BbBaker

1)__ Do you take the flu vaccine yearly? If you do not, what is the reason you do not participate (if you don't mind answering this question)? Yes 2)__ Does your employer have a mandatory influenza vaccination policy as a condition of employment? If yes, where do you work? Yes, but I would take every year with or without a mandatory policy. 3)__ What concerns do you have about the flu vaccine? That too many people do not take it for unreasonable/irrational reasons, putting too many vulnerable people at unnecessary risk of hospitalization/death. 4)__ Do you know if anyone who has been released from their job because they did not get the flu vaccine? No, but I fully support an employer's right to dismiss non-compliant (except those with medical, well documented, contraindications) staff.

I work on a 30 bed post surgical unit. We do not take ortho or cardiac patients. Our RN-patient ratio is 1:6. In addition to general surgery patients (abdominal, thoracic, wound, etc), we also take speciality uro-reconstruction and bariatric surgery patients. We are not a tele unit, but we do have telemetry monitoring on our unit. I work days. It is considered one of the most difficult units/shifts to work in our hospital. There is really no typical day on my unit. Some days are easier than others, but almost all days require 110% go, 100% of the time (isn't that nursing in general?). We often get VERY high acuity patients, and often you get 6 of them at once. Expect very sick patients and very needy patients and patients that need you very much. Morning med pass often takes 2.5+ hours. You will be intimate with your facility's controlled substance policies; you will administer LOTS of pain meds and LOTS of antiemetics; you will hate passing pain meds and get sick of hearing how pain is 20 out of 10 - get used to it; get over it and focus on patient safety and doing what you can within safe limits for your patient. You will learn a lot about dressings and wound care. You will do a LOT of dressing changes, wound care, drain removal, staple/stitch removal. If your staff ratio is the same as ours you will never be able to keep up with everything you need to do. As a night nurse you'll pick up the pieces for the day shift; please remember that day shift is chaos with discharges, admits, doctors rounding, patients coming and going from surgery/procedures, etc...we count on nights quite often to finish or fine tune. We have lots of patients on frequent vitals monitoring (q15mX4,q30mX4, q1hX4, q2hX10). We admin blood frequently. Foleys go in, foleys come out, foleys go back in for retention. Lots of peri-care related to foleys. Oh, since a lot of wounds and problems that require surgery are associated with long term uncontrolled diabetes, expect to give lots of insulin, check lots of blood sugars, know your s/s of hypoglycemia, and do TONS of diabetes management education. We also deal with lots of infections and sepsis, and thus give lots of antibiotics and have to watch closely for SIRS, reactions, etc. We also see quite a few ileo/colostomies (new, revised, reversed) that we have to care for. I've only ever worked on this unit, but I assume it's like nursing in any unit. It will be frustratingly busy at times. You will feel overwhelmed, underappreciated, and at times outright HATE your job. Then about once a week you will have a patient or family member that thanks you so sincerely, or you'll see someone who was nearly dead a week ago go back home to their family, or something will touch you, and you'll be revived and able to survive another 36 hours of chaos.

I'm an ADN student also going into my third semester. I was privileged to get an extern position at a local hospital. At first I was worried about having multiple patients, too. 1. you will adapt after a few struggles and stumbles. Keep moving forward. 2. No one will let you hurt a patient. Don't over step your skill or knowledge level, and ask, ask, ask and research, research, research when you have doubts or questions. 3. After a very short time your fear will be replaced by growing confidence, skills, and the knowledge that you jumped in and learned now.