fusster

Well, there's the two drips I used last night-cardizem and dopamine :) other calcium channel blockers like verapamil, Beta-blockers mostly lopressor, labetolol, and coreg, aspirin, amiodarone, digoxin, rythmol, ACE inhibitors mostly lisinopril, diu...

I'm not a dialysis nurse, but here's my understanding. Dialysis ports (Permacaths, Quinton caths) are usually the only way for a patient to get dialysis. If you draw off of a dialysis port, you risk not flushing it properly and clotting it off. If...

I was in your position about two years ago when I was in nursing school, so I know where you're coming from. It's hard to learn to interpret EKG's quickly, as you need to do in nursing school. Do you need to learn what the interventions are for eac...

I work in a community hospital on a telemetry/step down unit-not really sure which you would classify it under. We do drips-cardizem, dobutamine, dopamine, amiodorone, nitro, insulin-pretty much everything except for levophed. The majority of our p...

Pressure ulcers can develop overnight. I turn Q2H at a minimum, this is the standard of care for anyone unable to turn themselves, and results in better patient outcomes. They can be very difficult to get rid of once they're there, so it's best jus...

I work tele, not ER, but about a month ago had 2 patients in a room together. Bed 1 had a BP that maxed out at 211/110, Bed 2 maxed out at 245/115. Gave a lot of labetolol and hydralazine that night. Lowest was 40's over 20's in a dying patient. L...

We're supposed to do this at my hospital too. I try to do hourly rounds, but if my pt is asleep, no way am I going to wake them up to say this. If they're awake, I'll say "how are you doing? Is there anythin I can do/get for you right now? Push y...

I started nursing school at 18, right after I graduated high school. I went into a BSN program, 125 or so students in my class, and the majority were right out of high school or within a few years of out of high school. At the University I went to,...

This reminds me of the time when the ER tried to send us a patient whose CT showed a dissecting AAA Now, wouldn't be so bad if I worked at a large hospital, but I work midnights on a telemetry unit in a community hospital with no surgeons in house ...

I find that at the hospital I work at there are a couple of reasons ER nurses wait until shift change to give report and sent patients to our unit. First, the census in the ER dictates their staffing. If they have a very low census, but another uni...

I would suggest you go for the RN. Since you're tyring to work full time and go to school full time, I'm guessing money is a factor for you. It isn't that much more schooling to get an ADN, and the top pay for a LPN is usually about the same as the...

When you're getting an admit from the ER and the house supervisor calls to let you know that the pt coded in the ER, then the family decided to make him a no code due to his terminal state, so they're sending him to our floor so his death won't be in...

Look up the possible causes of syncope, then you can narrow down what assessments are priority (as a general rule of thumb, start with your ABC's).

I work in a small hospital, but we do not have this rule. If doctors are the type that don't like to be bothered at night, then they make sure their home phone numbers aren't in our contact information database and they turn their pagers off at nigh...

Had a pt the other day who's PEG came out on the shift before mine. The nurse called the doctor, and he said to insert a foley into the hole in the abd wall, then to resume the tube feeding through the foley, and he would be in tomorrow to insert a ...

ok, thank you all for your advice. I've been a nurse for less than a year and had never encountered this situation before. I followed the lead of the preceding nurse who had 20 years experience, but I guess she was wrong. Lesson learned!

The nurse before me never wrote out the order to put the foley in, or even charted that he said to put a foley in, and I was unable to contact the doctor.

He didn't have to have another gastrostomy, the stoma was still open (luckily). So, if this happens again, I would insert the foley, inflate the balloon, secure it with tape, unhook the collection bag, verify placement, and put the tube feeding tip ...

I don't work on a psych unit, but once I had a schizophrenic pt on the cardiac floor I work on. He looked at my name tag, and started repeating my name over and over. It really creeped me out. Since I'm on a regular floor, my last name was on my n...

I would talk to the pharmacist at your hospital and see if they have any advice. Pharmacists are a wealth of knowledge. They would most likely be able to tell you if the drugs are incompatible or contraindicated and be able to tell you why, helping...

I work at a hospital (acute care) in Michigan. RN's at my hospital can pronounce if the pt is a full DNR. 2 RN's have to do the death pronouncement, checking for heartbeat, carotid pulse, respirations, etc. Plus I work on telemetry, so we can reco...

Hello, I'm in my senior year of nursing school and one of my clinicals this semester is in the ER. Does anyone have tips as to what the best things for me to review would be? It's a fairly rural ER and doesn't generally get major traumas and I'll be ...

Hell, I am a new nurse (been working about 5 months). A couple of days ago I had a patient who was end stage COPD. She had been off the ventilator for about 4 days and was on BIPAP when I received her on our cardiac step-down unit (she was also afi...

My hospital just went smoke free. It has encouraged many employees to quit smoking, but there are quite a few who will leave hospital property (or just hide out somewhere) to smoke. I haven't had any problems with patients who smoke, but many of my...

I also found this post very hard to read. My mother suffered from chronic pain for over a year before being diagnosed with a rheumatic disorder, for which the only treatment is prednisone and has worked wonderfully since she started it. Watching he...