KeepinitrealCCRN

Might as well have the family members inside the OR too while you're at it! PACU is no place for visitors and should be an open room for safety issues! Why would you want to risk the safety of pts by having visitors inside the PACU and walls??? Image if they all had visitors so that would be an additional 10 people inside the PACU and what if another pt codes? Awful idea!

I would do an incident report for unsafe staffing every time Im tripled. It is unsafe and you shouldn't put up with it.

Never only in CTICU.

For me I don't think it is safe. You have more medications running together, you might need to flush the IV site or if there's an emergency and you use that line to push meds through or hanging piggy back medications you might make a mistake. Also changes in rates will push more or less medications through the line. For example I would never Y site levophed to IV fluids but that is just me. Of course some patients are hard sticks or you only have limited options so you have to do it.

Any high risk medications I run alone if possible no matter compatibility.

Maybe not the question you asked but I would never Y site anything to a heparin drip. I always run heparin alone even if it is compatible with other medications.

Nope. The IV drips have nothing to do with your arterial line blood draw.

I would only bring it up if they ask you what your plans are for the future.

Please take everyone else's job off my plate so I can do my own job, that would be great. Thanks.

Agree with everything above. MICU is hell on earth. ECMO is also boring and depending on where you work a perfusionist might run the machine so you really don't do anything with that. You need to learn hemodynamics and managing emergency situations and intubations. CTICU or Surgical/Trauma ICU are your best bet for experience. Go for CSICU if your goals are CRNA or NP as they favor that type of experience over MICU.

Well if you can read between the lines what I was trying to say was grades are not everything. I've seen many new graduates "top of their class" and they are not good nurses. It takes more than a GPA to be a good nurse.

I don't want a 4.0 GPA nursing student working alongside me. I'd like someone with some common sense, critical thinking skills, hardworking and knows how to communicate with people. You can teach most people the skills to being a nurse but you cannot teach common sense. They need to develop different testing measures for nursing school other than GPAs.

Everyone should come together and help out. Even if they are just transporting pts, putting IVs in or giving meds. The MICU nurses should not have to be the only ones working with the Covid pts in this very stressful time.

School nursing is a specialty just like any other. I cannot imagine doing that ever! To me it is hard and has a specific set of challenges.

A BP of 90s/60s is not a rapid response (maybe there was more to it). It seems like you did all the right things and I would not be worried at all. I wish certain family members would fire me!