Nursemommi

I agree with Annaiya. I had a hard time with this when I first started! I still - 6 yrs later - am a list maker. I can be flighty at times! I think "forgetting" little things here and there are ok as long as its not an every shift issue. So what if you forgot to empty the foley bag this shift - you had a busy day and ran around. Most nurses coming on will see that and understand. And my motto is "I have 12 hrs to fix it". I dont care what you missed, you were busy, the kid is fine. Idont care if the room is a mess. As long as you did your best and werent being lazy its ok. Side note: not all nurses are like this though :) Good luck - keep your head up and you'll be fine. People notice the effort!

Atropine, bicarb. Our staff is given a trifold orange "code card" its double sided. It has 5 pages for meds (1 for logo of course:)). Pg. 1 Epi anaphylaxis and code - concentrations and weight based chart. Pg. 2 Atropine - weight based chart. Pg 3 - intubation chart per age. Pg. 4 Safe ranges for emergency meds like dopamine, milrinone, nipride etc. Misc med doses - adenosine, narcan etc. Pg 5 - NS bolus doses, defib doses and RS intubation order. Any questions let me know. We also get a card for analgesia doses in peds.

Hi there :). We are a 20 bed PICU with many cardiac surgeries. Our current practice for art line blood draws is an open system. These babies that come back from the OR and need hourly labs loose a lot of blood for the 2cc "waste" that per our protocol we are not supposed to return unless ordered per the docs. We are looking into getting an inline system where the blood can be returned without risk of infection. Our NICU returns blood in their UACs but its not "inline" either. Hope to hear back from you soon! ~A.

Hey there, just letting you know I went through the same thing. I had a friend that I used to work with that actually looked at the CDC website and said that (i believe) if you have 5 rounds of the vaccine and your titer is low, if your immunity will go crazy if you actually get Hep B. She showed this to HR and our nurse manager and did not get her 6th dose. I did the same. Take it with a grain of salt though.

Ill be waiting in anticipation. Even though I may not be good to answer, I'll try :)

I think one of the hardest times I've had thus far as a PICU nurse is when we had a boy about 9 admitted for "the flu" as his parents thought. He was about my sons age and before that perfectly healthy. He was funny, witty, and sarcastic - as was his family (which made me think of my own). After an ECHO found that he had a 15% EF i think give or take. And soon after was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, placed on a VAD and awaited a transplant. In the mere 4 months he had to wait he would cook for us and do magic in the hall. he became friends with a little girl who had ALL (i believe). She was in and out of our unit and they loved to play tricks on us. Shortly before he got his heart transplant, she entered the ER with a head bleed and hours later was fixed and dilated. We all cried the day he walked to her room to tell her goodbye. Like I said, he got his heart, was doing great and came back to visit many times to squirt us nurses with saline syringes :). No one knows why but 9 months after transplant, he went into full rejection. Parents took it in stride, always hoping for the best. He was placed back on the VAD and shortly after that stroked. I felt like he came in when I came to the PICU so I will always remember him. I still have his obituary on my fridge, as his 1 year passing was last month. These kids make me squeeze my own a little tighter each night, and take my baby out of his crib when I get home after a long day just to rock him and be thankful theyre healthy and safe. I love my job.

New Year's Eve and the thread goes dead :). Lets pick it up again?!

We use standard tubing - we call it Dex. In our PICU we dont have lipid tubing. We use standard for that too, just change the full setup every 24

What an excellent post and interesting to read all the responses. We have a social worker where I work in the PICU that when asked "How do you know when they (the child) are done?" She simply replies "I think when you ask that question" "It comes when we find ourselves doing things TO them and not FOR them anymore" I was recently faced with a very difficult passing of a child with whom I had bonded with as well as his family. His parents were split - one wanted to continue, one was done. As staff we knew we were doing things TO him. I found myself tearing up with every assessment. Hugging parents, and letting them know that we are behind them in whatever decision they make. I think that once you disconnect yourself from the patients so far that you cannot involve yourself emotionally to grieve for a passing soul it is time to find a new unit.