rstrainRN

Hi All - I work in a pediatric hospital so I'm mostly interested in other peds nurses answers but willing to hear from anyone! In my facility we allow two visitors (usually mom and dad) to be with their child in the recovery room once the patient is starting to wake up and is doing ok. Up until recently we would allow siblings back to see the patient as well. We now are enforcing a policy where children under the age of 16 are not allowed into the PACU period. I'm curious what the visitation policy at your PACU is, how you handle siblings and what do you do when a single parents brings along a small child when they're unable to find a sitter? Thanks! Rob

In my facility our ICU patients typically go straight to the ICU MOST of the time. There are situations where they're unable to take a patient and they're diverted to PACU. We're certainly equipped to take care of them, but it isn't an ideal situation. Lately the ICU has been really good and we haven't held many of their patients in PACU.

We currently do follow up calls the day after, also use a script with standard questions. We'll call up to three times, or at least leave three messages before completing the call altogether. Any issues found during the follow up call get forwarded to our nurse manager and then on to the surgeon's office.

OR scrubs here also. Although if one wanted they could wear their own. Otherwise hospital provided and laundered on site.

Don't be too overwhelmed by questions like that! If you're applying as a new nurse your interviewer knows that you don't have a large base of experience. Take a deep breath and always go back to your A-B-Cs - don't overthink the questions. For a ventilator alarm for example check the patient. Look at the alarm. Determine what the alarm is. Assess the patient. Assess the equipment. Go through trouble shooting. You don't have to know everything but a lot of critical care is thinking logically and using common sense.

I've never heard of this, let alone seen them used in my unit or nicu. Seems like a pretty ridiculous and dangerous thing to me...

I think like most of the other males who have posted that there's nothing inherently wrong with choosing l&d if you can find a job but there may be better fits. That being said I enjoyed my rotation in nursing school and only had a single patient who refused me. In that situation it was entirely a cultural reason for that patient and while my instructor was actually angry I respected the patients choice. I work in pediatrics now in a critical care area and love it.

We also use a paralytic drip in conjunction with typically a fentanyl infusion for sedation, occasionally versed and bolus doses prn for our oscillated patients.

I think that any career is what you make it to be. What works for one person may not for another. For what it's worth we have happy nurses and unhappy nurses and happy rrt and unhappy rrts where I work. We have a rrt that is also a nurse starting in my unit as an rn soon. If you have the ability to shadow a nurse you should jump at that chance, see what it's like. There will be days that are great and days that suck but it truly is a rewarding career and I'm thrilled with my job. The great aspects of it far outweight the worst of it.

I'm inclined to say when in doubt, document. However - coming from a critical care background and doing quality assurance work on charts I can certainly agree that it is absolutely possible to over document. Here's an example. I work in pediatrics. When a kid is moving or thrashing around or kicking sometimes their pulse ox will not pick up and alarm. You can tell that the pulse ox waveform is not picking up, that the child is upset but still pink and breathing comfortably. We had a nurse who documented that their patients pulse ox desatted to the 60's and then detailed everything they did after that. In reality this was a simple but quick equipment error, the childs pulse ox truly never deviated from normal. The patient was never in any kind of distress. Checking the probe and changing it would have remedied the situation and not required a note of any kind. Of course for a true desat with the patients color changing or requiring ventilation would necessitate documention and rightfully so. But this was an example of creating something out of nothing.