nrsnic

My anatomy and physiology teacher from years ago told us a story about when he was in nursing school (he dropped out because that was back when men in nursing school were severely mistreated...at least at that nursing school). He was assisting an RN to take care of a man that had gone through a TURP procedure the day before. The patient had developed a clot, so when he and the RN he was with went in to check on the patient, said patient was writhing in pain because his bladder was full (CBI had dripped in until it couldn't anymore). The MD was called in, and he tried to irrigate the foley. The poor patient was having a lot of trouble at that point, so the RN and my teacher were on either side trying to console him. Well, the doctor was evidently feeling the pressure, so he pulled REALLY hard on the plunger, which caused it to pop out of the end of the syringe. Evidently is was like the Hoover dam breaking loose...and the MD was standing right in front of the stream! The RN was horrified and grabbed on to the syringe and proceeded to spray bloody urine all over the MD and the room before getting it under control. The patient felt immediate relief

When I was a phlebotomist I recall refusing to give blood to a room full of nurses, two ER docs, and the ICU charge. The reason was that the patient's blood ID band had been cut off, as well as his ACTUAL ID band, and had been tossed onto the counter amongst a messy pile of paperwork. It didn't matter that half the people there "absolutely knew" that the person in bed was, in fact, the right person...it is an absolute no-no to give blood to someone without ID bands. Especially since this person had just been transferred from OR. Whew, just thinking about it gives me hives. The two doctors and the charge nurse were in my face screaming! Luckily my blood bank manager overheard that. Not only did my manager back me up, I was told some time later that I absolutely did the right thing by the nurse manager for ICU. It wasn't my fault that there was an oversight, but it was my duty to make sure that we got back on the policy/procedure track. The patient didn't suffer for it. We can give uncrossmatched blood in an emergency, which is what they did. WHILE the docs and charge were yelling at me, I calmly redrew the patient so he could have blood crossmatched again. I won't say that I have never broken a policy or procedure, but blood products and all the procedures surrounding it are too important and scary to screw up.

i haven't been a nurse long, but i have been involved in a very significant medical error (please understand that this is not me saying you made a mistake...i have no way of knowing that from where i sit). during my preceptorship in the last term of nursing school, a baby i was working with had to have his lipids and tpn switched out d/t expiration dates (they were changed every 24 hours). i was being instructed in how to change lines for babies that have picc lines. you have to be quick and get it done because these lines can clot off very quickly. unfortunately, a few things occurred during this time that caused the lines to become switched in their respective pump channels. the tpn and lipids were now running at completely the wrong rates. this was not discovered for almost 24 hours, and then the only reason it was caught was because a triglyceride test was miraculously drawn that day and came back very critically high. now technically speaking i was working directly under the license of the nurse i was working with, and she didn't check my work entirely. however, i was still the one who put it together wrong. devastating, to say the least. i will say one thing though...i effected a hospital-wide process change. risk management and quality improvement got involved, did interviews and decided that a couple of policies were inadequate or missing. moral of this completely different story is that even if you are by some chance in the wrong, you have stated that you followed your policy and procedure. you were only doing what you knew how to do based on what the organization told you was right. one of the most unfortunate things about healthcare (that i am not even sure how to improve) is that mistakes sometimes have to be made before improvements can be made. i know this is a small consolation when you are sitting there tearing your hair out trying to understand how you could have done it differently...but know that you have probably effected a change that will help more people than you will ever be able to touch.

i was a phlebotomist for almost 9 years prior to becoming a nurse, and i would highly recommend it to anyone. while a cna may work more closely with a nurse, at least in my experience, they might not get the same diversity of work. most cna's in my hospital only work on one or two floors whereas the phlebotomists go literally everywhere blood can be drawn. i believe the one thing phlebotomy will teach you that will help you more than anything else is just how to deal with people, and more importantly, how to deal with people who don't want you to do what you need to do. this sort of environment really helped me to build my confidence and made it easy to talk to patients and see them...something that really many new grad nurses have a hard time doing. i learned how to use my hands without having to look at them while doing something that is really quite dangerous (ever wonder why anyone that handles blood or body fluids has to have a blood borne pathogen quiz or lecture every year?). i learned how to adapt to different environments and how to read a person in under 30 seconds. i can't tell you how many people are impressed with my grasp of certain basic things that a lot of new grads lack from simply not being exposed much to the medical environment in a diverse way. it certainly isn't for everyone, but if you have a hard time doing this sort of job, you might want to rethink you're career choice anyway

