously. My advice for you, to gain r...