All_Smiles_RN

Sounds like my first job as a new grad. A crazy tele floor... they tried to give me someone with an AICD misfiring and with orders to hang a lidocaine drip. Veryyyyy appropriate for a new grad... Anyways, best thing I ever did for myself was get a ne...

No review course for me and passed the first time. All I studied from was from my nursing school books, nothing special. Good luck!

I graduated from DBCC last year. Great program, definitely gave me a good foundation for nursing practice. When I applied, I was accepted, but for the class that started 3 semesters later. I actually got called up to start early though. Don't be disc...

No I have not, but my hospital has a protocol for our CHF discharges. I'm not sure if this is specific to my unit/hospital or if it's a larger initiative, but we have "core measures" we are supposed to follow. Some of the things I can recall involve ...

In a future case like this where you are deciding to give a med or not, check his BP trends. If he is always 90-100 / 50-70, then check and see what other nurses have done. If a dose of morphine 6mg was given, see what his vitals were before and afte...

Not sure of any organizations you can join. Make sure you get the basics of nursing down (that goes without saying) :-) Focus on your cardiac meds... your ace inhibitors, beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, nitrates etc. Take basic ecg. You can ...

well the stress test isn't going to show blockages, it will indicate if there is ischemia. the cath would show blockages. i haven't heard of any drugs like this. maybe the Dr. was referring to tweaking your husband's current meds and seeing if someth...

Why not? I have great co-workers. On night shift, we have this bond and we work so well together. It's unfortunate that things have changed for the worse on my floor.... thinking about moving on to another unit, but not sure I'm willing to lose the g...

the time that comes to mind was when i was on my third night of taking care of the same gentlemen. i just felt like he was beginning a decline... i couldn't quite figure out what it was though, nothing concrete to base my feeling on. i watched him ve...

Both my nursing jobs involved self scheduling. I have no clue how many staff members... first was a 50 bed tele unit where we each took 6 pts on average. I'd say that was a large unit? My current unit is a 20 bed cardiac pcu where we take 4 pts each....

I was just browsing my Nursing 2007 June edition and was reading an article on vein viewing devices. Has anyone seen or used one in practice? It seems like a wonderful piece of technology... I'm willing to bet a costly one though... Here's the one th...

A pt on my old tele floor passed while his monitor was off (battery died i believe).... May seem like a pain at times, but it can mean the difference between life and death.

I splurged today and bought a pair of danskos. I'll let you know how it goes. I've been wearing a pair of nursemates which have been great; they are just worn looking after 6 months or so...

I'm at a large teaching hospital and trauma center. Nurses wear blue, techs wear burgundy, RTs wear black, and housekeeping wears green. I don't think it helps pts so much, but it helps the doctors ;-)

There is a nurse at my facility that abbreviates the term nursing assessment when charting. She writes nursing @ss. English is her second language and we've told her a few times what she's writing, but to no avail, lol.

I went into nursing for different reasons, but chose cardiac nursing because my son was born with coarctation of the aorta and a bicupsid aortic valve. And because my 15 year old brother had an anomolous coronary artery and underwent revascularizatio...

I have two children and every time they are immunized at the Dr's office, off we go, no waiting. Do you know how unlikely it is that an allergic reaction will occur? Isn't this woman a nurse in case a reaction were to occur? How do you know she didn'...

Amen! ;-)

Check with your state's BON yourself if you want "official" information: http://www.nh.gov/nursing/about/index.html With residency programs here in FL, they usually allow you to start orienting as GN on the floor or as a Senior Nursing Assistant unti...

I avoided all contact precautions patients if at all possible. My reason was because if I did catch say MRSA or VRE, however remote the possibility, I would not be able to take the antibiotics to treat it. The antibiotics to treat these infections ar...

Delegation is a role I have not mastered yet. Can you help me out? I am a team player and will do anything that needs to be done. If a pt is incontinent and I find it, I change them or ask my tech to assist me in changing them. If the floor is crazy...

All so very normal! It can be overwhelming, but eventually you get settled into a routine so to speak. My advice, familiarize yourself with your cardiac meds. Figure out who on your floor is most receptive to new grads. Ask questions! Don't worry abo...

They do breathing treatments, suctioning, manage vents, and more. they may upgrade the pt to a venti mask or non-rebreather and they also help wean them down. they do ABGs. they take orders from Dr's and call them when they feel it necessary. wheneve...

That's exactly what my institution uses, although I work with adult pts. I have no problems drawing from lines with them. Works great.

At my old hospital, each pt's room had a dry erase board with the number for their nurse and for their tech. It was a bit cumbersome taking all these calls while trying to take care of another pt. I was not a fan of the pts being able to call directl...