lupin

Hello, I am an RN with 6 yrs experience. I am in an accelerated fnp program at my state university. I work PRN night shift at a local ED and have a 3yr old and husband. Feeling a little overwhelmed but trying to muck through the best way I can. Would love to hear from anyone else to gain advice or just to commiserate. Thanks!

I went to Cmcc and graduated in 2005. I felt I got a good education from CMCC. The instructors were very helpful and the clinical experiences were interesting (our clinicals were mostly at Central Maine Medical Center, D'youville, St. Mary's, etc). I lived in Brunswick at the time, so Smcc and Cmcc were going to be either direction for me. I had several personal issues that came about during my program but my Advisor really encouraged me and helped me get through them. I know by state standards, the school that has the most students pass the N-clex on the first try is rated the best in the state and SMCC was consistently rated #1 in the state, but CMCC was usually #2. It basically came down to who was going to get me in a program faster (I applied everywhere ) and CMCC called me two weeks from the start of classes saying there had been a drop out and I was first on the waiting list. Whatever you do, when you finish, go back and finish your bachelor's. Easier if your already working as a nurse. No change in title but will make a difference in some job situations.

Not really this week, one was sick, the other was at FEMA training, and we were also down a nurse. But we made it through .

We have two CNAs with phlebotomy training do our labs and we also draw some labs ourselves depending on the amount of labs or if we are working up an STD pt.

Hmmm, not getting any results here. I would really like to hear from you NH nurses. This is one factor that can make a difference in where we move to. Any help is appreciated.

Hello, I am an RN currently residing in TN but looking to move back up north, possibly to the Lehigh or Lancaster area on PA. I'm looking to get any advice about where to apply for a good job with benefits, good pay, and a flexible schedule, plus to see how PA nurses feel about your jobs there and how your nurses' union support is. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks, Lupin

Hello, Iam an RN currently residing in TN but my husband and I are considering moving back to New England, possibly to the area around Boston. I am looking for any advice regarding where to go for a job with good benefits, pay, and schedules, possible neighborhoods that are safe for kids, and how you nurses feel about your state's nurses union support and your careers in general there. I appreciate any advice. Thanks, Lupin

Hello, I am an RN currently residing in TN, but my husband and I are considering moving back to New England, possibly to the Portsmouth, NH area. I am curious as to how the NH nurses feel about the pay and nurses' union support in your state. I know there is a salary clculator on this website but I don't think it tells the right story just the best case scenario. It told me that the current state I am living in had an average salary double what I've found out nurses actually make here. And can anyone point me in the direction of hospitals, offices, VAs or other places to apply that have good benefits, schedules, and pay? I really appreciate any advice. Thanks, Lupin

There are nights I come home from work and feel like calling in for good before my next shift. I have had bad nights run through my head over and over again (Tyleonol PM is a great thing). When I very casually asked a long time RN who I trusted in my ER about debreifing he told me to never talk to anyone in Admin because they would track me down and ease me into another area or out the door. His advice was when it became too much, transfer to another unit or specialty where ER experience was important, like ICU or L&D or OR and then after I was over being shellshocked then I should look into ER again. Not promising. But I do feel that if someone told me I'd still be where I am today when I retired, I might just scream and run off into the mountains.

Oh, so many favorites! Let's see. My-Primary-Doctor-is-the-ER-doctor patient Mean Drunk (male or female) Redneck trash-talking woman (the type that think snapping their fingers gets them attention) The oh-so-popular misdiagnosed bipolar(actually borderline personality disorder) The I-want-my child-to-seize-from-a-fever-so-I-didn't-try-tylenol mom and subsequent 4-10 other siblings she brought in "for a real quick check". The comatose OD who we have to peel off the ceiling after about two hours. The either deaf or dumb "huh?" patient who says "huh?" after every question I ask them in triage, including what they're in for. Last (but not least) the People who have no medical history but are on insulin, BP meds, have a big CABG scar on their chest, and of course, are on benzos and narcs.

While all nurses see problems with patients' health caused by their own poor choices, none to me is more heartbreaking than when it affects infants/children. It is so easy to get angry and furious at them and most of the time they are in such denial we end up on the legal side of it, but we have to just keep plugging away at the education part and their choices still remain their choices. Take good care of yourself and stay focused on the fact that YOU did what you could do for her and the baby. Perhaps next time she will pay more attention to what the diabetic education tells her.

I was a bottle fed baby and while I'm not the smartest or richest person by far I don't think I turned out too badly. I fed my son breast milk and supplemented formula for the first two weeks of life, but I didn't rest enough, hit the baby blues HARD, didn't drink enough water, and at the end of two weeks had to switch to formula because I ran out of milk. I swear I did everything but stand on my head and spin to get milk out but I'm just not a big dairy supplier. That stressed me out even more and perpetuated the cycle. My child is four pounds heavier than when he was born 8 weeks ago, smiles occasionally, can turn his head to listen for mine or my husband's voice, loves to stare right at my eyes, and has started cooing so sweetly I wish I could tape record it. From what I read in the parenting books he is pretty much on par with where he should be developmentally. While I still wish I could have breastfed him, I don't feel he is starving by any means.

