Megsd BSN, RN

Hey everyone. I'm moving to the Dayton area on May 31st and am planning to work full time for a year before trying to apply for nursing schools in the area. While I am trying to get a job at a hospital as a clerk or something, I'm also trying to thin...

My instructors, my classmates, and my paramedic boyfriend all have different opinions on this matter and I can't get a straight answer out of anybody. When looking at an EKG strip and calculating the heart rate by counting R waves, do you include PVC...

Hello all. :) I'm currently a student in Kansas a year away from completing a BA in Spanish. After graduating, I plan to move back to CA (I'm originally from San Diego) and get my BSN. I have been looking at various nursing programs throughout the ...

What a day. I had physical assessment lab today and we were listening to heart and lung sounds. I was able to hear the heart sounds pristinely, but when it came to the breath sounds, I couldn't hear anything at all. I'm pretty sure I was in the ri...

My starting salary was $22, which seems to be about average for Dayton, unless you're looking for peds (which pays less)

When I did psych clinicals my friend had a pt who had been in ICU for an attempted OD before being sent to psych. One day he told the nurses he was going home to have dinner with his wife because it was their 40th wedding anniversary. They all smiled...

Can you chart in the control room periodically? That's where I computer chart when I travel with pts to MRI.

While I think a year of med/surg can be valuable, post-partum jobs can be hard to new grads to snag, so that's awesome that it was offered to you. If that is your passion, I would take that position. You would still get experience with juggling multi...

I know we get lots of these threads but I caught myself today doing something very typical of a nursing student. I start in about 3 weeks and I had to order a Skills CD from the bookstore that came in the mail yesterday. There are procedures and vi...

One other tip, take the tourniquet off the arm before you flush the IV, otherwise you might blow the vein. Been there done that.

This is kind of a silly question. I am still in nursing school but exploring my career options. One area that interests me is the OR. I have plans over my winter break to observe in the OR if possible to get a better idea of what nurses do there. Eve...

My first week of working an a RN I was participating in an internship and my preceptor and I had this fellow who was postop. She and I were both in the room when he started to vomit. I don't even know what happened next, but somehow I ended up WAY in...

Ha. Heaven forbid she has to assess her patient!

LIST IT. I don't know about the issue of pulling your license and seeing your jobs, but the nursing community is smaller than you think, and they will find out. I would just say, when asked, that your current job isn't a good fit, that you've decided...

Priming them isn't too bad. Just remember to "wedgie" the tubing into where the air indicator is, and make sure the tubing isn't stretched out so it will infuse properly. I find the guardrails very easy to use, not as much math involved for me. We st...

I think alcoholism is many things. I have many alcoholics in my family, but my mom is the current active alcoholic. While the initial drink was certainly a choice of some sort, alcohol is so embedded into my mom's life that she can't even tell what d...

I'm kind of similar. I have no game face, my coworkers apparently think that I can't hold it together in stressful situations. I try to handle everything myself, perfectly, and before I know it I'm up to my eyeballs in stuff to do. My advice (that I ...

Personally, I don't care about working weekends because I like the slower pace and the extra money. On my unit we finally have enough staff that people who have been there for two years or more have been switched to every third weekend. And you know ...

One trick is to put your roll of tape on your hemostats, clip your hemostats to the bottom of your scrub top, and put your scissors/shears through the tape the other way. And yes, cargo pants rock.

1) How quickly did you take the NCLEX and get your license? I graduated 11/17, got my ATT 12/6, and took my NCLEX 12/26, and started working 1/21. I think I got my license in the mail the first week in January. 2) How quickly did you find a job? As ...

The issue with lab draws only exists if the person has fluids running because of the risk of diluting the sample. So our lab people either draw in the other arm, or ask if we can pause the fluids for 5-10 minutes before they draw. I always start dist...

Yeah the only time I will mention test results is if a test is normal or negative and I am 150% sure I understand what it means. If a head CT says "no acute injury" I feel comfortable saying that, but if it says "signal alteration noted with increase...

I thought this was hilarious.. hopefully others will too. :) I work on a neuro step-down unit, so we deal a lot with people who aren't in their right minds for one reason or another. Most of the ancillary staff realize this is part of dealing with ne...

I've been off orientation for about two months now and I tend to clock out 10-15 minutes late most days. I've had to stay 30 minutes late twice, due to some issues that popped up right at shift change that I didn't want to stick night shift with. I g...

One of our neurologists does that. He'll write the date and time and say.. Please d/c IVF Thanks! Dr. So-and-so Oddest (and sweetest) order I've ever seen was for a lady with CA who had to go straight from the hospital to a nursing home so she could ...