sarahlee23 LPN

At my facility, when a med aid is scheduled on one of our halls for day or PM shift (we never have med aids on at night), the nursing-specific tasks are assigned to the nurses on the other 3 halls. Each of our 4 halls is divided up into thirds, and ...

My classmates in nursing school thought I was nuts because I knew when I started that I wanted to work in LTC. At the time I had been working as a CNA in basic care, and I loved working with that age group. Even after all my clinicals in other area...

I recently had one of the CNAs I work with on nights tell me that she likes working with me and that I'm easy to respect because I listen to the CNAs, I pitch in and help them when needed, and I have good ideas. That CNA is wonderful, and I really n...

I work nights in LTC, and one night I was giving one of the residents with dementia a wheelchair ride around the building since sometimes that helped settle him. At one point he turned to me in his wheelchair and said "Do I need to call your mother?...

I talk to myself quite a bit. The CNAs I work with regularly don't even bat an eye anymore when I do it. Anyone who picks up a night shift is usually caught off guard when I start in. Usually I'm talking about my own clumsiness, wondering why I ca...

It does get better as the residents get to know you as well. I've had some residents get upset because I was late with meds or didn't bring them at the specific time they want them (one lady I care for wants her 12am meds at 12:30am) when I first st...

I usually work the night before and the night after our nurses meetings. I only go to the ones that are scheduled so they fall when I have that night off (which happens once a year). I keep telling everyone at work that I will start waking up and g...

I have a BA in English. I realized as I was finishing the degree that while I love writing, I didn't want to make that my full time job. So went to nursing school because I loved my summer job as a CNA.

To me accessing the port instead of just doing a peripheral draw is worth it if that's what the patient prefers. But then, I had a port put in for chemo last year. My veins were hard to find before chemo, and it's even worse now. And after chemo, ...

My mom used to be horrible about calling when I'm sleeping for work. And she wouldn't call just once...she'd call up to six times in a row and leave at least 3 voicemails. So I started turning the volume on my phone low enough that it wouldn't wake...

Sorry about your grandma. At my facility, we check the wanderguards every shift to make sure they're working, but we've still had a few issues. A couple weeks ago someone eloped and even though her wanderguard was working the alarm never went off wh...

I worked with a nurse who was from Korea for awhile. She spoke English well, but when she first started working she struggled with the charting. As she gained experience and got better with written English, her charting improved quite a bit. She w...

Can you just schedule it online? When I scheduled mine, I had to do it online because when I called they told me there were no available times the day I wanted to test, but I was able to schedule for the day and time I wanted online.

I had a knee brace on prior to surgery when I took my NCLEX a couple years ago. They asked if I really needed it, and once I told them I was supposed to wear it until surgery they let me leave it on. But they did check to make sure I hadn't stuffed...

In addition to assessing the resident and checking whether the low blood pressure is normal or part of a trend, I also check with the CNA to see which arm was used for the blood pressure and have the blood pressure checked on the other arm. There ar...

I work nights as an LPN in a LTC facility. This most likely isn't all the procedures I've done, just the ones I can think of right now. In addition to the procedures you've listed, I've had to do blood draws, start an IV, give meds through central ...

I don't plan on going back to school for RN any time soon either. Even during nursing school people acted like I was crazy for not going on for RN right away. But I want to get student loans paid off before I even think about going back to school. ...

When I was a CNA, it would take me forever to get a blood pressure because I just couldn't hear it. When I started nursing school, I got one of the better Littman stethoscopes, and I've rarely had a problem since as long as I use my stethoscope. We...

I graduated in December and took the NCLEX the first week of January, only a couple days after I got my authorization to test. The only reason I did it so soon was I knew I would be having knee surgery and didn't want to try studying while on pain m...

We had to do this for my med-surg and peds clinicals. The only difference was that our clinical instructor went in before we got there and assigned us patients. So we usually didn't run into the problem of having our patient discharged before we ha...

I would just add to be willing to stay a little later at clinical if it means that you get a chance to see something cool or do something new. I had a few clinical days where I ended up getting done later than I was supposed to, but it was worth it ...

We were taught what is and isn't in our scope of practice throughout the nursing program. Then during the very last week one morning they gave us a printed copy of what's in our scope of practice, went through it with us, made sure we knew where to ...

When my sister started her nursing program she got a Littman Master Cardiology and loved it. When I started my nursing program I got a Master Cardiology as well because my sister's stethoscope was the first one that I had used that I could hear well...

Either chocolate or Coke. My inhaler since about the time I leave that at home something triggers my asthma at work. My stethoscope as the ones at work are either terrible or are missing the earpieces. Penlight because otherwise I'll be stuck usin...

I was hired on the spot for my job. Which surprised me because I was interviewing while recovering from major knee surgery. I'd been out of the knee immobilizer for 2 days and off crutches for maybe a day when I interviewed, so I had a major limp. ...