allamericangirl

Ran our butts off all night ... and one of our post Post Op Pts went wacko running down the hall pulling his IV pole, his buns flapping in the wind, and smacking nurses out of his way... took 6 security guards to settle him down! :rotfl:

There are 720 total minutes in a 12-hour shift. Last night I completed my fifteenth day working as a PCT. This includes the days I was in training. I work 1900 to 0730 hrs. This is my 1st job working as a CNA. I work 3 - 12s, back to back. This is my 1st experience as a CNA. :smackingf I am the only Tech on our floor at night. I am in Med-Surgery and Barriatrics. We have 22 PT beds. I had 19 Pts, divided among 4 nurses at 5, 5, 5, & 4 Pts. I do 3 sets of VS and 2 sets of IOs per Pt. and 9 additional sets of VS (4/ 3/ and 2) ... on Post Ops. Last night, I had 3 Post Ops, and 1 new Pt, in my total of 19 Pts. I took a total of 106 sets of VS and IOs! If everything goes perfectly, and I take no breaks or lunch, I have a total of 6.8 minutes per Pt, per visit. If Pts are away from their beds, in the bathroom, need help going to the bathroom, need, water, juice, ice, changed, moved up, etc, which they do...Its my job. I also chart 5 times, empty Ngs, all Pt drains, do Blood Sugars, and Foleys. There is a minimum of 2 Techs on the day shift and 5 RNs. I am new and working hard on my speed. I admit I am slow, but I don't stop. Last night the 1st time my butt saw the bottom of a chair was at 11:30 pm. The next time was 3 am. Two 10 minute breaks...and I certainly am not lazy ... but the linen carts did not get filled and the cleaning did not get done, and the laundry hampers did not get emptied for the day sift. I wanted to but there wasn't time. The nurses, though, had time to sit around and discuss their vacations, families, boyfriends, off and on for at least 1 ½ hours. Night before last I had the same Pt load but different Nurses, who helped me, and I got out on time. Maybe some of you just don't understand all of your Techs duties. I am determined to get it all done and have time for 3 - 15 minute breaks and a lunch break too, but it will be a while longer, I'm afraid! god, I'm tired! The biggest problem I'm having is getting trough my first set of VS during visiting hours! Climbing over visitors and running down stray Pts. My next biggest problem is getting the Dynamap to quit sputtering and dragging out the blood pressure readings! Sometimes it takes so long! Definitely need help with the Dynamap!

No doubt we will probably not have a meeting of the minds here. I feel to breast-feed or not to do so, is a matter of choice with neither choice being wrong. The important thing is that a baby be fed and loved. I do feel, however, that too much is made of the breast feeding issue from both sides , and it is an issue that makes new mothers feel guiltly, no matter which option they choose. There is enough for them to worry about without making a big deal out of breast-feeding, especially if it is not working out. Instructions on how to bf dont necessarily get food into the babys mouth. No more said ... have a good day ... :) .

The bottom line is feed the baby. The rest is small stuff! I hate to see femme macho get in the way of what should be the happiest time of her life. I failed at breast feeding and it didnt make my daughter an inferior human being because she had SMA instead of mothers milk. I hate to see my grandson end up in ICU because he is not getting noursiment. (Bravo to your daughter for breastfeeding and for seeking help & support!! I'm sure there will be plenty of issues your daughter will seek help/guidance on while raising her child - this just happens to be one of them.) In the mean time, the baby is not getting fed ... how would you like to go a week without nourisment? What kind of healty start is that? That is NOT small stuff... the rest is small stuff! :stone

my daughter is trying to breast-feed and is totally guilt ridden because it is not working out. she is going in every two days to someone who is counseling her. what is so natural about that?! it makes me angry that this has become such an issue. just more jabber rhetoric to keep the female chained to guilt, promoted by, whom else? other women ... as usual! lezz jes keep them wemen down! stupid crap!! :angryfire feed the baby! enjoy life, and dont sweat the small stuff!

