SombraRN

I have given insulin/D50 many times for hyperkalemia. I will monitor glucoses more closely for awhile. When I get an order for kayexalate I usually try to get the order changed to insulin/D50. Kayexalate for a renal patient has been associated with intestional ischemia.

One of the reasons many hospitals require two nurses to witness and cosign the med. Then if an error is made, you move on unless it is a chronic problem and you gotta wonder where else is someone screwing up. Computer bar-coding of meds is another safe guard for safety.

Does not the conditions of admission inform the patient at which their signature gives consent for students to be present in a teaching facility? Have never heard of a consent being obtained for a student to be present. I think there must be more to the situation than a student just looking at a ventilator.

Yeah, I never thought I would see the day until the two men that I worked with recently. I just didn't think guys would treat each other that way. One could scream at you in the nurses station over nothing. The other was a letter writer to management.

When my son was born, his mother's nurse was a man. My thought was "you are one brave nurse!"

Being the OP, I have had private emails. Thank you to those who wrote. However, I am too new to the site to directly message anyone yet, but your comments were appreciated. As I originally wrote, I wasn't really referring to the usual disagreements that occur between people from time to time. I was referring to such behavior (Workplace violence occurs horizontally and vertically) as dragging someone into a hearing based on what a confused person said which was not true, letter writing by co-workers to management who drag you into hearings over nonspecific issues, being drug into hearings for not guessing what was on a physicians mind when you have gone over your plan with an PA and it had been approved, and so on. When co-workers that you trust come up and tell you that you are being targeted, all these things that go beyond just disagreements and affect your ability to even keep your job, you have moved into the realm of harassment and bullying. I think it is true that we need to narrow what is meant by workplace violence or how it is defined. But when one unit has an unacceptable rate of firing people for non-specific stuff, it makes you wonder just a bit.

With electronic charting, many places charge for what is charted and not what is taken out of the pyxis. Hope this eases the feeling that a patient is paying for a nurses meds. However, it does not make it right to use up hospital supplies of any sort for personal use. But you are in a bind because you are new. My experience is those already in place get more credibility than new people even if well experienced transplants from other healthcare facilities. Tough one, but I would bite my tongue until credibility is established. Do keep in mind that just because it is not a controlled substance it is OK to use on the job. Phenergan is one med that can make you very drowsy and unsafe for patient care.

Noting that a recent journal article published that at some point in a nurses career approximately 33% of nurses will leave a job due to workplace "violence" and 37% will actually be terminated due to the same, how does one recover professionally after that event occurs to you? Do you upfront tell future potential employers the circumstances regarding why you left? How did you deal with this event in your professional life?

Perhaps we should seperate those who try to switch back and forth between a day life and nite life. I suspect that those who maintain the same sleep hours even on days off will tolerate it much better than those who try to live a day life when off. It is more the jerking your bio-clock around more than being up at nite.