not now RN

Go for the extra education, more education is never a loss. No problems here. My facility just took away the special pay they were giving nurses for extra shifts worked. This pay was much more than time and a half, it was supposed to last six to eigh...

My son will get all vaccinations except for varicella and HepB. If he doesn't get chicken pox by the time he's four then I'll vaccinate him. As far as HepB goes, my four month old isn't having sex or doing IV drugs, the vaccine can wait. Many non-vax...

Pros: -A daily routine -Becoming familiar with your residents which actually makes your job easier (i.e. I can Mattie to take her pills if I do this, Ted can usually be found next to the roses, ect) -If you are a LVN/LPN it pays more than the hospita...

I wear a long sleeved shirt under my scrubs and a black or dark blue hoodie. My old NM forbid them but my new NM is her polar opposite and doesn't care. The only time I wore a lab coat was in school.

I've seen one nurse wear her white cap. She was younger too, only in her early 40's. She wouldn't wear all white though, she'd wear regular colored/printed scrubs with her cap. I have two caps, one from LVN school and one from RN school, we didn't w...

I hate reading charts and not knowing what the writer is saying because it's messy or full of abbreviations that I don't understand. For that reason alone I don't abbreviate in my charting. Ever. When I worked in LTC I wrote everything out. Now I'm i...

That's what I was gonna suggest. I don't remember the name of them either.

Got the flu shot once, years ago when I was a phlebotomist, and didn't get the flu. Haven't had a flu shot since and came down with the flu once, the same year I didn't work in a health care setting. Actually, I wasn't working at all that year. Last...

I don't have some huge sense of pride because I'm an RN but my mom sure is proud that I am. I don't hide the fact but I don't shout it from the rooftops either. I am VERY grateful to be an RN because it's a profession that I really enjoy, I earn a v...

Our pharmacists are so fast to arrive that we hardly ever use the meds in the crash cart. The just show up with a big bag of meds, needles, syringes and start drawing up what the doc orders except bags of meds/fluids. It's great because it leaves nur...

Five minutes. Maybe ten if I hit all the red lights.

I used to work nights on a med-surg floor. If there were multiple open beds on the floor the team lead based it on acuity. If you didn't like it, tough. If you were swamped at the moment it would come into consideration but with multiple empty beds ...

My facility is odd. They have stopped hiring LVN's in all acute care except ED and urgent care. Urgent care only staffs LVN's and the LVN's in ED are regulated to the "fast track" area of the ED. All LVN's left in other departments were either encour...

I was in the same boat as the OP. I loved what I learned on my ortho/med-surg floor but I was drowning every night. I loved my co-workers but I hated going to work. I wanted to go to ICU but didn't have enough experience so the director of critical ...

I totally agree with the PP that getting patients up and walking is the ideal but sometimes it's not gonna happen. Thigh highs make patients sweaty, so do knee highs. I find that to be the biggest complaint from all my patients next to "It's just an...

I thought it lowers the seizure threshold in high doses like 450 mg or more a day. So wouldn't a smaller dose (75 mg or so) not be considered a risk?

I read in one of my pharmacology texts that if a woman is having sexual problems due to SSRI's (anorgasmic, I think the term was? And/or lack of desire) the patient can be switched to Wellbutrin which will actually increase desire and the ability to ...

If I can't get them to eat any type of balanced meal I just give them what they want. One of my residents always had bags of cheetoes and orange fingers but she ate so family was happy. She also would refuse our food but loved any kind of fast food (...

I think IVPB is getting confused with low porting a med. With a piggyback the primary infusion stops while the PB runs. If you "low port" a med then the regular fluids (NS, 1/2NS, ect) is running on it's own pump and another med (cardizem, ativan, e...

Who keeps track of who's getting called off? We have a schedule book and in the front it lists those who have floated to another unit or those who have been called off and the dates. When the census is low it goes in this order: registry, PRN, OT, pa...

I hate condom caths for the reason everyone else does, they fall off or leak constantly. They do come in small sizes though. I remember and older nurse (been a nurse longer than I've been alive) that told me "Make them feel better. Show them the lar...

So far I've seen the following orders in acute care: "Wine with all meals." "One can of (insert beer brand here) with all meals." "One can of (insert beer brand here) QHS PRN." These all came up on meal trays or dietary would stock the fridge with ...

If I don't take my med I can't function at work. My concentration is shot, my head is all over the place, I can't keep my priorities in line, I can't hustle like I should and I crumble under stress. I stopped my med when I got pregnant and had to go ...

After today I totally could have written that OP. I was losing my mind this afternoon and all I get is "This order was written two hours ago and you didn't get it done?" Um...no, I was trying to keep the other guy from hurting himself, then he went ...

In my last semester of clinical we were not assigned patients until that morning. The thought being that in the real world you don't know before hand what patients you are going to get so you'll never have time to do a careplan or look up meds before...