LPNnowRN

At least two pots per day. I justify it because I use half milk in every cup so it's healthy calcium intake. I can drink coffee and go straight to bed, no problem. Love the picture--I always joke about needing a coffee IV!!

I kept mine and have loaned them out to other people taking classes--there are just a few that I refer to all the time, and I constantly buy more references ( Introduction to Clinical Neurology by Gelb is good! and a short book). There are just a few I have given away.

I know from exerience! Blocked off my common bile duct with a gallstone and had acute pancreatitis. Six day stay until discharged the day after my lap chole. Dilaudid works, but always made me throw up. I never asked for phenergan because I didn't want to be labelled a drug seeker, LOL!, but when the nurses asked I always accepted.

Woot!! You ROCK! State is stressful and you did good, pat yourself on the back!

OMG--pop came out of my nose on some of these!! OK, in to give meds to patient, scan bracelet, try to open little pill blister pack and flip it under the roommates bed!! I'm on my stomach crawling under the bed to find and retrieve it, apologise with a red face and tell them I'll be back with a new pill. At least it was metoprolol and not some outrageously expensive med...but I still had to explain to my charge why I needed a new one out of Pyxis...when I got to the crawling under the bed part that's when she lost it!

I Left My Heart in San Francisco, Tony Bennett. Anything Frank Sinatra or Doris Day. Big band music.

I can only hope that when I'm in the home they let me play Metallica and watch Star Wars and The Matrix on TV!!! Rock ON!

I am 48, and I do regret that I don't have that 20 years that other nurses have. I feel like I have much less time to achieve my dream job by getting my BSN or MSN, getting my Med Surg experience. I feel a time crunch because Med-Surg jobs are scarce around my area. I'm in LTC and really love the relationships, but feel the need to keep expanding my skills. I find myself being drawn to cardiac stuff--I've taken 12 Lead ECG Interpretation and I think I want to eventually end up on a cardiac unit, but that means a drive of an hour or so in my rural area. I don't think I'll ever leave the floor, but worry about my stamina ten years from now. I have trouble pushing my regrets aside and looking forward and doing what I can to get where I want to be. I also worry about balancing my wants (money for advanced degree for me) against those of my middle school age children and what they want to accomplish in their lives.

Our med techs know more pharmacology than I do--can instanly tell you about whatever obscure med just got prescribed. They are amazing. That said, take each person and evaluate their skills--not all people are the same!

What?!?!?! Only four days????

My nursing home was seeing low census over the summer and we figured out that the new ALF in town was starting to take residents that would normally come to a nursing home because their census was only 18 total. The residents we ARE getting were formerly kept in the hospital...it's like Med-Surg with 25 people. IV vanco x 2, morphine pump, urostomy, new colostomy, huge wound dressings, wound vacs, 4 fx's, TKAs, THAs, ect....I think the people in the hospitals on Med Surg used to be in ICU, and the ICU people must have not survived in the past. Crazy.

LOL!!!

In my last job at 15-20-ect... years of service we had a catalog that we could pick something out of....I still sleep on my two feather pillows!!

Way back when I was working as a CNA I took a resident to the toilet--obviously no one had toileted him in a while because he pooped out, with great difficulty I might add, a hard stool the exact shape and size of a soup can! I had to break it up in the toilet to get it to flush.

Not this topic AGAIN!!!

LOL!!I thought it was just me...no one can figure out why all these people love cartoons!!

I am so sorry for your and her loss. Just last week we caught someone throwing their rings away, and gave them to their spouse for safekeeping. Alzheimer's is a cruel disease on many levels. The person with it loses so much, but can't really remember the past after awhile. It's family and friends who can remember who suffer loss after loss for a very long time. My heartfelt sympathies.

Quietest duing the Super Bowl, then all heck breaks loose!

Keep up with your charting--don't save it all up for end of shift.

Because Lord knows it's always end of shift and the paperwork on a fall will make you late!

Yeah--what's the rush to get a hospital job when the hospital comes right to you? Wound vacs, IV vanco, morphine pumps, fresh ostomies, and on and on...

I had a colleague who came in to pick up her check, ended up being guilted into staying due to short staffing then went to Wally World and bought a set of scrubs and shoes so she could be decent at work!!

Woot!! Love this post, it's absolutely true!

If you really want to learn the material, why it works, how it fits in with the physiology, try this out of print book: The Phunny Pharm The Ultimate Pharmacology Study Guide. C. Reidhead. It is a study guide, but puts everything in a story/picture context so you can remember it. The pictures leap into my mind and I can recall what it does and why easily. Written for med students but invaluable to me as an RN. I still review it to keep everything fresh in my mind.

Holy Cow!!!!