Stargazer

When I worked ICU, we had nurse techs who assisted with bed baths, but all nurses bathed their own pts. Since most of the pts were sedated/comatose/immobile, it took 2 people to do a bath, turn the pt and change the sheets. It was a good time to listen to lungs, check back dressings and assess skin integrity.

~sigh~ Apparently this needs to be stated yet again. I don't care what you do on an official break, whether that is a 15-minute break, a lunch break, or all your breaks for the shift combined into one, as long as this is accepted practice in your unit and institution. Breaks are breaks because (1) your patients are covered by other staff nurses during that time (2) unpaid, and (3) usually mandated by contract. I don't care if you eat, smoke, go the bathroom, go jogging, run to the bank, wash your hair, or crochet a doily during your break, as long as you return to the unit promptly when the break is over. I believe what people have an issue with here is people who sleep on the job, i.e., NOT during a break, but during their scheduled shifts.

I understand the impulse though. We can return SOME expired supplies for credit, but a lot of items can't be returned and we just eat the cost. It kills me to throw away perfectly good IV solution and ACLS drugs because they're, like, 1 minute expired. My company donates a lot of expired stuff to 3rd-world countries too. Our supplier has always told us that it's generally accepted knowledge in the pharmaceutical biz that meds are still fine for 6 - 12 months past the printed expiration date, if that helps you any.

I know that Doctors Without Borders won't take expired medical supplies as donations, so I suspect there are legitimate reasons for the product dating.

I know that our expired endotracheal tubes have to be replaced, even though they're just inactive latex or similar. When I asked our supplier (a trusted colleague for 13 years, not a sleazy company rep) why, she said that they are no longer guaranteed to be sterile after the expiration date.

Listen to Lausana, for she is as wise as she is bee-yoo-ti-ful.

Don't feel bad, Tracy. The more posts there are on this thread, the more it's making me laugh. Why yes, I am going to hell, thanks for asking.

W. T. F.????? The doc's never heard of stool softener?

As far as firefighters and cops never reporting each other, that's just not true either. My brother, a paramedic, once had to report a colleague when they discovered, cleaning the rig after a call, that the partner had given exactly the wrong med (lido instead of atropine or similar) to a cardiac arrest patient who was still being coded when they left her in the ER. My brother brought it to the guy's attention and told him he needed to call the ER now and let them know the pt. had this drug on board. Partner pretended he was going to make the call but never did, so my brother ended up calling the ER. The ER doc asked rather grimly why the medic who'd actually made the mistake wasn't on the phone, instead of his partner. Guy was written up by the ER doc. Can't remember if he was canned, but I know he was at least suspended. And just this last week in the news, a Seattle police officer was caught on tape extorting money and drugs from dealers he arrested. Said cop was under investigation in the first place after fellow cops reported their suspicions to Internal Affairs. Bottom line, if you're talking about penny-ante crap like "Jane left the pt's room a mess" or "Jane takes too many breaks" or something, then you're absolutely right, there is too much of that and it needs to stop. If you are talking about actually covering up for clinical incompetence/mistakes or criminal behavior like drug diversion, then that is just bullshit. Protecting the patient/public and the integrity of our own profession should be our first priorities.

Good point, Deb. Many religions try to make sense of, or take comfort in death by speculating that there is some form of afterlife, whether you call it Nirvana or Heaven or something else. For those of us who believe in reincarnation, it is probably just another way to believe that death is not the end of existence. And then there are some religions (I believe Judaism may be one of these, but somebody feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) where they don't believe in any kind of afterlife, and I can see where the comfort would be there also--you pays your money and you takes your ride, and you don't have to worry about heaven or hell, just the legacy that you leave among the living. just_wondering, it's great if your faith helped you through your grandfather's death; but faith and beliefs and comfort come in many different forms, and they are all equally valid. The key is to figure out, first, what belief system works for you, and second, what belief system works for your patient.

After working with approximately 100 different nurses over a 12-year period dealing with life-and death situations daily in critical care units, I can honestly say the subject of religion came up exactly once in all that time, and it was initiated by a Wiccan who told me she sometimes said protection spells (? sorry if that's the wrong terminology) for her sicker patients. As a lapsed Catholic-verging-on-agnostic ICU nurse, I don't ever recall thinking about religion when it came to caring for my patients. I did what I could to keep them stable or healthy, and when I couldn't, I did what I could to alleviate their suffering. I gave patients and families choices, respect, and dignity. In other words, I cared for them more from a holistic model rather than a religious one. As far as death and dying is concerned--as I said, I headed it off where I could. When I couldn't, I tried to make my patients comfortable and make their death as positive an experience as I could, letting them have as much control as feasible, offering them privacy and time with their loved ones. Working in a big-city teaching hospital and seeing technology often abused to keep patients alive no matter what in order to keep patients alive another day, or another hour, I saw very clearly that death is not always the worst thing that can happen to someone. I think everyone tends to see things through filters based on their beliefs and experiences. If you are a religious person, you will see everything through that filter. If you are a very political person, you tend to see things through that filter. I think that the vast majority of nurses see and treat patients holistically regardless of their religious beliefs or lack thereof, and therefore you're not probably going to be able to tell who is religious and who's not based on the care they give. And yes, implying that the topic of conversation was over Sunny's head was rude and insulting, not to mention entirely inaccurate.

6800 cc's? I'm impressed. And having sympathy pains. Oy. My biggest "yield" was 3800 cc's--from a guy who hadn't peed in 5 days. He was so distended, I couldn't pass a cath for love nor money, and neither could the doc. The doc finally had to do a suprapubic tap just to get 300 cc's or so off, then we were able to get a cath in. You've never seen someone so grateful in all your life. :)

Okay, that made me laugh out loud, but I actually think the opposite. Life must be relatively easy when you're too damn dumb to even know how dumb you are. And ERNurse, the complete version of that saying is, "Too stupid to live, too annoying to die."