vintage_RN BSN, RN

me...on night shift...as I shove my 2nd slice of cold leftover pizza into my mouth at 1:53AM: "dude...settle down...."

I started out in adult med-surg for 3 years and then went to the NICU. I'll never work with icky adults again!

We have a few males in our NICU. I would suggest trying to get into a level 3 or higher NICU (I think you have level 4 in the states?) because you will see more critical babies and "true ICU" patients there. I would say generally it is a happy place....

My challenge may just be the place where I work and the culture. I came from adults where I did everything...IVs, venous draws, central line dressings, complex wound care etc. In the NICU I work in, you have to be selected to get trained to do IVs, o...

This is a tough one...on one hand I can see her position...because I have felt that way and it isn't fun. I work in a large NICU, and it is very catty. There is a "cool girls group" like we're in high school that excludes others...it really makes for...

Our charge RN does not take an assignment. We have 2 charge RN per shift (67 bed NICU)...they cant possibly take that many responsibilities effectively!

Our orientation is 30 shifts plus about 2 weeks of in class and some other education days mixed in (NICU)

Just curious as to the practice at other hospitals, whether this is standard or not. Here we do RSI (rapid sequence intubation) for all intubations....Atropine, Fentanyl and Rocuronium (or Succinylcholine if intubating for surfactant only) given prio...

Its night shift and this is where my brain is going. Just some fun at 3AM... What are some common misconceptions and/or truths about your specialty, or that you have about other specialties? For example, people often think in the NICU we just hold, ...

I did a high school volunteer placement in the NICU, filing papers and whatnot. But I got to sit in on rounds and listen and see what it was like there. It made me want to be a nurse and work in the NICU. I worked with adult surgical patients for a f...

I work at another children's hospital in Ontario and we only hire RN's.

We do all those same things as well. I was a little harsh with saying 45 days. Our longest ever was 130 days, which we just had another one so we're back to 0. I wonder what the variance is.

I have to agree with what the others have said here. I understand how it can feel to be overwhelmed, and feel like there is no one supporting you. It isn't a good feeling. Your preceptors, experienced L&D nurses, have had concerns about your abil...

What are you guys doing to go this long? We usually manage to make it around 45 days or so before we get another one

We use little plastic beakers with warm tap water, put the feed in a plastic bag into the beaker. We also have very high NEC rates. I don’t know what the correlation would be, as the feeds are prepared sterily in syringes for tube feeds and wouldn’t ...

We use poseys to secure vent tubing to the crib.

all of our Intubated babies are RT/RN handles. We’ve see our unplanned extubation rate decline dramatically since introducing this.

I find it a bit weird and unnecessary. In Canada, they have just only released the NICU nursing speciality exam through the Canadian nurses association last year. I feel like NICU is so specialized in its own right that you don’t need all these sub s...

We do not routinely check for residuals. That being said, I do check placement via aspiration prior to each feed. This means sometimes I do get residuals when I do that. Often when I tell the docs they give me hell for checking, but you have to check...

Not sure what level you work in @adventure_rn...I’m in a level 3 in Canada (tertiary centre, highest level with all the sickest babies of the region)...and we have a lot of codes, we’ve had at least one every shift this set alone! Lots of very sick b...

Yikes! This is something I’ve never heard of and definitely not something we do in our NICU. Actually all intubated patients are a 2 person RT/RN handle due to having many unplanned extubations.

We don’t swaddle any of our little ones, only once they’re old or term babies. How can you assess their belly and skin/colour/breathing without waking them up all the time?

I worked part time as an RPN and did the bridge full time. It was busy, my last year when I had consolidation placements I had 1 day off a month. But I did it. And it’s worth it.

I did! And now I’ve been working in the NICU for 2 years and I love it. Best decision ever.

I like seeing stuff come up when I suction an ETT. I like making my patient a nice bed with clean, matching cute linens. And getting my babies all snuggled up with their positioning aides to make them look all cozy (im in NICU)...it’s very satisfying...