acosenza2

Hello fellow nurses, Just curious what everyone has in their first aid kits? Do you have a smaller, personal kit that you keep with you for those just in case moments? Do you keep a larger family kit? Keep a big one in your car? Or did you pick one up at the store and it suits you just fine? Just curious what everyone else has. I am trying to put together multiple kits: one for personal use for when I am alone doing outdoor things (hiking, hunting, shooting range, or just alone and I need to treat myself), a bigger kit to keep in my car for the family and the same kit to keep in the house for the family. So let's hear it (AND SEE IT!).

The graphic provided was from the White House website, so we can expect it to be biased. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the Affordable Care Act is taking millions from Medicare in order to pay for other parts of the ACA and has put Medicare on a path to bankruptcy much quicker than it currently is. Healthcare reform is certainly needed and while this administration has some good ideas, the bad ideas seem to be catastrophic.

I graduated from nursing school in May and have been working in a LTC facility for about 2 months. It is hard work but I love it and I think that has as much to do with the work as it does with the culture of the facility and the nurses that I work with. The key to getting the experience is to find facilities that are willing to hire graduate nurses and for me I found that in a LTC facility. Is it what I want to do forever? Absolutely not, but this facility has rehab patients, ventilator patients, dialysis patients, and some seriously ill folks where I can gain valuable experience. The thing I love about nursing is that you can do just about anything and at the end of a very hard day I keep that in mind. If I ever think being at the bedside is too much I know I can move to a different facility, bedside, specialty etc etc. I currently only have my ASN, but I am planning to get my BSN and eventually my MSN because I already know that I do not want to be 50, 60 or how whatever my age busting my ass as a unit nurse and will eventually move on. I have even considered getting a Doctorate in Nursing as well because the more nurses getting more advanced degrees will help to move the profession forward and open up more opportunities to myself. I remember having doubts as well while in nursing school, but that is because nursing school sucks, your instructors are not always nice and you are terrified of making a mistake and if your school was anything like my school that mistake could result in a "needs improvement" on your evaluation and the administration has been known to kick people out for a "needs improvement" on a skill. I have discovered that the real world is not like that. Sure I am still afraid of making a mistake, but that makes me a cautious and skilled nurse. Being a fairly new nurse there are things I have not seen, but that just means that I ask a more experienced nurse, the supervisor, or the charge nurse and they either know it or we figure it out together if they are not familiar with it either. The point is this, we have all heard that nurses eat their young, and when I was in nursing school I met some of those people and I steered clear from them because I was not about to get into a ******* match with some bitter nurse with a chip on his/her shoulder. Out in the real world I find that nurses are not eating their young because we are seen as their colleagues, part of the team, and if we don't work together it quickly becomes a disaster for everyone on the unit during that shift. Get through nursing school, you will find a job that will give you the experience, and always remember that you have options and it does not necessarily have to be in a facility giving beside care. Nursing is dynamic and the possibilities are nearly endless. And to answer your other question, I have a son and I would certainly tell him that nursing is a great career to enter into. If I have daughters I will tell them the same. I would not go into a career that I would discourage my children from entering.

The order was given, and the medication dispensed, in order for you to give them in the hospital so that is what should have been done. I understand the feeling of being a parent, but you are also a nurse and when you are working you are a nurse first and foremost because it is ultimately your nursing license, not your parenting ability, that is on the line.

My advice, go agency if you are having a hard time finding work. I have a few friends that are nurses working for agencies and some of them have a regular schedule of 60h/week while others have decided they only want 30h/week. I found nursing work 45 mins away, but the paycheck offsets the 45 min drive so I was willing to take it.

I am a newly graduated RN and I work with a lot of LPNs. Honestly, there are very few things that I can that they are not allowed to do. According to our State Board LPNs are supposed to only care for stable clients with expected results etc etc but it typically does not happen that way. In my short career so far, a nurse is a nurse and I am grateful for all of them. Where I work the LPNs and RNs are all very knowledgeable and impart their wisdom on me whenever I need some advice or help. I never did understand the LPN "hate" but then again I am a man so sometimes I get the male nurse "hate". Stay strong and keep up the good work.

When I was a nursing student my definition of bathed was what I would want for myself. A Few washcloths with soap everywhere and then a few washcloths with clean water to wash it all off and then dry them, really dry them. I would certainly expect no less if I were the patient that needed full cares. Now as a nurse I do not have the time to do bathes because I have high amount of patients to care for, but if I do have time I will help to clean a patient after BM etc. I take it seriously because an unclean patient has an increased risk of skin breakdown and skin breakdown is not pleasant or easy to heal and is very easily preventable. The nice thing about our facility is that when someone is bathed they also get a full body assessment by a nurse so I see first hand that our CNAs do a fantastic job of bathing our patients.

If an ambulance pulled to that same spot to provide services it would not have received a ticket. You really are no different. You provide much needed medical services.

As a nurse, that is also a man, I have had this request before and I usually take no offense to it, but it is not always possible to honor that request and if that is the case I ask the charge or super talk to the patient. In my opinion, a patient is free to request whomever they want to treat them and is usually based upon "old ways". I have had both older men and women request a female nurse because of their generational mind set.

I feel sorry for the guys that have felt discriminated against in nursing school. My class graduated with 3 or 4 guys and my clinical group always had at least 2 guys, and at one time we were 50% guys. I never felt discriminated against because of my sex, although many of our instructors seemed to hate the entire class so I did not take that as a personal offense. My clinical instructor my first year was a man so no issues there. The second year both of my instructors were women but they never treated me differently. The staff at my clinical site were always fine with me and I never felt any push back from them; many of them said they are happy to see more men moving into the field. I do remember having an elderly male patient that asked me how my father felt with me becoming a nurse, but I assume that was more based on his generational thinking that only women are nurses. At any rate, I do not let me gender become an issue in my practice and I have only ever had 1 female patient ask for a woman to help her with toileting, but she was fine with me doing everything else.