MikeRNWI

"But wearing gloves to hand someone a cup of pills or to check a BP is just crazy-pants." Try being part of an ICU study where you have to gown and glove each time you go into your patients room....

I agree with BelgianRN. You dont want to bolus your pressors. If your patient is requiring increasing doses of these medication, it is doubtful a transient dost such a as a bolus will be helpful in the long term. Once the bolus wears off, you lose it...

Yep sometimes in the ICU you need a long chain of stopcocks to manage everything. Last weekend I had a patient on with a triple lumen and a IJ dialysis catheter for CVVH. Had so much that we even had to stopcock things into the Dialysis venous return...

Our code teams work similarly to the post above. Granted, we are a Level 1 Trauma center, and a academic medical center, but our ED fully handles all pre-hospital arrests themselves. Our ICU's handle their own codes (with the occassional exception of...

We do the same in my ICU. We use a coolguard femoral or subclavian line, which has 5 lumens, 3 for infusion of medications, and two closed circuit lumens that circulate water. Cool as quickly as possible to get down to 31-32 degree C. Once at goal te...

Ill second the amazing camaraderie and teamwork. So many nurses who transfer from the floor to our ICU are amazed at the amount of help we do for each other, on the floor it was just everyone does their own thing. In my ICU, when we get an admission,...

If you want to get some good information (especially patho stuff) on critical care, look into some of the CCRN study books. CCRN is the Certification for Critical Care Nurses. Depending on your learning style, there are a bunch of good books. I'm stu...

I will also say, in the ICU patients, there is absolutely nothing sexy or sexual about anything that you see there, but you do deal with the genitals quite often. Incontinent patients, swollen genitals, catheters and "tube feed stool" just to name a ...

What??????

At my hospital, step down units usually take patients who have spent time in the ICU, and are mostly better, but still need a bit closer attention/management then general care floor. Usually, staffing ratios are better then the floor (I think 3:1 in ...

http://www.icufaqs.org/ Check out the section for Peripheral IV's for beginners. And yes, its practice practice practice.

Even with central lines, a ml or two of air is not something to be concerned with. In fact, there is a study done with echocardiograms called a "Bubble Study", in which 1 mL of air is agitated within 9 mL of saline (Use a full syringe and and empty o...

So, Onradar, since you know so much, you surely know where the OP lives, and that there is a bus route right past their house, directly (or with few stops) to their place of employment. No one ever lives anywhere that is not on a bus route, or in a ...

So... I had to reread. I first saw this say head and heart transplants.... I was really intrigued and perplexed with the concept of head transplants....

To the OP, I to just got my TB test done, and I also had a red, swollen looking circle. This is a pretty typical reaction for me, and I have been told that I have an allergic reaction to the preservative in the injection. Maybe this is the same with ...

I still personally think that babies look an awful lot like old men.

Its all about the miracle of life man!!!! Ok, no idea for me either...

I work in a unit that sees both MICU and SICU types, so I know those both well... MICU - Medical ICU, we see lots of ARDS, sepsis, respiratory distress, ESLD, overdoses just to name a few SICU - Surgical ICU, we see lots of traumas, post surgical cas...

The 10 mL of air comment really scares me here. I too have heard (and done) bubble studies with TTE or TEE's, in which we use 1 mL of air and 10 mL's of saline, agitated with 2 syringes and a stopcock. But never for placement of a line. That study i...

Not sure where you can get Dexmedetomaine (Precedex) cheaper than propofol or midaz, Dex costs roughly 55 dollars/200 mcg bottle, while Midaz costs about a dollar/mg. Considering Dex is dosed in mcg/kg/hr, while midaz is mg/hr, that is a substantial...

UW Hospitals and Clinics in Madison is also a Level 1 Center.

As far as the air emboli, no worries on a little air. Even a few mL's of air will not harm patients. There is actually a cardiac study called a bubble study in which you inject saline with bubbles in it to see how the heart is functioning... For spik...