kk2021

I was doing a fundal massage on a patient who had just delivered her baby. Her family was in the room, so I was doing my best to keep her covered while still being able to asses her bleeding-which meant I was leaning forward a bit to see under the lifted sheet. When I pressed on her belly, it released a huge fart....right in my face! It scared me and I very obviously jumped back. I felt so bad!

Hi everyone! I am currently finishing up my first travel assignment. A few of the other travelers I have been working with have told me that they use multiple agencies. Does anyone have experience with this? I'm just wondering how it works-what do you tell your recruiter when you decide to take another company's contract? Also, is it worth it when you are switching your benefits from company to company? Thanks for any input!

Have you had your OB clinical yet? For me personally, I found the classroom and textbook part of OB hard to understand until I was actually doing it and seeing it in clinical. Now I am an OB nurse and absolutely love it, but it didnt necessarily start out that way!

One of the OBs I worked with had silly tidbits from the patients' prenatal visits. One that I can remember said, "good fetal movement, no ctx, bleeding, or leaking of fluid ... pt has PINK HAIR !!!" I definitely laughed out loud reading that one.

I worked L&D for 3 years in Nola before I started traveling (not at ocshner). It's crazy busy, and you will care for a very diverse patient population. We absolutely loved our travelers and were so thankful to have them. I'm going to link to a recent post I came across to give you an idea of what it can be like-truly, I witnessed this first hand on many shifts..even with all of that said, I must be crazy because I loved it and hope to go back one day! And you absolutely cannot beat the city of New Orleans! Good luck! https://allnurses.com/ob-gyn-nursing/staffing-safety-issues-1014230.html

Hello! Can anyone tell me if/when your AWHONN fetal monitoring certification expires? My certificate doesn't say and I can't seem to find it on the awhonn website. Thanks!

My thoughts exactly! They have tons of bags that we have already learned and practiced doing this last year..I honestly do not see the point of purchasing this bag. We have our first lab next week, so I guess I'll find out

We were all shocked..this is our 6th semester and up until this point, all the IV supplies have been provided for us. The school is a separate health sciences center, consisting of the medical school, the dental school, the nursing school, allied heath, and physical therapy. So the budget should allow for things like IV supplies--it's not just a college campus with a nursing major. I work at a hospital as a nurse tech, and could possibly get some of these supplies, but I've already purchased the bag so I guess it's useless :/ I will definitely be complaining, and maybe the future classes will be spared from this ridiculousness!

Thanks for your replies! I thought it seemed odd too. The bookstore isn't directly selling the fluids, they just received the pre-packaged, zip-tied bags and actually had no idea what was in them! I am going to e-mail my course coordinator and complain (not like it will do much good, considering I already bought the bag). It's just so frustrating because I am on an extremely tight budget, and it really makes me mad that I spent so much money on this dang bag!

Hey everyone! Hopefully someone can help me with this question. My school is required us to buy these mysterious bags for sim lab. I am a senior, and this is brand new. The bags are zip-tied and once opened, cannot be returned to the bookstore. No one at the bookstore knew what was in them, and the teachers just kept saying it was mandatory. I finally decided to buy one--at $85, and when I opened it up, it was nothing but a 500 ml bag of 0.9% sodium chloride, one IV primary tubing, and a disposable infuse-stat pressure bag. Do these things cost that much? They are all one time usage things meaning we will use them ONE time in the lab. Normally the school provides these things for us. Maybe they are running low on supplies or resources, but $85 for these 3 things?! Thanks for any input!

Yeeea, this one is tricky! I agree with the other poster about doing a self-care deficit for the sake of ease, but if your instructor is a stickler for priority dx that might not work. I'm drawing a blank on an outcome, but here's a few possible interventions (in no particular order): -assist with range-of-motion exercises (if this is even possible, and if PT isn't already doing this) -turn q2hrs to prevent formation of pressure ulcers -assess for skin breakdown that can result from impaired mobility -assess neurologic system (LOC, language, cranial nerves, etc) -assist patient with ADLs -educate family (if they are present during her stay) on importance of position changes and S/S of skin breakdown Hope this helps a little..good luck!

I don't have too many tips, but I can tell you how my mental rotation went! It was an acute inpatient unit, and there was a pretty high turnover rate. First thing in the morning, would get report. Then on the floor we would get all the vitals, bring the patients into the dining area, and assist those who needed help eating. We would do our mental status assessments at some point (whenever we got the chance). Then sometimes we would sit in with the doctors and residents as they discussed each case and brought in each patient to discuss how everything was going/any treatment changes. Other days we would stay on the unit and have really casual, conversational sessions on things like nutrition or relaxation techniques. Other times we would listen to guided imagery tapes. After lunch we would usually play a game, like pictionary, bingo, fill in the blank (like hang-man, but we didn't call it that or use the hanging man for obvious reasons;)), or finger painting. This hospital didn't want us, the students, giving meds for some reason, but we would observe the nurse who did it in the mornings. It was a pretty easy going rotation and very interesting! The main tip I can give is to just be as comfortable as you can be. I was worried at first thinking that I wouldn't know what to say or do around this patient population, but just jump in and don't hold yourself back! Just remember all those therapeutic responses you learned about in lecture:specs: I'm currently in peds, but I've only had a week so far. I have a pretty bad teacher though. But basically we get report, check the charts, do an initial assessment (VS, check IVF, daily weights, etc), and start charting. We draw up our 9 AM meds and need to be prepared to give them by 8 with our instructor. After meds, we do baths and linen changes, more vitals, and more charting. And then we report off and are done by 12:30! We are off the unit pretty early compared to what I've normally done. I know every hospital/teacher is different, but I hope that helps a little bit in terms of what to expect!

