sjalv

We take care of a lot of renal patients, particularly when their hemodynamic system becomes unstable and they require pressors to maintain their blood pressure and therefore cannot tolerate their typical dialysis treatments. We often start CRRT which...

What's your favorite thing about working in CVICU? This is probably applicable to all kinds of nursing, but you never know what you're going to walk into when you get to work. You might be walking into a fresh code where the critical care doctor i...

I started in the CVICU as a new grad at a hospital in Tulsa at $23/hr base, and went up to $25/hr base after a year of being there. I can't speak to OKC hospitals but can't imagine it would be too different. Shift differential for me is $3.75/hr for ...

There are many rural areas within an hour of Tulsa, such as Skiatook, Collinsville, Sperry, and large swaths of land between these towns and the city. I'm not sure about OR jobs specifically but there is no shortage of jobs for nurses in the Tulsa ar...

I'm an ICU nurse and am always enthralled when I get in report that the patient already has a PICC or central line, but I don't expect it. I do expect that the patient have two IV sites though. We have critical care nurse practitioners that work over...

She is not telling her to take the discussion elsewhere, she is giving her additional places to get feedback. The Facebook groups that I am a part of have over 20,000 members. You get at least 5-10 responses within the first hour of posting something...

I've dreamt before that a patient of mine started coding and I knew they were, but my body couldn't perform compressions. I could yell for help, push the code button, position the bed supine, but my arms were like jelly when I went to do compressions...

CCRN is a certification, nothing to do with any board. 'board certified' tends to refer to physician certifications upon completing a residency and passing their respective boards. I think to say getting your CCRN makes you 'board certified' is misle...

I got hired into an adult CVICU before I even graduated ADN school without any tech experience. It really depends on where you live.

I keep my stethoscope, headphones, a phone charger, some nonperishable food as previously mentioned, and an IV drug reference book, although each med room on my unit has one so I rarely use that.

I'm not sure if you are asking me or if you were just clarifying that that was the question you were trying to figure out, but in case it's the former, I'm not too sure. On one hand, you have ICU experience, but it's not pediatric ICU experience. The...

Disclaimer: I'm speaking as a nurse who started in an adult CVICU, and that's still where I am. Obviously our hospitals' orientation programs and environments differ, as we don't even do transplants at my hospital and I'm guessing y'all don't do open...

I know someone has already said this but whenever HR calls you, it's for a reason. Voicemail or not. Keep that in mind for whenever you do work for a hospital.

At my hospital, hearts are 1:1 for the first 6 hours. Hearts are never doubled before this point, and if they have an IABP, they're kept 1:1. Even if the heart technically goes off 1:1 during day shift, they won't typically give you an admit. This is...

I was taught to not inflate and I never do. I also do not know any nurses that do.

An incontinent patient who is A&O x4 and can vocalize that they are soiled = not a reason to catheterize. A patient who, regardless if they're usually continent or not, is sedated and cannot verbalize they've soiled themselves = reason to cathete...

Did he say that his unit was a 'special snowflake' unit? Is your passive aggressive assumption warranted, or does it contribute anything to the discussion?

Please, for the love of God, if I end up intubated/sedated in an ICU, catheterize me so I don't keep urinating on myself out of lack of awareness/control. To not do so would be ridiculous in my opinion.

Did you clarify what you know to be the truth, i.e. that the lumens are separate and even if the medications are incompatible, they are fine to infuse through separate lumens?

This is exactly what the OR nurses tell us when calling report on a heart and it's all I need to know, for what it's worth. I feel like if the nurses want to know the nitty gritty of the surgery, such as where the bypasses were etc, they can read the...

Is it possible you can post the job description here? If you are not a nurse and do not have experience in leadership/management, I don't see how feasible it would be to get a job in this position based on the name alone.

Is there a reason you can't use the other arm? If so, I would use a radial cuff below the PICC line. I would never use a brachial cuff over a PICC line.

I usually shower before work. I don't change into regular clothes before entering my house, nor do I have work-specific shoes. I'm more worried about catching a communicable illness at the grocery store than I am at the hospital.

On my unit, intubated patients/continuous bipap are bathed at night, everyone else is bathed in the day. By bathe, I mean 'chg bath'. This is irrespective of their surgical status. If they are so hemodynamically unstable that they cannot be turned to...

I don't agree with this mindset. I expect to see patients in distress due to their situation of being hospitalized, but that does not give them the right to be disrespectful. I tell patients when they are disrespectful that it is a two way street. Th...