PatricksRNMommy

In the past when receiving patients from the ER, they printed a report to the floor and then called to give a verbal report. Now the process has changed to improve pt flow. Now, the report is printed to the floor, the ER nurse calls the floor nurse t...

I am a charge nurse and when I make assignments for the next shift I look at several factors: 1) Patient acuity - I try to split up "total care" patients as much as possible, as well as isolation patients, post-op patients, confused patients, and pt ...

I had a patient when I was a fairly new nurse who had gone into SVT. While we were waiting for another nurse to bring in the adenosine, the charge nurse asked the patient to bear down like she was having a bowel movement. It wasn't bringing down her ...

The MRSA patients are on isolation for a reason, to protect caregivers and visitors who go into the room. As long as you are following proper contact precautions (gown and gloves) and thouroughly washing your hands after you leave the room, you shoul...

I can't stand that! There are quite a few doctors at my facility who get the attitude of "Why are you calling me, they are a DNR" if we call with concerns about a patient. And if you try transferring a DNR patient to the ICU, you definitely hear it f...

I came in one morning and got report from the night shift nurse that my patient had come in in rapid afib and was on a heparin drip and a cardizem drip. The heparin drip had started at 900 units/hr (18cc/hr) and the Cardizem at 15 mg/hr (15 cc/hr) at...

Just being devil's advocate here, but then wouldn't almost any contact with that patient be a HIPPA violation if you are discussing with them their plan of care, ordered med/treatments, diagnosis, medical history, etc....?

They absolutely can and they should, IMHO. At my facility the PharmD calls the doctor for order clarifications UNLESS the original order was a telephone order written by the nurse, in which case it is the nurse's responsibilty to call and speak with ...

I always find it funny when someone presents to the ER at 2 am on a Saturday with "headache x 6 months" or "foot pain x 2 years"....

"Help the patient to poop" (yes he really wrote POOP in the chart lol) And this was not an order, but something written in the MD progress notes in the chart of a patient who had been having very high blood pressures (think 220's/110's) that nursing ...

The end-tidal co2/pulse ox machines have an adapter that we plug into the call light system and then we set the alarms for whatever parameters we want to be notified of. It's very helpful, except when you have a patient on the end tifal co2 monitor w...

On our post-ops, we wire the O2 sat and end tidal co2 monitor to the call light system and if the numbers drop too low the call light alerts us.

Talk to your manager, be honest, tell her your concerns and issues, and see what your options are.... Sometimes when you talk things out, a solution will present itself. Bottom line is that you have to do what is right for yourself as well as your ch...

Agreed, both are very different... Busy in their own ways, though. We have had ER nurses float to the floor and could not stand it d/t all the charting, the constant phone calls from family, doctors, cat scan, pt, ot, speech, pharmacy, lab, etc. And ...

There are some fabulous ER nurses out there that I know do their best to make sure the patient is taken care of and that important information is passed on to the floor nurse, and I appreciate those nurses tremendously. I understand the push from adm...

Shouldn't this be based on a doctor's order or a writtin policy or protocol? What if the patient had an adverse reaction from being overhydrated that was unexpected and you were not covered by a policy or a doctor's order. Wouldn't this be considered...

To the PIA VIP patients: "I don't care if you know the CEO, the President, or the Pope, I care for all my patients the same, so you need to sit down, shut up, and I will get you a newspaper when I am done taking care of the patients who treat me like...

We all have our areas of expertise... I work on PCU/Tele/Stroke floor so if a patient on med/surg is on a cardiac med or has a cardiac history that they are not knowledgable about or they think a doctor's orders might be questionable , they will ofte...

After reading some of these posts, I really want to make it clear that I was not bashing ER nurses. I know you are very busy in the ER and I do everything as I can as a charge nurse to get patients up to the floor ASAP. I feel like floor nurses need ...

I didn't say that it was, all I was trying to say was that what is happening now is not working.... for the patients, for the nurses, and for relationships between the ER and the floor... I just want things to get better for our patients, they don't ...

I just feel like patient care should be the priority, and bringing a patient up to a dirty room to a nurse who can't give them the care that they deserve just isn't fair to anyone. :)

Instead of criticizing and joking about the med/surg nurses, maybe you could have given them some helpful tips on how to best handle a situation like this in the future. Not all med/surg nurses are ACLS prepared... I know that at my hospital, there ...

I am a full-time mid-shift (2-10) charge nurse on a PCU/Tele floor and usually do not take patients unless someone calls out/goes home sick or all the nurses have a very high acuity patients and are unable to take an admission/post-op/transfer. I am ...

It has been my experience that they will give you whatever you will take... If the charge nurse accepts that a transfer is coming out of the unit on sn insulin gtt or a dobutamine gtt running higher than the unit standard and a nurse accepts the assi...

I passed about a week ago and used a program from med-ed Med-Ed > Online Education > Login Portal.... There are lectures from Cammy House-Fancher that you can stream and outlines and practice tests. It was very helpful to me. Good Luck!!