All I needed was clarification about that so thank you! That makes me feel a lot better about the whole situation.

PS-I know I could just go to the course coordinator initially, but these teachers are all friends and have worked together for years. So I don't want to bring this up if it's not as big of a deal as I suspect. That's why I'm coming here to ask for advice and insight from experienced nurses.

I get the point about not using tubing that had been out. I should have known better and there's no real excuse except for the fact that my instructor told me to do it this way (still not excusable and I won't do it again). I also understand that all IVs need to be flushed of air..that was the main issue here-that the teacher did not instruct my classmate to do so, and said no when we both asked about it in the room. From your link.. "However, complications have been reported with as little as 20 mL of air[7] (the length of an unprimed IV infusion tubing) that was injected intravenously." ^This combined with the fact that this was a tiny infant makes me feel like this could have been a really serious issue had the infusion continued. I guess I am looking for reassurance that I'm not crazy and that she did make a mistake/my classmate and I did the right thing. This instructor is literally ZERO help. She laughed at us when we did a calculation "wrong" (it was NOT wrong, but that is a whole different story that I won't go into). I take clinical very seriously and do not want to come out more confused than before; however, I'm getting nothing back from this teacher, and I feel like this is an important issue. Also I'm wondering if I should report this incident to my course coordinator, but if I was wrong about how important of a safety issue is, then I don't need to do so.

I appreciate both of your responses, and I will definitely remember to not use an IV line that had been sitting out for a few hours. However, the line was full of air. My instructor immediately stopped the infusion (luckily before it had really started infusing), disconnected it from the port, got a basin and primed the line. And like I said, this was not a pump where the line runs through it so it can detect air. It was a syringe attached to a pump, connected to the line which was directly connected to a port on the primary line going into the patient. So are you saying that it still would not begin infusing if there was air in the line? How would it know to not infuse? I'm sorry I have so many questions about this, but like I said this was only my second day in this rotation, and as you can probably tell my instructor is not the most helpful.

Congratulations on your acceptance! I don't know anything about WCU, but as a fellow nursing student, get ready for the ride of your life! It's hard, exhausting, and stressful, but also so rewarding and so worth it in the end!

I just finished my L&D/Newborn rotation, and here's a few of the dx we used for the newborns that were instructor-approved: -Risk for infection: newborns immune systems are not fully developed, and therefore are put at high risk for developing infections. This is why hand hygiene is crucial in the nursery. Also, this is why we bath the infants ASAP once the temperature is stable, because any possible bacteria or anything from mom's blood that is on them could cause an infection. -Risk for ineffective thermoregulation: Babies don't shiver, and the signs of heat loss are harder to detect. When they lose heat, peripheral vasoconstriction occurs (causing acrocyanosis or mottling) and their respiratory effort increases. Check out this article on thermoregulation:http://neonatalnetwork.metapress.com/content/473r60h611222317/fulltext.pdf Hope this helps! If i come across anymore that I remember, I'll post it here!

Alright, so I am a nursing student in my pediatric rotation. Today was the second day of this clinical for us, so everything is still pretty new. My patient was 5wks old, only 7.6 pounds. Early in the shift, my instructor came with me to put a new secondary line in the room as the first one had been damaged somehow. Because there was no medications running through that line at the time, we left it coiled up with the tape around it so that the next person to use it would know it had air in it and needed to be primed. A few hours later, we went in to set up the med..my classmate was doing it and I was observing from the back (this was the first time either of us had done this). My instructor was walking through the methods with the other student, and I noticed that they did not prime the line, so I asked "shouldn't she prime that line?" She said "No, it's already been done." I assumed that since I was standing in the back, I may have missed when my classmate did this. The second we walked out, I asked her if she primed it, she said no. We immediately went to the teacher to tell her that an IV line full of air was about to infuse into this patient, and she just acted like it was no big deal. She calmly got up and walked down the hall to fix the error, and did not say a word about it to either of us afterwards. Am I crazy or could this have been a fatal mistake? Both of us said something in the room about it, and it's like she didn't take us seriously because she's the teacher and we are just the students. Any advice on what I should do about this, if anything? Sidenote--this was not one of those pumps that the line runs through that can detect when there is air in the line..it's one of the ones that you attach the syringe to and the line connects directly to a port on the primary line and then you set a time to be infused (sorry I don't know all the technical name of everything..clueless student here!)