Jim... My husband and I don't go out often. I am not much of a drinker, and have always taken myself and my performance on the job too seriously in every job I've ever worked. I am not athletic, and don't enjoy participating in sports, but I love to dance! When I am overwraught and stressed out, my husband says, "You have 60 minutes! Put on your "dancin' shoes", and lets go!" He takes me out, lets me have a few too many drinks, dances my tail off, drives me safely home and puts me to bed! After that I'm good to go for months! If he didn't help and participate with me, I would probably just explode. Sometimes old sayings are the best sayings because they are true. I know you have heard the term "going out and blowing off a little steam". When too much steam builds up in the steam engine the engine blows up, so the engineer allows it to "blow a little steam"! Be a good engineer and help your wife by being part of a life with her outside of her work and outside of your home. Help her to have more of a life than work and home. Get out and do some things with her that she likes to do. Don't ask her, just start getting some planned outings together and then take her! Good luck. :)

What an ordeal! I took my State Board Exams for my Nurse Aide License over 2 weeks ago. I had to wait over 8 weeks to get scheduled for the state exam after I finished the required hours of schooling :angryfire and then after I took the state test I had to wait 2 nerve-wrecking weeks to find out if I passed or failed. It made me completely NUTS! I thought I was going to lose my mind worrying and waiting ... fussing and stewing! OMG!! A bunch of people that I went to school with failed the state boards and I didn't have any kind of feel about whether I passed or failed. The test shouldn't be that hard, but the testing service "Promissor", has made the Skills portion of the exam ridiculously hard! In the skills portion it is all in the eyes of the beholder, (that is where most of my classmates failed) ... My tester didn't seem to be very objective, but more judgmental, as she was also a new nurse educator! ( I was scared to death! :chair: ) It is so hard to tell with standardized state exams, how you did... they always have so many wacky questions, with questions that could be answered a lot of different ways... you know ...which answer is MOST right! My state has revised the CNA educational and testing program and made it really difficult. Considering the pay scale for CNA's and their scope of practice, it is a little bit overkill. I swear I was ready to start desperation drinking ... especially since I landed my first choice of jobs at my first choice hospital (1 of the top 100 hospitals in the US, 2004) nearly 2 months ago, and they have been waiting for me to pass my exam before my start date. :yelclap: I have been scheduled 2 monthsfor the monthly hospital orientation this coming Monday morning, June 6th and as of last night, Friday... I still didn't know if I had passed or failed the test! SCREAM! They must post new licenses during the night, because when I got up this morning I checked the on line License Registry and there it was!!!!! YEAH!! My name and a license Number behind it! !!!OMG ... Hallelujah! :bugeyes: I start to work Monday morning. I'm jumping up and down ... I'm sooo excited ... and relieved! I get to work on the General Surgery Floor, where I will really learn a lot about bedside nursing! Hallelujah! My nursing career begins! Next, Step #2 ... learn my job and do it well ... and then...start my training toward my LPN! Hubby says he's leaving town when I have to wait for the outcome of that one ... LOL! Oh! I'm sooo HAPPY! :balloons:

:w00t: :thankya: :thankya: :thankya: WOW... Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, for sharing such helpful information!!! I am so excited about getting to move to the Fort Myers area!!! I have wanted to live there since the first time I visited there in 1981! That's a 25 year dream that is going to get to come true and I just can't tell you how happy it is going to be for me! It is all I can do not to pack up my bags today and head SOUTH! I have really been worried about the wages there, but what you quoted is so similar to what they pay here in Denver that there is really very little difference, but the difference inthe cost of living is tremendously less there than here! You can't rent a shed here for $600. and we pay $1,200. for a townhome and that is at the low end of the rent table for a decent area where you aren't bombarded by drive-by-shootings, car jackers, and high rates of intruder break-in, incidents. I have been trying to decide if I want to get my LPN here or if I should wait until I get down there. I would love to have more information about the Florida Workforce Counsel, and find out how and or if they could help me get help with my education. Would you mind sharing what it is costing to go to the High Tech Central program for LPN, how much time it takes to complete the program and what kind of waiting list they have? What are the pre-recs for the program? Maybe I could get that all out of the way here and get on their waiting list and be all ready to go when I get down there!!! I hope that we can keep in touch. It was really nice of you to take your time to respond to my post. I look forward to continued contact with you. Thank you again!!! :)

Back in those days (the 50s and 60s) my Dad had what they called Major Medical Insurance and it had a deductable, something like $200. It covered anything that you had to go to have surgery for from Tonsillectomy, Appendicitis, Heart Attacks, or Cancer care, and accidents like broken bones. You could afford to pay out of your pocket for a doctor's office visit and injections, and vaccinations back then!! It's ridiculous today. A visit to your local doc will run about $145.00 to $195.00 here in the Denver area, and there are no walk in clinics where you can go in and be seen for a cold or the flu for a few bucks. Twelve years ago before we moved to Denver, I lived a short time in the St. Louis area and there was a chain of walk in clinics there where you could go for $25.00 and get checked out and buy your antibiotics from them too and they were very reasonable. I don't know if it is just Denver that has nothing like that or if it is like this all over now! You know that the insurance companies don't pay Drs $145 to $200 for an office visit! And then there is the cost of RX! You could get Penicillin for your infection for $2. to $5. I thought that an expensive med back then was about $20. :angryfire

