Jenni811

We had it happen once during a horrible storm with a tornado. Given it wasn't very long but we all had to stay an extra couple hours. I didn't want to drive in that terrible storm anyway. I was safe at the hospital. Anyway, we all got paid overtime for that 2 hours until the next shift could get there safely. They should pay you of your required to stay.

We just had joint commission leave. We don't have pill cutters for every patient and they didn't say anything about it. We are required to clean them in between uses though so maybe that was acceptable enough for them?? They make up such goofy rules. Something about how we needed to change the font color of high alert medications. Whatever....no hospital can be perfect and they are going to find something to change with every place they go to.

I'm 25...I work 12 hour shifts. I'm on my feet ALL day! I usually try to squeeze in a break. But let's face it, that doesn't always happen. I'm finding that my ankles swell at the end of the day. Nothing serious or putting....just you can tell. I'm NOT looking for medical advice but wondering who else deals with this and what do you do? Do you wear ted hose at work like I've seen some nurses do? Tried it once and I itched my legs all day...not fun!!! Is there a "Ted hose" you can buy for nurses?? I can't be the only one cause I see others wearing them I just couldn't stand the kind I bought. Suggestions of brands that don't itch??

I recently followed a nurse (newer nurse). she is going to be WONDERFUL when she gets a year under her belt. Honestly...good nurse, but needs to pay attention to detail. the patient i was recieving from her was on a lasix drip. when i got there the doctors note read "gentle diurese" as our plan.the patiet's orders for lasx drip read 0.5mg/min. Back of my mind, im like jeeeeeez thats alot! i mean think about it, thats 30 mg of lasix every hour...or nearly 720mg of lasix in 24 hours. The drip was running at 30ml/hour and was all set up correctly. We ahve titration orders to maintain urine output at 400ml in 4 hours. When i asked about ehr urine output the nurse was like "I haven't checked that in a while" and her urine bag was FULL FULL FULL. i mean full, backed up going to explode full!!! So our i/o was inaccurate, so i just monitored urine out put for the next hour. I got 1400cc IN ONE HOUR!!!! it had been running like that all day. 1400 cc in on hour as opposed to 100cc in one hour (what they wanted). I called the doctor, telling him "I can turn this down but im questioning if you really wanted this to run at 0.5mg/min." He was like "WHHHHAT? i wanted it at 0.05mg/min" Basically, its sad because the nurse DID follow the orders and its the doctors fault he put it in wrong. But i think a nurse with experience would maybe question that order and say "Are you sure?" and would recognize that .5mg/min is alot of lasix. and that 1400cc of urine in an hour is way to much. Nothing came of it, patient was fine...but man!!

Im terrible with students, i try not to be.

General rule... keep in mind that detox/confused patients get placed on any med/surg unit (generally). We all need to "share the love" with these patients. Sometimes i feel like our unit gets pooped on all the time with these patients. When i have to float to other units, i see that they have just as much as we do.So...going to a new unit for that reason alone, you're probably going to be disapointed. I could totally be wrong though and maybe it is your hospitals protocol to take them. However; in our hospital pretty much any med/surg unit can cake an "altered mental status patient" or a detox that isn't having DT and is generally safe. We share the love among us. Although we are talking about this in our meetings and adminstration is actually listening to us and trying to open up a unit for med-psych/detox/confused/awaiting placement patients. There are SOOOO many of them and they are taking up hospital beds for people who need them. They expect it to be up and running when we move into the new hospital in 2014. We are currently building a new facility and they promised us this unit will be there. Already they are recruiting to see who wants to work it so i know its not lies. No takers yet, obviously i voted on taking advantage of the newbies on staffing it. HA! just kidding.

i am going to add about the use of lift with these patients. YES, we DO use lifts when turning/moving these patients. We have ceiling lifts in every room, and have special bariatric ones in our bariatric rooms. however, these are useless when CLEANING apatient. This is because the lift uses the turn sheet to hold them on their side. However you need to move the turn sheet to clean their bottom. If you move the turn sheet they just end up on their back again. So...you need atleast 5 people to hold these obese patients. Which, can be at times your entire staff. That puts others at risk and neglect. So i don't use the whole "use the lifts" as an argument, because you can't when cleaning. Turning/moving, yes. Cleaning their bottom, no.

