MN-Nurse

It isn't a primary concern or goal of my union and there is no evidence of them spending any resources on the effort. The redistribution of wealth - upward - is what is actually happening and should be a concern to the country.

Interesting. Disdain for the people who work for you and reverence for a single overpaid person at the top. Remember when North Memorial Hospital's CEO was caught in a prostitution sting on his wife's birthday? Did you enjoy how he trickled on you? North Memorial CEO arrested in prostitution bust | StarTribune.com Even after that episode, they simply found another overpaid lump to slide right into his position at a same or higher salary. Executive pay has gone insane in the last few decades and the skyrocketing benefits of CEOs (whose compensation is determined in boards made up of other CEOs) has NOT led to better conditions for rank and file workers.

Yep. Hospital CEO salaries made a very conspicuous public run during a recent RN strike.

Do NOT send anything of the sort. Do not voice your displeasure. Do not do anything but nod and say, "I'll do my best." Then use all that energy you would have spent on the letter and protest and go find a better job. When you find that better job, resign.

Do long hours of work still exists today? Yes. How many hours per week (avg) do you work? 38 Do you see medical facilities in your area reducing or increasing hours? It fluctuates almost constantly at my facility. There is either an abundance of open shifts and overtime or there is none.

The diverters get pretty good at it. I had an instructor who was duped by a coworker who kept fake med vials in her pockets and was extremely good at pocketing the real med, switching to the fake one and "wasting" it. She would then keep the "waste" for herself and give the patient a lower dose (eventually none) of the actual med. I don't use narcotics but one could easily do this if he or she saved carpujects. Just palm a carpuject vial filled with water, pull a real one out of the pyxis (right in front of a coworker if necessary) insert the palmed one into the device, spray the fake med into the trash during the waste. Usually coworkers only witness the wasting of the contents and not the actual pulling of the meds so you don't need to be Penn & Teller to fool anyone.

I am fan of the Nurse Jackie show. The show has almost nothing to do with nursing - much like MASH had nothing to do with the Korean War, but it's entertaining. The one thing I always notice is that EVERYONE on the show (EMTs, MDs, nurses) wears their stethoscopes backward. They stick way out from the actor's head every time. I remember thinking, "I know they have nurse technical advisors, why are they all doing it wrong?" I realized, well if you aren't used to handling a stethoscope and you weren't actually listening to anything in them...if you put them in correctly, they would blast your ears as you banged them into things. But if you put them in backwards, the sound is muffled. So I figured the actors were putting them in backwards on purpose. So use a stethoscope that has the acoustics killed or put the dang thing in in backwards.

I found the chemistry extremely helpful.

Look up "Basic Metabolic Panel" (blood chemistry test) and look at the levels given. Then look up the effects and treatments for ranges that are too high or low for each result and you will see a whole lot of nursing content.

I would have given it and rescheduled all subsequent administrations to start 12 hours after the time I gave it.

I've heard of these horror stories and have some idea why the misuse of pens would occur. My hospital pharmacy is fairly bad at getting medications to the floors in a timely matter. Except when it comes to insulin pens. When we first got the pens, pharmacy took their usual sweet time getting them to us. So we used the few remaining multi-use vials we had on hand during the switchover to pens (with the correct needles, for pete's sake). However, we had to override the barcode scanner on the MAR because we were not using the prescribed pen. Multiple insulin MAR overrides got sent up the chain and management began bellowing, "WHY AREN'T YOU USING THE PENS?!?!?!" "Because we don't have them. Pharmacy takes hours to send them - or just doesn't send them at all - and patients need the freaking insulin." Someone then shook pharmacy's tree. Hard. New insulin pen orders now arrive in a timely fashion. If a pen is empty or lost - it replaced very quickly on request. I can easily imagine a scenario where another facility would remove the vials and insulin syringes and decree "Pen only" - and then NOT supply the pens needed. This would force the staff to either not give any insulin or use the same pen for different patients. The pharmacy department loves it because they don't have to fill orders, the purchasing department loves it because they buy fewer pens. The staff hates it, but they feel they have no other choice. Management (the source of the entire problem) looks the other way - until they get found out. Then when the kimchee hits the fan they do what management weenies do best - they blame the nurses and "remove" the pens. Pens that were not used properly because management, again, didn't do their freaking jobs.

Those nurses you admire for their mastery learned a lot of their lessons the hard way. I once asked a Red Cross Nurse sticking me for a platelet donation, "How do you get so good at that?" She replied, "You screw it up."

JCAHO.

You went in to get an unnecessary round of vitals and cut the cheese while you were at it? Well done! Oh to answer your question, no, I've never done that. If I am handing someone their walking papers, I'm not taking their vitals.

You're already out of it. Got a new gig and everything. Keep going. With respect to the predictions of doom from HR, it is total BS. The HR/management drones giving you the apocalyptic scenario are going to quit or get fired eventually - and in that environment sooner than later. The employment pendulum is going swing the other way again and the new HR/management drones will be hiring recruiting agencies who will be ringing your phone off the hook. At which time you may politely tell them to perform impossible anatomical feats with their pleas. It is a huge game and the people playing don't understand they are rats in a big maze with no comprehension of how small their lives and existences are.

I put my head down, power through it and find another job as fast as I can.

Associate degree RN, graduated May, 2011. I owe $21,246.13 in school loans. Truth be told, there is probably another $3,000-$4,000 on my credit card related to school expenses. In better news, I have so far made $114,347.23 working as an RN.

This reminds me of one of my favorite stories from my previous engineering career. The Manufacturing Manager was hiring for assembly positions and told applicants, "We have a zero-tolerance drug policy." One applicant asked, "Even pot??"

The best way to do something in clinical is to ask the instructor or preceptor how they do it, then do it that way.

In general, newer nurses work the night shift. I found them generally to be far more helpful, fun, and nicer to be around than many of the ever-complaining burnout cases on days.

You take any population of sufficient size and you will find some jerks. No biggie. As far as the management drone descending on you because of what the roommate reported, well that is what they do. You think they left bedside nursing to help your sorry butt? They have no other purpose in life but to come down on you for this and the more cases they pursue, the better they think they are doing their job.

I blame his dad for that. During the Bush I presidency, I noticed many conservative acquaintances pronouncing it "nu-cue-ler" on purpose when they previously had pronounced it correctly. When Palin shot the level of conservative yahoo-ism to stratospheric heights (standing on the shoulders of GWB) I think people started to turn. "Hey maybe we should stop sounding like idiots."

Me too. And CEOs, celebrities, captains of industry, doctors,... Wait, you weren't talking about incontinence care were you?

I have found that some patients can just get to you, and some cannot. When patients go mining for emotions, I find it works to be a dry well.

The only thing worse would be doing 8 hour day/night shifts - like I did until I got another position. At least with 12s you get a little more time to recover.