Picklefreak

Different things will work for different people, but what I've found is best for me is Skechers Shape-ups. They will do nothing to get you into shape but the cushion-y heel is perfect for me. I wore Danskos for a while but developed plantar fasciitis. It has vastly improved with the shape-ups.

I am a pharmacy tech turned RN. I love nursing much more than pharmacy, but it was a step up for me in education, status, and pay. If it is patient care you are wanting more of, you might look into PA school.

I've had residents try to send post-op patients home with only Tylenol. Some of them have not gotten DEA numbers and don't want to track down their upper-level to do the scripts for them. This is where the "patient advocate" part of nursing comes in. :)

My dad spent the last 2 months of his life, save the 10 days he was home on hospice, in the hospital. I am forever grateful for the time my kids got to spend with him there. They were 13, 11, and 6 at the time. It was summer, and we visited every day for an hour or so. We all had the nicest visits. I know he was so glad to see them. Some of my fondest memories of my dad come from this time. I am so grateful that no arbitrary rule kept them apart. I completely understand the problems children can cause, but it was exactly what my family needed at that time.

Starting pay is close to what the Commuter stated. It is comparable to other hospitals in the area. OUMC is a private, for-profit hospital owned by HCA. It is located on the OU Health Science campus, but it is not actually part of the University. They offer tuition reimbursement, the percentage of tuition that they pay increases the longer you are employed.

Completely agree! This is the kind of problem that makes end of life care so bad in our culture.

We get prisoners at our facility regularly. Most are just people who got into trouble due to substance abuse. (Which makes them no different from many of our non-incarcerated patients!) I have had a few truly evil inmates, though. One was a serial rapist and murderer. Part of my job as a nurse is to protect the privacy and dignity of my patients. As I did things like pull the curtain while he was using the urinal, and tie his gown in the back, it occurred to me that I was protecting the privacy and dignity of a person who had grievously violated the privacy and dignity of others. He had probably taken pleasure in it. But THAT is what separates someone like him from someone like me. It felt almost like a victory to be kind to him, if that makes sense. Another inmate I was assigned to was a woman who was serving a life sentence for torturing and molesting her son over the course of several years. It was a notorious case in the news, and one of the most heinous crimes I've heard of. She was in a great deal of pain when she arrived, and one of her guards told me, "She deserves every bit of pain she's feeling." I tried to imagine being for the rest of your life at the mercy of people who felt that way about you, and it must be a miserable existence. My withholding care from her would do nothing to right the wrongs she did, and would certainly do nothing for my own humanity. It was pretty difficult, though. I was glad when my shift ended. Like someone else said, though, I did not lavish TLC on these people. I am pragmatic and professional, but I'm not a saint!

Not exactly a hallucination, but I had a funny thing with an ETOH withdrawal patient recently. I touched his arm and he flung off my hand and said, "Get the f$&@ off of me!" I said, "Hey!" and he looked very startled to see me standing there and said, "oh sorry, I thought you were my cat." :lol

Maybe she is just an incredibly fastidious person, and after washing her hands, she used paper towels to thoroughly dry the sink. Or she keeps a small bottle of hand sanitizer in her pocket and used it just before you saw her.

I wouldn't say that I lost it, but I really chewed out someone I caught smoking in her room. And when I was done, the charge nurse called the cops on her, and they came in and chewed her out. And confiscated her smokes and the RX drugs (not in her name) she had in the bed with her.

If you default on a student loan, the government can garnish your wages and confiscate your tax refund. They do not have to go to court and get a judgement against you as other creditors would. It's what you agreed to when you signed the promissory note.

My hospital has a little different set-up for stepdown. We have several stepdown beds on each nursing unit. The ratio for stepdown is 2-3:1. (Ratio for the floor is 5:1.) We do total care and don't have techs for stepdown. We do have a unit secretary usually. Vitals and assessments and I's and O's are charted at least q4h unless there is an indication to do them more frequently. The patients are on tele with monitors at the bedside as well.

My mind says gross and unsanitary, but realistically, **** gets on everything in our rooms. The floors, the walls, the bed frames and mattresses. These just get the normal cleaning from housekeeping between patients. I guess that's really not that much different. But, still! Lol

I think if this were the case, the OP's preceptor would have explained herself. Her comment of, "you'll figure it out eventually" makes me think she has some preconceived notions about uninsured or Medicaid patients.

This is a common occurrence where I work. Nothing as dramatic as a year, but we have patients who have no need for acute care but have to stay for weeks due to no insurance coverage. We see a lot of osteomyelitis and endocarditis that require many weeks of IV antibiotic therapy. Once they are no longer acutely ill, the insured patients are discharged to a subacute facility or to home and receive their antibiotic therapy via home health. But the uninsured stay with us for weeks and weeks and weeks. And that means thousands and thousands of dollars. And guess who's paying for it, folks? How people can think we don't need health care reform is beyond me. The current system is insane.