budger1983

The program we are using is from Laerdal Medical and is accredited by AHA and accepted by JCAHO, the program is quite impressive as far as the detail and requirements to pass ... but I am getting some grumblings from co-workers that it is not the same as hands on........(possibly because in the classroom you have someone to hold your hand) so to speak......this program allows 32 hours for completion. Thanks for your replies......still want all opinions good or otherwise Jeff

Has anyone here ever had to take ACLS on the computer? Refresher and/or initial course. This is something my hospital is starting and will be up and running by Dec. 1...................and they dropped it in my lap to take care of it.....some nonsense in the contract about educating fellow employees when you are a core person in your area.....oh well such is life.: Just hoping for some opinions. Thanks

Hey everyone, gots a question for you. Anybody familiar with having to provide a medication reconciliation for patients being discharged from your EDs? I was just informed by my nurse manager that we have to devise a system to provide patients with a med rec that has all of their meds on it not just what is being added or changed. This is going to be time consuming as all hell if I have to write or type out every medication and dosage for every patient that comes through our ER as we have no unit secretary, just 2 RNs and a doc. This came to us via. a JCAHO representative. Any and all advice or ideas are more than welcome.

The facility I work in has a 7 bed ED, a 6 bed ICU, and a 10 bed Tele. our ED sees just over 10,000 patients a year, not a great deal for a level 3 trauma center but we are only 60 miles from 2 level 2 trauma centers and a burn center. All of the nurses in our facility are on the same pay scales per union contract. We have nurses that work only ER and nurses that work only ICU, and then we have those that float to both, our name badges all say critical care. I work only ER, I do not know a damn thing about vents, "I bag the pt" I do not know anything about swans, baloon pumps, art lines or the like. We do not have an IV team or a code team, when some one needs an IV and the nurse tries but fails (including our ICU) we in the ER are the ones called to start them as we do about 80% of them anyway. We have a 5:1 ratio on codes we see many more in the ER than in our ICU. Our ICU/Tele and our ER are considered 1 department, under 1 nurse manager, I feel this is wrong, we are not the same. Our ICU nurses that float down say it is 2 totally seperate ways of nursing, 2 totally diffrent mind sets. Some of our ICU nurses are great in the ER, but there are others who are not, they are terrified of kids, or of psych, or OB, or Trauma, and that tends to put a lot more of a load onto those of us who take care of it all. When I first joined this forum I was surprised to see that ER was not in the critical care area and a little dissapointed. ER nurses are critical care nurses it's just that our patients are acutely critical and generally unstable, I also noticed that flight nurses are not considered critical care nurses in the forum either HUH? In my area of the country that is all they take care of, every flight, granted only 1 at a time but critical none the less. Please any ICU nurses or nurses from any other area do not take offense to my words. I work only ER and that is all I want to do.......God bless those of you who take care of the same pt day after day after day... I personally do not have that desire. Sorry for rambling, it's late

First I want to thak you for the supportive words prior to my taking the CEN I did pass, though while taking the test it reminded me of taking my state boards.. AC, of all the books I studied from the Lippincott's was the closest in resemblance to the exam (with Mosby's taking a very close second).....same style of question and close wording....I did find however many of the questions were familiar yet going in a totally diffrent direction. I think that loricatus put it best when saying to not second guess yourself....very true (and thank you again) as I found several times where I wanted to go back and change an answer but didn't, mostly because of that advice. Anything else you need or want to talk about on this let me know. Best of luck to you and always remember the basics ABC

I'll let you know tomorrow night, I take my CEN tomorrow morning at 0900 and have been studying from the lippincott and the mosby Q&A books....nervous as all get out.....probobly going to be questions on all kinds of crap I have never dreamt of.....oh well will find out soon enough

Hibbing and Virginia are the two largest facilities north of Duluth in this state, chances of getting a job as a new grad are really not bad, just don't expect a full time position immediately and try to be open about what area you would be willing to work. I would suggest making contact with each institution now prior to your graduation just to get your name out there. You can access Virginia hosp at http://www.vrmc.org and in Hibbing I believe you have to apply through the Fairview system. The name of the facilty is Fairview University Medical Center Mesabi. I work at VRMC and have for the past 4 years since getting my lic. as far as Cook, Ely, and Aurora......I really have no insight as to if they are hiring or not. I hope this helps at least a little... We do not have a nursing shortage on the Range as we have 2 schools in Duluth and 1 in Hibbing putting out new grads every year. Good luck to you, I wish you the best. Jeff

Depends where you want to work also. I work in a hospital setting. ER to be exact. We have only 7 LPN's on property. Lpn's here only work in clinics or long term care. Wages need to be addressed as well, there is quite a diffrence between LPN and RN in pay. The light is a little brighter and more doors of opportunity open with the RN, but with this comes more responsibility as well. I got my RN at age 38 and have not looked back.

Point well taken, I was using worst case scenario. The point I was hoping to make was to not be ashamed of going to an ED with this problem.

Kidney stones are very painful and are a very common site in the ER, if not treated could infact result in irreversible damage to the kidney. If bad enough could destroy the use of the kidney all together requiring a transplant. So don't feel bad about going to an ER with KS's