On a night shift once we had a patient once that required 4 people to turn, and even more to clean. (holding skin folds, legs open etc.) We had 5 RN/CNA on the unit since it was slow. It is required that one always is at the desk. This is because we are a telemetry unit and we need someone to stay by the monitors. Anyway...so we had to clean the patient, but there were only 4 of us that were avaliable to do so. (trust me, this was NOT enough to clean). Which really isn't a good idea because the person watching telemetry coulnd't leave to answer bed alarms or call lights. So we had decided that 2 staff members need to stay out by the desk (one for telemetry and one for call lights/bed alarms). This left 3 of us to clean the patient, which was NOT possible. our "sister unit" is the critical care unit, so we called over to see if they could spare a nurse or a tech to help for a little while. They sent us a nurse, and then we also got the HOM to help us. It was quite the ordeal just to clean this patient up, or even round up the people necessary to do it. In the mean time while we are rounding a "team" up she is hollering "CLEAN ME!! SOMEONE NEEDS TO CLEAN ME NOW!!!" i went in to calm her down and i told her we need to get more help because we cannot risk injuring anyone she was like "i don't care about that. Clean me now" people like that....seriously???

No. Temperatures fluctuate throughout the day, especially in females (time of month has something to do with it too). Anyway, people don't get that it fluctuates. I get that line frequently too and i just explain "Well, it is common for our bodies to fluctuate temperature from time to time. We really don't get too concerned unless it is over 100. That is the bodies way of telling us something is wrong." Keep it simple, they don't understand what fevers are and why we get them. So someone who is normally 96 something and has a temp of 98, is not running a fever.

awful...just awful. I don't think i could handle watching or doing that. I don't have it in me. We are not a burn hospital but can take mild stuff and occasionally do. I once had a guy who was newly diagnosed COPD and going home on oxygen. Despite the NUMEROUS teachings from RN, RT, MD and smoking cessation he decided it would be a wonderful idea to smoke while using his oxygen. Ended up burning his lower right leg. (Could have been much much worse) but even doing the dressing changes on just that alone made me cringe and want to cry. I can't imagine what it would be like doing it to someone with 90% of their body as bad as this lady. Yikes! Bless the people that can do it.

10 patients in the hospital?? My god.... We only have 4 patients per shift and i run my butt off. Can't help you with the part-time thing cause i am full time. Perhaps go full time?? even in our hospital i know we get alot more benefits than the part-timers. To be considered "full time" or have full time benefits you need your FTE to be 0.75 or greater.

I don't work with children in nursing but i know people like this. I feel like it is usually the parents who are incredibly overbearing on their children. They are with them 24/7 and THRIVE on adult interaction. So its like their child is sick, there is another adult who is showing they care and taking care of them. On top of that giving the parents some attention they are craving. They thrive on adult interaction and someone they can hold a conversation with. Something to talk about other than crayons and poop.

Annoys me when people say "i could care less." the correct saying is "i COULDN'T care less"

Slightly off topic, but my fiance and i being from different places have different words for things. We completley understand each other though. My fiance is from New York and i'm from Wisconsin, So we so alot of traveling back and fourth to visit family and such. I always get picked on by my fiance and his family because of things i say and my "thick wisconsin accent". First time i was visiting his family in New York (Near buffalo) we went out to dinner and i was like "I need to find the nearest tyme machine" they looked at me like i was on crack. They were like "You need to find a time machine? Where will you be going?" Then there was this awakward silence and my fiance chimed in and goes "She means ATM machine" Apparently everywhere else in the world it is an "ATM machine" but where im from it is a "Tyme machine" Embaressing at the time but we laugh about it now :)

It isn't considered a holiday, and that SUCKS. I am on every dang easter because of how our weekends fall. I hate it...