Jo Dirt

I've noticed that when it gets toward the end for people (not necessarily the VERY end, but maybe the last month or so when they have started really going downhill) they will hold their arms upward once in awhile and then let them fall at their sides...

I would please like to post this here to see if I get more responses... The activities director and coordinator at the LTC facility where I am employed work very hard, but they have been there many years and it seems they need some new ideas. The act...

I don't know if it has anything to do with being pregnant, but I'm craving the smell of PineSol and Comet. I'll go wipe the counters or clean the toilet or mop the floor just so I can smell it. My husband is freaking out and says I am going to pois...

I've got a 2500 square foot house with four bedrooms and two bathrooms on 17 acres. We are going to move this summer (back to our old farm) but I don't really want to sell this property. I would like to find a way to keep it to pass onto my children....

I'm going to start working night shift 7pm-7am. This sucks because I'm a person who likes to go to bed early and get up with the sun. But sometimes you have to do what you have to do, so until I can secure a day shift position I'll be on the graveyar...

I know my problems are meaningless to you all but that doesn't make them go away. Please help with some words of encouragement. I was called out today to a new admits house to change a dressing (no one told me what it was) because the nurse who cover...

I don't expect it to be any better than anywhere else, but I don't know what anywhere else pays, either. I'm thinking of signing on with them but I wonder what I can expect to make? The drive will be over an hour to get there.

My 82 y/o father-in-law has been living a few hundred feet away in a trailer we set up for him this past summer. He's been there since August. He came up to the house today and says he doesn't want to report us because it might get us in serious trou...

My husband is about to undergo a radical nephrectomy. The urologist uses a First Assist. I've heard about First Assists before, but exactly what do they do?

At my HH job I was sent out to draw a lab on this woman who has a portacath. I told the boss I've never drawn blood from a portacath and she gives me this instruction sheet and tells me it's easier than drawing from a PICC line. So today I go out to ...

Just out of curiosity...I've been torn between being a NP and psychologist for a long time. I am finishing a BSN with a minor in psychology and wonder if it would be feaseable to eventually be a NP as well as a clinical psychologist? Either way, bot...

These meds are expensive and used liberally in the nursing home. I cannot tell they make any difference in the patients they are used in. We recently had an inservice where this was discussed, and information was given that these psychotropic meds ca...

I'm about to graduate from a local university with a BSN (I did the online RN to BSN...wasn't totally online, I had to go to clinicals and such). You know those silly elective classes they make you take at the very end, like "Health Care and the Futu...

Is this a good place to work? I'm in Tennessee but the jobs have dried up and we are thinking of a move, maybe to Dallas.

The activities director and coordinator at the LTC facility where I am employed work very hard, but they have been there many years and it seems they need some new ideas. The activities are so childish it is embarrassing. I've heard of once a man tw...

I'm the sole wage earner in my family of 6 (4 children and a husband) and I am about to start a FNP program that's total cost will be 15-17k. The first year I can probably work at least 3 days a week. When clinicals start I may have to stop working f...

this is hard to sift through. let me run this through my little orphan annie secret decoder pin and i'll get back to you.

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! I have never understood why people whine about the loads they are expected to carry at the nursing homes. Nursing homes are NOT acute care hospitals! They focus on MAINTENANCE. What do people expect? Really? There is ...

They don't put up with crap like that where I work. The DON tells them with a quickness that if we can't meet their needs Mom or Pop can be hauled out of there in a heartbeat. This doesn't mean we nurses have the easy road, we're expected to stay hop...

For one thing, what kind of stone-aged place is this that doesn't have provisions in place to allow weekend admissions? For another thing, the facility needs to blame itself if it didn't go over this policy, what else have they not told you? Handing ...

I didn't legally marry my childrens' father until the oldest was 9 years old and I still called him my "husband." It was nobody's business, but it saved a lot of explaining. I was an LPN/LVN, I was proud to be an LPN/LVN and I'll never let anyone tak...

I'll be Frank (and I'll be Earnest, too) but I can only make assumptions, forgive me if I'm wrong. When you say "boyfriend" I am just assuming this is not the father of your infant. If you have not known this man long, please do not leave him with yo...

This makes me sick.

At the nursing home where I work the other nurses just say, I can't wait until you become a NP, then, you can write us prescriptions!

I would challenge you to come work where I work. Other than that, this kind of statement will only perpetuate the myth that all nursing homes are horrible. Nursing homes are a fact of life. People go there and that is usually their "last" address. Th...