Thank you. Words unspoken are words unheard. :)

hi angelladyclaire: i lived in springfield for about 20 years before moving to the rocky mountains. it was a beautiful little city, and i always felt the people there to be very nice. did you go to kickapoo or glendale? has spring started there yet? i remember the dogwood and redbud and all of the beautiful flowers that made spring in the ozarks one of my favorite memories! i'm sorry that you couldn't read and understand my post. i corrected the typos, added the n to the i, the m to ore, the word have that dropped and who that dropped. it should be easier for you to comprehend now. possibly you had difficulty with the complex and compound sentence structures. the prof that i had in eng. comp. at drury u. was really big on compound and complex sentences. i also remember the ozarkeze language well! the following is something i found from cambridge university. i think it is really an interesting concept. thought you might enjoy it too. :) "aoccdrnig to rscahecerh at cmbadrgie uvsiertniy it deons't mteatr in waht oedrr the lreetts in a wrod are, the olny iptoramnt tnihg is taht the fsrit and lsat ltteer be at the rhgit pcale. the rset can be a taotl mses and you can sltli raed it wuiohtt a peolbrm. tihs is bsacuee the hmaun mnid deos not raed erevy lteetr by isletf, but the wrod as a wlohe."

Well here is my contribution. I am on a consumer panel that reviews ABC TV shows and this is the opinion that I gave when they solicited it. I used the same letter in Karen's indicated place to email. I'm sure that some of you will not like it, but that is expected. I am writing to express grave concern about the portrayal of the nursing profession in the premiere of "Grey's Anatomy." In my view you blew a fantastic opportunity to show how nurses teach new physicians, and that experienced nurses are highly educated, dedicated individuals with great health knowledge. "A Hard Day's Night" went out of its way to underscore the surgeon's contemptuous views of nurses, and to reinforce the portrayal of nurses as unattractive, under skilled subordinates. There were so few appearances of nurses that it was as if they rarely exist in the hospital environment and that they are rarely used in any capacity of health care when the true fact is that nurses are the caregivers in health care, and in fact the physician's appearance is marginal!. Physicians peek in and out and occasionally appear. You portray this untruthfully and just the opposite of actuality! None of your nurses even have a name! Only surgeons play significant roles in your care discussions, and only their actions matter in patient care, which is a huge untruth! You do not show that the nurses are the caregivers who interact with patients, and provide patient support, NOT the physicians. In real life, nurses provide education and care options to less than knowing interns! The misconception that physicians provide all meaningful care is blatantly pushed beyond repugnancy in your contemptuous definition and endorsement of your surgeons' contemptuous views of nurses. Rhimes said: "the way people look at people on television is the way they perceive the world," and that "we can change the assumptions that people have simply by the images they see in the background of the show." - March 25, 2005, NPR interview: Isaiah Washington and Shonda Rhimes "Gray's Anatomy", another of television's damaging misconceptions of medical care portrayed to the American public to the further determent of the safety of public health! Don't you people have any concept of responsibility to the public, to create positive results in the area a health care, an already DANGEROUS situation to the populous due to the extreme nursing shortage? When will television and ABC take a stand for improving the lives of it's viewers instead of instilling harmful misconceptions of an already broad misconception of medicine? Choose to be part of the solution to the nursing shortage by a positive presentation of nursing in your show and correct your warped, misconstrued, misconceived, and falsely portrayed view of nursing on "Grey's Anatomy." Better yet do a new series, a truthful one about the heroes of health care: NURSES! This is a critical time in US medicine, and the public is at great risk! Help to improve public understanding of nursing, and dispel the public misconceptions which programming like Scrubs, Dr. Kildare, ER, and now Grey's Anatomy perpetuate, falsely portraying Nurses to be the stupid, uneducated, servants of the physician. The BSN degree is a four-year degree, and Nursing of today is filled with advanced masters and doctorate degree nurses! Your untruthful portrayal of nurses being helpless, blue collar, unskilled subordinates of health care is unforgivable. During your seizure patient's code scene: Meredith does a total brain lapse, and the nurse's voice is prompting her: "You need to tell us what you want to do!" Nurses do not need to be told what to do in cases such as these. But your false portrayal shows them waiting for an Intern? to make a decision? NO! Eventually Meredith recovers, initiates and performs defibrillation, saving the patient. NO! The nurses working hard, portrayed to have minimal technical knowledge, and no suggestions