i was a phlebotomist for about 9 years until last july. i transitioned to my new nursing role at that point. i don't know if that helps, but i could certainly answer any questions you might have. i did training and held my ascp license at one point as well. if that can work for you, i would love to help :) if that doesn't work, i hope you find what you're looking for

i sort of fell on it, so to speak. i was actually more interested in being a cop than being a nurse when i graduated high school. nobody on either side of my family went to college long enough to get a degree in anything, but both my aunt and uncle were sheriff's deputies. after returning home a year after high school graduation from a failed (and stupidly begun) marriage, i had to find a job, and fast. i spent $200 dollars on a phlebotomy class and got snapped up by the local clinic. i moved two years later to a larger area with an acute care hospital. now here's where it gets really interesting...one night, while i was assigned to nicu, i was called to stand by during a delivery because a hydrops baby was being delivered via c-section. there were two nurses, an rt, and the neonatologist (all of whom i adore and stay friends with to this day). well, they get this kid out on the warmer and rt is focused on the airway, the two nurses are working like maniacs to get an umbi line in, and the doc is running back and forth between both sides trying to get chest tubes in. i am standing out of the way next to the new father who is less than an inch from falling on the floor in a faint. i was literally on my toes, poised for the call "line's in, let's get that blood draw," when the doc looked up and around and said "anyone have any free hands?" his and my eyes met, he beckoned me over, and then he put in my right hand a 20 cc syringe attached to a tube that was attached to a large bore needle that was acting as a chest tube for that baby. he then took my left thumb and forefinger, pinched them around that damn chest tube, and then showed me how to withdraw the air from the chest cavity with my right hand and the syringe and told me, ever so calmly, to try not to move my left hand much. that was the longest two minutes of my life. i will never forget it. it was in that moment, when i very steadily did something that was well beyond my scope of practice, that i knew i would do it again. right after the thought of "i am helping this baby survive its first few minutes" came the thought that all it took was having free hands to help someone literally overcome death. to those of you out there who realize and understand how this is not anywhere close to everyday nursing, even in an nicu, know that i have loved every minute of my time spent caring for people. i went from the above to caring for elderly toward the end of their life. that too was an extremely rewarding experience. since then, i have come to the conclusion that there is little in nursing that i can't do and more than i can ever do in a lifetime.

OK, I have to ask...where are these positions you speak of? I am currently hunting in that area (Eugene/Springfield) and there certainly aren't 120 positions for just nurses. Are you including all of PeaceHealth, which is also located in Alaska and Washington (not to mention a few other places around this state)? I am not trying to argue, I really want to know where you're getting this information. I know that if you have a year or more of experience you do quite a bit better, but as a new (or practically new) nurse you're up the you-know-what creek... On another note...I worked at PeaceHealth for seven years as a hospital phlebotomist at OML (now PeaceHealth Laboratories). I made a lot of positive relationships with nurses, charge nurses, and department heads. Toward the end of my educational sentence (I worked full time too, so it really wasn't fun), I started looking for a nursing position (around April 2009). I couldn't get my foot in a single door. I had letters of recommendation from a neonatal doctor (who is also in charge of the PeaceHealth hospital pharmacy), a per diem house charge nurse/LCC instructor, another well known and respected LCC instructor, and I could have given them 20 references from almost every department in the hospital. It didn't matter one bit. There simply weren't any positions. I ended up having to go into a LTC facility. When I contacted HR again about a month ago, I was told (verbatim), "the job market is worse off than before when you were looking." I have another tab open in my web browser right now (Friday 1/22/10 @ 12:12 AM) and there are 31 total jobs listed in the Eugene/Springfield area for nursing, and that includes listings for CNA's and LPN's (so the number of RN positions is actually much lower than that). So as you can see, I have a bit of data that suggests that the local Eugene/Springfield market is a little less than optimal. Again, I can't stress this enough...I am just this side of desperately looking for a job, so please...please prove me wrong

I sure wish I knew where this was happening... It took me three months of looking to find the job I had (I worked in a hospital at the time, and had been for seven years!), and I just lost that job two days ago. I am seriously having to consider moving way out of state...something I was stressed about having to do the first time I had a hard time finding a job! The local Eugene/Springfield job market just doesn't seem as positive as you're making it sound