I can't help but feel that a lot of these women are so uneducated about their options and are so desparate for some kind of family unit they take whatever they feel they can get. The men seem to prey on this too. I don't think it's subconscious either. I hope every man out there that does this to a woman and his child some day wakes up ALONE and SAD because he let the greatest thing in his life slip through his fingers and I hope it eats him up. And I hope every woman who falls for these guys someday wakes up and kicks his butt or whatever junker they're with at the moment (because when one is done with her she'll find another one just like him).

An earlier poster stated that c-sectioned women "bounce back" to their pre-pregnancy shape earlier than vag delivered women do. Pray tell how, because after eight weeks, my body is in "Snapdragon" condition--half of it's snapped and the other half is draggin'. And as far as saving herself pain-my labor pains were annoying but far from intolerable. My little guy's FHRs just kept dropping and my O2 sat was in the toilet, but if it hadn't been for those problems I think I would have been okay at least up until time to push. I thought I was dying after the c-section. Next time I'll just ask for general anesthesia instead of a spinal.

1. Press Ganey (goes without saying) 2. Drama Queens/Kings 3. EMTs who don't know how to start an IV and have fluids running through an infiltrated line. 4. Restarting IV sites on pts who came in via those EMTs (they stuck me in the ambulance, why do I have to have another one?) 5. Mean Drunks 6. Mean redneck women who think getting mad and threatening us gets them what they want. Look, hon that may work with your husband or kids, it just gets you kicked out here. 7. Mean men who think because they're bigger than me they can intimidate me. Kiss my a&& now these really big male nurses will help you (out the door). 8. People who ask for tylenol and motrin scripts while they talk on their cell phone and replace the pack of cigarrettes in their Coach/Vera Bradley/Doone & Burke purse. 9. No foley kits/tegaderms/alcohol pads/etc in the room (or the next five).

I forgot this one in my first post: We hear from the PD there is a bad MVC on a well-known curvy road. We've had pts from MVC's on that road before, rollovers, going too fast that sort of thing. We get incoded that they are bringing three DOAs and two lacerations in from the accident. The three DOAs were a grandmother, mother, and 15 yr old daughter, the daughter a well-known local girl from pageants and almost always won homecoming for her high school (small-town). The two lacs were the driver and passenger from the other vehicle. The DOAs were brought in and I got to learn how to do postmortem blood draws that day. The 15 yr old looked like she was sleeping, no visible trauma but I just couldn't touch her. The mom and grandmom were like moving bags of jello around. This was two days after Christmas, the Dad was in the local prison, Stepdad was out on the road as a trucker so the only next of kin was the 18 yr old stepbrother, who had to come down and identify them. It was so sad. The local sherriff and chaplain at the hospital went in with him and sat with him until the extended family came in. Half the local school was there and the high school principal even showed up. Have no idea how they found out (again small town and half have scanners). But I just went home and cried that night. The thought of the sherriff having to tell the Dad his daughter was dead and the Stepdad just out working and his wife and stepdaughter are wiped out while he's gone. Sometimes it's too much. The cause of the accident was speeding by the grandmother, all were wearing seat belts. The other two from the accident just cried the whole time. It really messed up the driver. He just kept saying he was sorry, and it wasn't even his fault.

Congrats to you. I tip my hat to you because I can't handle being a SANE nurse. Have a hard enough time as it is doing my regular job, not going to add the stress of evidence collection and seeing kids assaulted to that. Good Luck!

I like the variety and the fact that I come away from every shift knowing I learned something new. I love some of the other nurses and paramedics I work with and since this is a small town, I know just about every cop, sherriff, and EMT in three counties (even have my own list of who can come and get me in an emergency. Don't want the local EMT pervert cutting my clothes off, just kidding). As an ER nurse, you just seem to rely on your knowledge base more. I've learned more about lab values and diagnostic images in the ER than I did in two years of floor nursing. I hate triaging because I'm right in front for people to take their grievances out on. I hate nasty drunks and pain med seekers. And I hate any peds trauma cases. I haven't had to code a kid yet (knock on wood) and I hope when the time comes I can handle it.

