calivianya BSN, RN

ICU

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All Content by calivianya

  1. calivianya

    Is this common?

    It seems so weird for anyone to call ICU for hard sticks. My full time job is very high acuity - so almost none of the patients have peripheral IVs and most of the ICU nurses really suck at them. I'm...
  2. calivianya

    Is this common?

    I have worked places that had pieces of those things, but not all of them together. My full time job has phlebotomists to stick all the patients for labs, but we do not have a discharge nurse, and we...
  3. calivianya

    Re-entry nursing after trauma

    For some reason, the first thing that popped into my head is palliative care. I floated a few times to an inpatient palliative care unit at one hospital, and I really enjoyed the low-key atmosphere....
  4. I'm feeling you! It's extra scary because we used to orient new grads for six months and they've cut it down to 12 weeks... and there are so many of them... ugh. Random comment, but this is one...
  5. Most of us do lose our cool on a regular basis, that's how. I think at least half of the regular staff are heavily medicated. It's not uncommon to come up on a group of my coworkers talking about what...
  6. calivianya

    Do you feel safe at work?

    I'm just not a worrier, so I do feel safe unless I have a reason to feel otherwise, i.e. someone standing over me shouting in my face and making very violent gestures towards me. Worrying about being...
  7. Well, I just learned that some people call an IV "capped" if it is clamped. If I chart "capped" it's because I put a green alcohol swab cap on the port. I had no idea what anyone else meant if they...
  8. I learned that we are going to be relatively staffed soon as we hired 14 people in the past month - but 12 of them are new grads, so the apocalypse of being one of only two or three people on a shift...
  9. calivianya

    If you could speak your mind...

    There's a reason why the intubated, sedated, restrained ward of the state is the holy grail of patients! My personal favorite recently was when a daughter who lived a grand total of three hours away...
  10. calivianya

    Discrimination in PT care??

    My first nursing job was in the deep South (backwoods rural Georgia) and it was ugly. One of my coworkers, who was black, routinely got comments like, "You're so good for a black nurse!" Ugh. I just...
  11. calivianya

    How do you last?

    Things get better the longer you stay in a job. That being said, I still have some nights where I want to scream "I QUIT!!!" and run out the door, especially when there are high-strung family members...
  12. calivianya

    No Upward Mobility

    Clinical ladders are usually only worth $1/hr or so, max, at least at the places I've worked at, and the number of research projects and total BS you have to do to earn your whole whopping dollar is...
  13. Yes PLEASE! I always check if I don't know right away. I came in one day this week to a hot mess - patient only had a triple lumen PICC (don't even get me started on how useless only having three...
  14. My first job - KCL was considered a drip and running it as a secondary was against policy. My second job - if you ran KCL as a primary your coworkers would make fun of you for being an idiot. Every...
  15. calivianya

    How to get input and output

    Are they talking about a closed drainage system like an Atrium for a chest tube or something more like an accordion drain? The question would actually confuse me, too. One of those you would subtract...
  16. Not everyone is paid extra to precept. My unit does pay extra, and it's a whopping $1 per hour. Big deal. After taxes take about $4 away, I can get a $8 lunch in the mediocre, overpriced cafeteria...
  17. calivianya

    Leaving current job after only 5 months

    Every job I've ever worked has had some sort of bonus because of short staffing, so that bonus would not scare me. I even got relocation assistance upwards of $2000 as a new grad. The first hospital I...
  18. calivianya

    Dashing a patient's hope or just being honest?

    Just gotta say I wish I had the emotional control of some of the other posters here. I can't seem to control whether I get annoyed or not. I wish I could I'd be a much happier person and I'd like...
  19. calivianya

    Normothermia and shivering

    Hi guys! I had a patient within the last month who was on hypothermia protocol post arrest. He was on our normothermia arm - after 28 hours cold, we rewarm, but leave the arctic sun pads on for an...
  20. calivianya

    2015 allnurses Salary Survey Results

    This is awesome and very helpful. It looks like for my degree, years of experience, and where I live, I make a few thousand more than the average you found as my base pay, and a whole lot more with...
  21. Very important question here. Not all states have income tax, but I'm not familiar enough off the top of my head to know if any of the bottom states are free of income tax. If those are before tax...
  22. calivianya

    Stanford Rape

    The best way I can come up with the answer to this is with a personal anecdote. When I was 18, I was backing out of a parking space and distracted. Someone else was also backing out of a parking space...
  23. calivianya

    The Bad Shift

    You might just have to leave. Even the same type of unit can be very different across different facilities. These are both ICU, so this is probably a bad example - but my PRN job is more aggressive...
  24. Definitely leave - that's horrible! I think you should try ICU somewhere else before giving up on it altogether. The hitting/punching/kicking is personally why I would never work ER. If you work a...
  25. calivianya

    What Nurses really Want to Say When They Chart

    Reminds me - the other day one of my coworkers was asked by a female patient to eat her out. If that wasn't bad enough, one of the patient's home meds was valacyclovir PRN. Would have loved to know...