frozenmedic

Weird.....Nursing invented a role that we thought we needed, but no other part of the healthcare delivery machine wanted, nobody (including nurses) really understood, and the idea tanked.

Is this patient in-hospital? You could transduce the PICC and look at the resulting waveform; this will give you a good idea as to whether it's arterial or venous.

This is NOT true, the PA catheter itself transits through the main pulmonary artery. However, the PA distal port sits in a branch vessel of the pulmonary artery. This is what allows the balloon to wedge with minimal volume. See the attached photo, ...

I can't see from the whole screen whether this ventilator displays a different Vte/MV/peak flow for spontaneous vs ventilator triggered breaths (if so perhaps the patient just had no spontaneous ventilations) But, combined with the numerous circuit ...

Not hospice, but working critical care I've seen this sort of peace come to patients, but there is one patient I will never forget.....60ish year old woman, dying of cancer, and expected to pass in hours to days. I cared for her for most of a shift,...

"During our head to toe assessment, my partner that went before me missed several objectives on head-to-toe assessment such as, introducing herself to the patient before verifying the patient information" Ha! This is an actual grading poi...

You can't use the PA port for medication administration because of the volume of distribution in the vessel to which that medication would go. The PA port is located in a small pulmonary artery branch vessel that will further branch into the pu...

As Muno and others have explained well the serial Y sites are definitely not ideal. However, if this is the situation you find yourself in (I worked in an ICU that did not allow manifolds for foolish reasons) best practice is to attempt to connect y...

If you enjoy education but hate med passes, you could also consider mother-baby. These patients are on far fewer meds than a general med-surg/oncology unit but have LOTS of questions about everything newborn/breastfeeding etc.

If you're interest in being an ED nurse, take the ED job. In general, ED positions are much harder to find/get hired into than med-surg positions. If you try ED and decide it's not for you, you could likely easily transfer into med-surg, but the re...

RN married to MD here. Skip all the posts listing how difficult medical school is and how many years of your life will be involved etc etc. Those years will pass either way, and will be small compared to the years left in your career once you're don...

I can't make clear heads or tail of what you're actually asking. All I'm seeing here is even more proof that "nursing theory" whether it's "advanced" or otherwise is nothing more than self-referential naval gazing that contributes nothing to pa...

This probably depends on many factors, in patients where a central line is not placed through burned skin it can probably be managed like any other line. Lines placed through burned skin are impossible to keep clean: no dressing sticks, and the ...

Isn't the most appropriate term for this condition now considered "Anaphylactoid Syndrome of Pregnancy?" I believe circulating fetal cells are now thought to commonly pass to the mother during delivery, but only an extremely tiny fraction of wom...

I'm assuming this was a COVID patient, based on the significant reluctance to intubate in the setting of profound hypoxia. As we have learned more about this disease, one of the consistent trends is that intubated patients have horrible outcomes, so...

Not sure if this occurred here, but consider lowering your alarm parameters to whatever you and the physician feel is appropriate given the patient's clinical context. Alarm fatigue is real, and low numbers without beeps will likely attract less att...

For nurses who went straight to ICU/ED then got a flight position, it's possible to be flight nursing in your mid-late 20s with that bare minimum of 3 years RN experience. On rare occasion I've met flight paramedics who are even younger; you can star...

I'm a flight nurse in the western US; not in the exact area you specified, but I think I can still answer your questions. First, flight nursing is by far the absolutely best specialty there is. You will have the opportunity to practice far more ind...

My day is destroyed by the "death by a thousand cuts" piling on of work. We want to minimize entry into patient rooms? RNs will now deliver meal trays. COVID tests are getting lost/not resulting fast enough? COVID tests will be hand delivered to t...

Data is currently all over the place on the exact numbers, but what we do known are two essential facts: 1-People can shed Coronavirus prior to their symptom onset and unknowingly transmit the disease to others. 2-People can be completely asymptomati...

It's a little difficult to follow some parts of your post, but it sounds like he was getting huge amounts of volume, plus huge amounts of pressors and still looked awful? Vent settings show hellacious ARDs, no pneumo and I presume crappy pulmonary c...

I completely disagree....this is a very bad idea/ A good charge nurse must be an expert in whatever unit they are in charge of. The ability to manage people and resources means that you need to be the first line of help for the unit nursing staff, r...

As with everything, it depends. In this case it depends on the mission of the group you want to work for. Is this a service that does a high volume of remote clinic transports and scene calls? If so focus on the skills you have in patient triage, res...

Paramedics come out of their initial education program qualified to start IVs. Unlike some nursing schools IVs are actually taught as an essential skill, not "something you'll learn in the hospital." Additionally, paramedics can push IV meds which is...

Unfortunately, nobody can give you a definite answer about whether or not a patient will sue. The fact that you know another nurse who made an error with Epi is also not helpful as cases may be settled by the hospital before ever involving RN staff,...