greyL

At my facility we use blunt tip needles.

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

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 away from my husband? How do nurses with families manage?

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 successful. I've been in acute care for a year now. Surely I should be comfortable with IV starts by now, right? I'm also looking for a new place to work, and I'm so scared that no one is going to want to hire me if they know that I can barely start an IV. =/

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 800 hours of workplace experience exclusive of a simulated environment. I am assuming that work place experience means direct patient care. Can anyone verify if that's accurate? The problem now is that I'm not sure if my school program provided that much. I went to school in California, and California requires 810 clinical hours with only 75% of that needing to be in a direct patient care setting. My program provided us with 855 clinical hours, but some of it was in a simulated environment, so I'm not sure if I meet the criteria. Does that mean I will have to go to a bridging program?

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 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. But now my dream position at my dream hospital back home has opened up and I'm not sure what to do. I feel so awful leaving my current hospital before 2 years is up because I feel like they are good people and they do try to make their employees happy. On the other hand, I have been kind of unhappy for the last month of so. I'm homesick for my family, and the hospital has put me on the opposite schedule of the few friends I've made since I've been here. There is also not much room for growth here. I would have to leave when I plan to further my education. So I've been thinking of leaving before I planned to since I was told about this opening.

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.

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.

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, and I said no and the staffing person asked, "So you're not available?" and I replied no, and she asked, "You're not available at all?" And again I replied no. Well, it's not like I have anything to do tonight except sleep. Jeez. But I do know that some nurses go to work when they are asked and I wonder how they deal with that. I just switched back to a normal sleep schedule. How am I supposed to go back without getting any sleep?

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

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 atmosphere of my hospital and I worry that other hospitals will not be the same. I don't know how independent hospitals expect their nurses to be. Right now, if I have a question or am unsure about anything, I can go to my charge nurse and ask. And where I am right now, I always have one or two questions to ask during a shift. Our charge nurses even do a lot of IV starts for us. Is this the norm in other hospitals?

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 list of common cardiac medications and learn about those. And does your floor to drips like nitro, cardizem, etc.? Study that too. But the best thing to do is write things down that you weren't sure about or didn't know while you were precepting and study them on your days off. Good luck to you! And feel free to PM me for any questions. I've been in CPCU for 6 months now.

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 here, and it is hard for me at times because I have no family out here, and I moved to a city of only 10k people and I'm from Los Angeles. But like I said, I don't want to just bail either after getting my one year of experience. So two years is about right to "pay back" the hospital for hiring me as a new grad?

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? I wouldn't stay if I was unhappy. I do like where I work, but I also moved out here away from my family, and I would like to go back.

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. And "keeping an eye on it" means assessing it again when you round on your patient to see how it's doing. Sometimes things just can't be done right then and there. You have a million other things to do with your other patients and you have to prioritize the most important thing. And, most importantly, it is stupid to do something for another patient that you know nothing about. The patient asks for water while his nurse is gone. Is another nurse just going to get water for that patient? Hell no. She/he has no idea if that patient is supposed to be NPO or on fluid restriction, etc.

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 do agree that I should have looked at the P&P, though looking at the P&P in the past for other procedures has never really gotten me answers (like when I looked for our policy of what size gauge to use for blood transfusion) This is the first time I've looked and it's showed me what I really needed to know.

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 PICC line they had floated me to ICU. I suppose I would have to call the doctor each time for a PRN order? =/

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 whenever I want. We have to access them from pyxis and it is treated like a scheduled medication. What should I do about this?

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 =/

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 had saline in it. Another nurse told me that I'm supposed to waste more than I flush and that I did it wrong. Is that correct?

Possibly, but peak season is considered November to March. And honestly, once I have more experience, I won't mind doing 4 shifts. I find it difficult to do 4 shifts right now though because I'm a new grad, and I don't usually get to go home on time like the more experienced nurses do. Today I left at 8, which is the best it ever gets for me, and I usually come earlier to prepare everything because it takes me longer to do things than the other nurses. The other new grads are in the same boat as I am, so it's not just me. We rack up tons of overtime already without the 4th shift. =/

Oh, I see. Even so, I was not told that it would be mandated until I got my schedule. When I started, people volunteered for extra shifts, then last month, they changed it to mandating that we do extra shifts. They changed it again this month to allowing people to sign up for extra shifts again. I don't know why they did that. A failed experiment, I guess.