RNin2012

At our hospice an admissions/triage nurse will assess a patients readiness for hospice care, explain the process to the family, and get them "started" with the Hospice program. They will not be the patients regular nurse, but will introduce them to all that hospice has to offer and get them started. They will then be assigned to a team for the rest of their care.

I don't know if anyone is still interested after 12 pages of posts on this topic. I guess I am not an older student compared to others, but I am 36, I work part time (~20/week) as an aide with Hospice, and I have 5 children ages 1.5 - 10. It takes discipline and will power, but so far I am done with my pre-reqs, half way through my first semester of clinicals and still holding on to my 4.0. I don' t sleep much, but I manage.

today was my first day of clinicals. It was supposed to be orientation but we wound up having access to some patients to do vitals on. I go into my very first patient ever's room. She is contact precautions, so all the equipment for vital signs is in her room, dedicated for her use, including the tempu dot single use thermometer. I take her temperature and couldn't get it to register anything which I thought was odd, but just kind of went along and did her blood pressure and respiratory sounds etc. I went to chart her v.s., realized I had never resolved the temperature mystery, went in to take it again. It dawns on me that the tempu dot single use thermometer is a single use ORAL thermometer. I had held it against her forehead the first time I tried to use it. seriously, who DOES that! In my defense, it looked very similar to the fever strip type thermometer I occasionally use to take my kids temps, I think I had it in my mind that, well, I don't know what the heck I was thinking! Luckily the patient didn't notice and no one else was in the room with me! Needless to say I took her temp the correct way and recorded her vitals.