for her and helplessly wait for her command. NO! The nurses wait for Meredith to take action to save the patient. NO! You show five nurses with no clue! How ridiculous! The nurses would have immediately done the defibrillation, then would have looked upon her as the idiot that she was! Nurses assume physician concurrence in the absence of an objection. Nurses are the ones who defibrillate, rarely, if ever the physician! Your message to the public was that five nurses with many years of combined experience had no clue of advice to offer an intern on their first day on the job. That was a disgusting untruthful portrayal! Alex calls Meredith a nurse as an insult! Where is your head? You insulted the profession of nursing and lowered it into the cesspool. You destroyed the nurse for doing her job. The nurse is THE patient advocate! The ONLY patient advocate in health care! You could care less! If you end up in a hospital perhaps you should go incognito! Particularly, since you feel nurses to be annoying old pests who only serve to tell the public something about the beautiful, perfect interns, and have no other purpose! You also made a specific slam at nursing education: "nurses have not been to medical school, therefore pretty much all they can do is mechanically identify symptoms." Viewers were mis-lead. Nurses are college-educated critical thinkers! Physician abuse is the major factor in nurse burnout and is the real threat to patients in today's health care! Alex trashes a nurse, who gives correct diagnoses and calls Meredith a nurse when she questions the diagnosis. Meredith takes great offense at being called a nurse. A perfect example of Suzanne Gordon's termed: "dress for success" feminism, in which women who pursue traditionally male professions like medicine disdain those in traditionally female ones like nursing is portrayed in your "I hate nurses" scene. Your program exhibits contempt for nursing. Your portrayal of nurses in your program says that smart, aggressive, attractive, professional women do NOT become nurses! You should check me out. I am a 58-year-old "dish" (forgive my lack of modesty) who has left the business world to begin nursing school! Now! There is a story for you! You are so far off base on your concept of what a nurse is, that I wonder what world you live in! With the media's proven influence on the public, an influence Ms. Rhimes acknowledged in her recent NPR interview, your show's attack on nursing will do more than its part to exacerbate the nursing crisis that is taking lives worldwide. I urge you to listen to nurses' ideas as to how that will happen. "Grey's Anatomy" will have a negative effect on public health. You contribute to the chaos in health at a time when most of the world confronts huge nursing shortages. Substantial research confirms Ms. Rhimes' view that entertainment television is a powerful force in shaping public views and actions, including in the health care context. Use your show to make a positive influence on viewer's concepts by telling viewers that nurses are highly skilled, autonomous professionals who save lives and improve outcomes every day, and who do it without asking physicians what to do in times of crisis. Contribute a positive influence to the public understanding of nursing at this critical time. You are in the position to take responsible positive action that could make a huge positive contribution to the world health care crises!

People are selfish! They put their own wants, needs, priorities ahead of others. These people are NOT Christians, they just THINK that they are Christians. True Christians do not act this way, because when they do it removes them from practicing Christianity. The facility needs to ask the family to remove Terry and take her home to die. aaaathe entire family is selfish also, or they would ask the protesters to have respect for Terry and the other hospice patients. I can't believe that there are not noise ordinances in this community that the protesters are breaking and so they would be removed and arrested! Freedom of speech must be used responsibly!

:offtopic: :offtopic: :offtopic: I am very sorry that you are having problems. There are several threads where the nursing shortage is being discussed at length. This thread is supposed to be a discussion of Nursing in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Maybe you could share something about the topic. I would be very interested in hearing about it. :)

I am really amazed at the thoughtlessness of folks today. A hospice is a place to die in peace. I think about the other patients and how unpeaceful and disrespectful it must seem to other families with loved ones there. I believe in freedom of speech, but I believe in using it responsibly. Standing out side of a hospice, chanting, screaming, taunting, and singing is not using the freedom of speech responsibly. It is using freedom of speech selfishly. These folks could move a couple of miles down the road. It sounds like a Football Rally with people yelling! How does it help anyone there to have that carnival outside the door of hospice patients? It makes me mad and ashamed of the people participating. I think their behavior is disgusting and disrespectful. Well, there I go again! :angryfire