misschelei

Well little did I know when I originally wrote this that a week later PIH would come back to play. I got sent to the hospital from the doc for labs and to make sure baby was ok. He was but I was given a shot of betamethasone for the baby's lungs just in case and sent home on a 24hr urine. I came back the next day to turn in the urine and get another steroid shot. Baby and bp were fine so I was sent home again on bedrest. Two days later while lying on the couch waiting for the home health nurse to come set up some monitoring equipment my water broke. I freaked out right away because with dd as soon as my water broke her hr dropped to 50. I don't trust the hospitals in town so I called the answering service while dh grabbed my bag and tried to get dd ready. The answering service failed me miserably. They kept transferring me to some doctor who didn't know me. After 3times and 15 minutes of this I took to screaming threats and obscenities into the phone. Not my best moment but amazingly MY doctor called me back within 2 minutes. He told me to go the the out of town hospital as planned and he would meet me there. The whole ride I kept thinking about dd and her hr dropping. You wouldn't believe the horrible thoughts going through my mind. It took forever for someone from L & D to come get me and the nurse was very nonchalant which put me over the edge. As soon as we got up to my room I kicked her out! Another nurse came and hooked me up and baby was fine. I felt like an idiot but was very grateful. My doctor showed up and calmed me down. I was 33 weeks and had gotten the 2 steroid shots so he was confident delivering me was the best option. So a couple hours later I had little Anthony by C-section 4lbs even 17.5 inches. He spend 10 days in the NICU but he is home now and a little peanut but doing well.

Good luck to you! Hope you find something else you enjoy quickly.

I should add you don't have to be an LC only. You can give great bf info to your patient as their nurse as well. You will run into nursing moms not only on L&D units but NICU's and Peds as well. So keep that in mind.

I can tell you I had a bad experience with LC when I had my daughter 4 years ago. She was small and having a hard time latching since I was extremely engorged (I know tmi) but the LC just kinda went through the basics with me. Then she left me soaking in bucket of epsom salt water and never came back without telling me how long to do it. Also it seems like there is a lot of conflicting info given by different LC's so I would say the field is lucky to have you knowing first hand what the moms are going through and what they need to hear to decrease the frustration and keep trying! Good luck!!

Hang in there diarygirl....I haven't worked in almost a week either. Though I haven't really tried very hard cuz my back and hips are so sore from bein prego It takes me days to recover from a shift. But need the money really bad too. I'm scheduled tomorrow...hope I get the shift so I can get it over with, pay a couple bills and sock the rest away for my leave.

Be very specific with everyone in the office if you go back to agency. Only work in areas you are comfortable in or you will get in over your head fast. You should know exactly what you are doing when you show up on a floor as an agency nurse. Your major concerns should be generally limited to hospital specific policies and procedures and unit specific supply locations you may not be familiar with. Stressed when you get there is going to make everyone frazzled by the time you leave and believe me they won't forget it! Since you have done agency before you know that becoming a regular at a few places will put you in that comfort zone where you know them and they know you. This makes things much easier but you still need to stay on your toes. When you screw up all it takes is a phone call for the hospital to be done with you. They don't need to pull you into the office 20 times or follow any type of protocol like they would with Suzy staff nurse (for example).

One of the hospitals I work for has a specific name called overhead for a family called RRT. I don't know if that's just an FYI to the responders or if it means walk slower (lol) but the whole thing is a little silly.

I posted on here over 2 years ago thought I would renew my story..... I hate to believe that children are ever left behind as ghosts. That said we have a room in the PICU I used to work at that is reserved to accomodate families with a dying child. Older patients who have died in the room have reported seeing other children in the room with them. Younger children have been known to point and track unseen things. Even the most hardened skeptic on the unit will tell you there is a strange static feel to the room. On my third day of orientation at this hospital my preceptor took me for a walk through the 'old hospital' Its all boardrooms and resident's sleeping quarters now. But it was the night shift and all the sleeping rooms were empty. When I asked her why she grinned from ear to ear. She told me stories of nuns floating and kids giggling and running down the halls, lights flickering, and shadows darting. We didn't see anything that night but you couldn't get me out of there fast enough. I could have killed her! Then I understood why our residents and fellows will find an empty room anywhere in the hospital before sleeping up there.

I just noticed this thread is almost a year old..someone must have been diggin deep in the archives lol

We used it when I worked burn until we could nurse them back to health. One patient we had for a good 6 months on the unit who was on crrt for a while was discharged and I had him as a patient 7 years later at another hospital for an unrelated issue.

Apparently Crocs are the devil. There's huge threads about them on here somewhere. They have even been banned from many hospitals. I personally have had a pair for over 5 years. Not the one's with holes in them...for goodness sake it's a hospital cover your feet! Anyway, I trip on them all time and they do nothing to relieve my back problems but they are so comfy I just can't give em up.

I would never accept a verbal or telephone order given to anyone other a nurse. And if another nurse besides myself took the order I would even ask that nurse to write the order.

I know one hospital that has public service posters in the hallways of the docs we all know smiling and using hand sanitizer or hand washing encouraging everyone to do the same. I have to admit they get more of a reaction (uncontrolled laughter) than isolation signs on doors.

What scares me more than anything is the staff who basically touch everyone in the hopsital like RT's, phlebotomists, and Xray. I can't tell you how many times I've seen them ignore isolation signs, not wear gloves at all or forget to wash their hands.

In my experience I can't hear any better with a cute stethescope than I can with a disposable one. But those are really cool! I like the blazing sun.