greyL

The hospital that I'm at uses IPOC (interdisciplinary plan of care). I'm a new grad so maybe I'm just naive about all this stuff, but I don't see the point. We have to have our IPOCs done by a certain time and basically we have to click whether we've...

I've always been like this. Anything new just freaks me out and makes me nervous, and makes me do worse than I probably would if I just had a bit of confidence in myself. I have a new preceptor this week, and gave me feedback about my performance, an...

What's the proper way to draw blood from a picc line? The other day I flushed with 10 cc's of NS, then wasted 10, then drew blood. But the lab called to say that the results looked wrong (extremely low hemoglobin level) and that the blood probably ha...

I'm a US trained nurse that has been considering working in Australia for some time now. I have a little over 1 year of experience. I wish I had applied earlier because it looks like the requirements have become really strict. It states that I need 8...

It's always been kind of a dream of mine to join the military as a nurse. If I were single, I would just join, but I'm in a relationship and will be getting married soon, so I hesitate. If I were to join, would I be spending great lengths of time awa...

At my facility we use blunt tip needles.

Just when I start think that I'm getting better, and I've had a whole bunch of successful IV starts in a row, I end up in a rut of not being able to start any for a long time. And period of time when I'm in a rut is much longer than when I'm successf...

I wear glasses. Does that show up in standard eye exams?

I am a semi-new grad and I've been at my hospital for about 10 months now. I moved to the other side of this country for this job, and I recently just bought a whole bunch of furniture because I had been planning on staying here for at least 2 years....

I wouldn't leave without having another job in place. I worry more about how it'll look on my resume, and I feel very guilty about leaving a job that hired me as a new grad.

I'm still a bit of a new grad. I've been working in a hospital setting for a little bit over 6 months now. I moved out of state for this job and I plan to one day move back (maybe in a couple of years) because I miss my family, but I love the atmosp...

Really? If I try and can't get an IV start, then the charge nurse does it. Or once in awhile, if we're very busy and we need the IV right away, the charge will go ahead and do it.

Where I work, I will always be asked to come in on my night off. A lot of the time when I see a call from my hospital, I don't answer because I already know what they're going to ask, and I feel so guilty about saying no. Today I got asked to come in...

I call my patients "hon", "sir", "ma'am", "mama" or "pops", depending on the situation/patient.

I just feel like staffing doesn't understand. I've been awake all day. How am I supposed to go to work? And it took me a whole day to switch my sleep pattern over. Grrr.

I do plan to stay for at least a year, probably two. But I have no family out here, and I miss everyone.

I work in a cardiac progressive care unit, which is considered a step-down from our actual progressive care unit, but our hospital still considers it as critical care. It's good that you took a rhythm interpretation class. It might be good to find a ...

What do you think is the appropriate length of time to stay after a hospital hires a new grad? I understand that hospitals don't like it if a new grad just leaves after their first year. What about 2 years? Will there be any resentment after 2 years?...

Thanks for the replies. It's not that I'm just trying to leave ASAP. For the most part, I do like it here (I do have one or two complaints, but I know it'll be like that at every place I work), but I did move to the other side of the country to be he...

There are some bad nurses. I'm not going to argue that all nurses are great. But there is a lot you don't see. You don't see how that patient has turned the call light on every 30 minutes for something that could have waited for when we round again. ...

It was because I just followed the way my preceptor showed me to do it. And because I had never had a problem with drawing blood from a PICC line before; though admittedly, I don't do it very often because I don't see a lot of PICC lines in my unit. ...

I'm sorry, I don't mean to be difficult, but I'm unsure how this would work out. Hep flushes have to be scanned on a COW and witnessed by another nurse. I don't get PICC lines a lot because I'm in CPCU. That particular night that I drew blood from a ...

So I looked up our policy, and it says we don't have to flush first. But now I'm in a predicament! Our policy says to flush with 20 mL NS after and if there are no IV fluids running, to also flush with 2mL hep flush. I can't just get hep flushes whe...

Hmmm ... I think that maybe we don't have those.

I feel like an idiot, but what caps? I've never heard of anything like that. And I remember learning to waste 6, so I thought 10 would be plenty =/