estherojin

Could also be heart failure- patients with poor cardiac output would be cool to the touch and would have edema.

Sorry, but I disagree with you. I worked in the cath lab for 5 years and have heard quite a few incidences of dissections, not all fatal, but dissection regardless. Even if the material of the balloon is pliable (which I don't know if you've felt, b...

RCA = Right Coronary Artery. Coronary arteries are visualized by injecting radio-opaque contrast or "dye" under x-ray.

Hi All- So, I need some advice. Having finished the last of my prerequisites in spring, I find myself in a very fortunate position of actually getting a summer break. Working Fri/Sat, I have 5 days free to do as I please. I have been keeping mysel...

If I was in your shoes, I would give it one more shot on the GRE. Did you score at least a 4 on your written portion? Focus on the verbal, study the vocab and I think you can improve. My school's median score went up and I believe their lowest sc...

while working a case in the cath lab, my (unbelievably hairy) patient went in to VF after an RCA injection. back then we had these old school defibrillators and for some reason the hospital opted to go with these orange electroconductive pads (not d...

Happy Halothane- Thanks for your reply. I have been living #5 for the last month, it feels great! I'm down one cup of coffee a day and it's purely for enjoyment purposes. Anyway, I was wondering if you could give me some advice on PDA's. What kind...

reading what you wrote about your personality and what you enjoyed in your clinicals, it seems like you are already leaning on an ICU.

honestly, i think you should wait until you have a full year's worth of critical care experience. you are not going to do yourself any favors by not meeting the admissions criteria. they might be willing to overlook one, but falling short on two mi...

This seems obvious to me- to work and save. However, I've worked my butt off for the last 6 years. I've been juggling a full time with a part time/per diem position, supporting my husband's graduate education. Cutting down my hours this spring to ...

nope, even cheapo free ones from pharmaceutical companies are good enough. you'll really be using to measure intervals. it's about the skill, not the tools necessarily when it comest to getting good with ecgs. good luck with your class, you'll enjo...

you mentioned that you might be able to work at this hospital through your agency? just to be on the safe side, i'd investigate the HR policy regarding agency use. many of the hospitals place clauses in the employee contract that state the employee...

no way. i'd have more respect for a MD who's walked in a nurse's shoes.

no, you're not stupid. it takes an intelligent person to know what they don't know. it's those people who are overconfident of their skills and knowledge that are the most dangerous people to our profession. i know it's overwhelming, it'll get bet...

on our floor, we check residuals with our scheduled flushes for pts on continuous feeds. i'd check residuals more frequently on pts who have distended abd, who havent had a bm for a while.

shouldn't you be doing your own homework?

We would allow the patient's family to witness the tail end of the code, after we had exhausted most of our resuscitation efforts, so that they would know that we had done as much as possible to care for their loved one and be able to spend the last ...

agree with queen216. sounds like she might be going into CHF. she's obviously volume overloaded. i'd put her on oxygen, get a set of VS, and listen to her lungs. also, i noticed there was nothing mentioned about her breathing pattern. if she' in...

In the EP lab, we've paced pts out of A flutter, but generally I believe you can't overdrive pace A fib since it's a disorganized rhythm- for the same reason you can't pace VF, but can overdrive pace VT. During EP studies, if you pace the atrium too...

when they order a rotoprone bed for your patient.

oral care on intubated patients. there's nothing better than freshening up a smelly crusty mouth. love brushing those teeth and deep glottic suctioning. another obsession- i have to have the IV bags hanging directly over it's corresponding pumps.

hmmm, if i had to do it for a job, nursing tops it all specifically being a nurse in a large teaching hospital in an urban setting in a fast paced ICU. i guess i'm lucky cause that's what i do.

love love RRT. i work in a critical care area, so many times i get report from the RRT nurses for the patients that get admitted from the floors. they're the rock stars of nursing!

What is it at your job that makes you happy -Comraderie- I don't see it as much on my current job in the ICU, but when I worked in the Cath and EP labs, I relished the teamwork approach to patient care- MDs, RNs, and techs all focused on one patient ...

In the Electrophysiology lab, the MDs used 40/40. From what I heard, the general recommendation is to use the lowest power setting as possible. I do remember that on our older units, we had to crank up the power to get it to where our MDs wanted. ...