terraqueous

Our facility used to insist tattoos be covered but it was not specified how. People showed up wearing the stretchy sleeves made to look like tattoos (their tattoos were covered and much smaller than what was printed on the sleeves) and others were wearing large gauze bandaging to cover them. It looked hideous and I had to laugh, where there's a will there's a way.....Management has become less insistent since then.

I always add a neuro check to my admission assessments. You need to know what their baseline is when they arrive and lots of times with elderly folks, one pupil may be larger than the other due to medical history, surgery, cataract. This can be pretty worrisome if first noted at the time of a fall.

I work in LTC and am just appalled at mandated gdr's (gradual dose reductions) on psychotropic drugs for our residents. They are truly my pet peeve right now, maybe in part because the powers to be at my facility are so zealously reducing medications at every turn. These are people who are stable on their current regimen--why subject them to possible worsening symptoms, depression or anxiety? Should they not tolerate the reduced dosage well, it is hard sometimes to get them back to their previous level of functioning and balance. Their physicians can deny a proposed dose reduction but it seems too often they sign off on the reduced dosage for no other reason than its mandated for the NH to attempt gdr's. I understand there is some good reasoning behind the plan, but in reality, it just seems like experimenting with these peoples' well being. What has been other experiences with gdr's?

Hi, we use Point Click Care at the LTC facility I work in also. We typically do bp's two times per week. When we click on a bp med to be given and the screen comes up that wants you to type in the bp, we can click the down arrow option and select "use last bp" rather than "new" which it will default to. This will automatically bring up the last one recorded. We have very few parameters to use also. I am usually the charge nurse but have worked several days as med pass lately and wasn't aware of this the first day......oh boy, way behind. One thing that really makes it quicker for the med nurses are the little wrist bp cuffs they can use quickly just before handing the med over. Once we got used to PCC, its quite nice and it seems like there's alot of customized options available to your facility.