Older male pt, comes in via EMS with c/o vomitting blood. Had eaten spaghetti that night. That was mixed in to the emesis. I couldn't eat Italian for a month. 50 yr old construction worker came in with EMS doing compressions. Was Purple from the neck up. Autopsy showed a massive clot. He was dead as soon as he hit the ground. 18 yr old found in his car behind his work not breathing, no idea how long he had been down. We got a rhythm back, UDS positive for methadone, speed and cocaine. Did decorticate posturing for the whole two hours we had him. His father just cried and cried over his bedside pleading with him to wake up. He coded three more times in that two hours and then died at the medical center we transferred him to. Had a mom on the spinal floor with multiple fractures and compressions after getting high and drunk then ramming her truck into a telephone pole. Her 14 yr old son was in the truckbed, hit the telephone pole headfirst, no brain activity, coded all night long. We could hear the overhead pages for Code blue on his ward and knew it was him. All the while his drunk mother was crying for pain meds and saying she would press charges on us for letting her hurt. Took all my patience not to go show her real pain. After she was released from rehab and was awaiting trial for his death, she was in another accident while drunk, hit a woman in a parked car. The other driver barely lived and all the mother could say was that she was now an alcoholic after her son's death (which she caused by drinking in the first place). 3year old with cerebral palsy and dehyrdated telling me he loved Paula Dean cooking show two hours before he coded from K+ imbalance. 80 yr old man walks in with complaint of feeling a little funny in the chest, was in full Vfib and was completely alert and oriented. Would not let us move him in the stretcher, wanted to get up and move himself. :bowingpur I can see why a lot of nurses end up with substance abuse problems. It's extremely hard to have a front row seat to so much suffering and trauma and not be affected adversely by it.

I fell for the story that if you explain rationales to a patient when coming up with interventions they would be more likely to agree to try them. *snort* . Whatever. Most of the time I don't get two words out when the patient asks why we are doing such-and-such and then they are screaming that I will do what they want me to do. *Sigh*. I was also told that if someone is allergic to aspirin then they are allergic to all NSAIDs. Not true. I swell up with aspirin, but do great with ibuprofen and toradol. I was told as a new nurse about the "full moon" craziness and so far that one has been spot-on.

Hello: I just had my first baby in June of this year. I work noon to midnight in the ER but around the time I was one-two months pregnant (I didn't know until 10 weeks along) I picked up extra shifts on the overnights. I had worked nights for a year when I first started nursing and found it was a little tough for me. I gained weight, my thyroid which is low anyway went haywire, and my circadian rhythm was awful (imagine waking up at 3 and not knowing right away if it is 3 pm or 3 am), so I switched to days and then took up the noon to midnight shift. Try picking up some extra hours on the night shift (helpful especially around christmas) and see how you like it. When I picked up the extra night shifts before I knew I was pregnant I got really dizzy and nauseated toward the end of my shift and then was a zombie the whole next day. Little did I realize that it was morning sickness (thought it was my gallbladder, ha ha). If you have problems with it while you're not pregnant, I would think doing it while you are pregnant would compound the situation.

This is like my third post: Don't shoot a carpet staple into your finger, claim workmen's comp, come into the ER and then throw a fit because your job requires a drug screen with injuries. It's not my job to know what your company's policy on drug use in the workplace is (though I can probably guess) so don't yell at me when you decide to refuse treatment. Don't take a "token" OD and then threaten the nurse when we tell you that you can't leave AMA. Four really big cops will come hold you down while we restrain you. And then DO NOT ask for narcotics, because you "hurt your shoulder" while struggling against the cops. Don't think that you can just jog into the ER for "a real quick visit". We have other patients here and we never know when that next STEMI might just come walking through the door. Don't shoot up tessalon perls (really bad outcome). Don't take whatever pills are in the "punchbowl" at a pharm party (again, really bad outcome). Don't make up homemade labels for your "prescription" drugs at home. We know what labels the pharmacy uses. Don't prick your finger and drop blood into your urine sample to convince us you have kidney stones and need narcs. We will see the bloody finger and then straight cath you "just to be sure". Don't give you 4 month old a bottle of Red Bull because you don't have anything else for her to eat. If you can get a ride into town to the ER, you can go to the store and pick up formula. Especially if you give up a pack of smokes a week.

COngrats! I just recently had my first child and am constantly amazed at him. Enjoy!

It's because of shows like this that patients either think I'm there to go get coffee for them and therefore have NO medical knowledge or they think I can just prescribe them any med they want and am just being a B*tch when I don't give it to them. It is really frustrating to have to educate people over and over about what I can do for them vs. what they've seen nurses do on TV (yeah well, I've seen plumbers in some movies before too, and I don't believe I've ever been offered "THAT" service before).

I called out of my job at walmart one time with Stomach flu or some such nonsense. Spent all day with my husband, hehehehe. But then got sick with the flu for real the next month and was miserable. Of course it happened on my three day weekend and not on my workdays. I called out last month because I swore I was going into labor. I was contracting regularly every 8-10 minutes and had back pain, the whole nine yards except for membrane rupture. I called out at 0600 but I didn't have to be there until noon. Well by noon I was back to contracting every 30-40 minutes and by three had stopped altogether. Gotta love those Braxton-Hicks contractions.