ICRN2008 BSN, RN

I had a position that I loved for the most part. Unfortunately, the long hours did not fit with our family's needs. Now I'm in an hourly position where we are basically set up to fail and are given responsibilities at the very edge of our scope of pr...

I've been off of work for a year (staying home with my kids) and now I'm thinking about going back (prn or casual position, not full-time). Any tips to get back into the game? I think I'm going to be pretty limited by the fact that I will only work w...

I think every nursing job is stressful in one way or another. I've worked both at and away from the bedside. When you work bedside, your shift is brutal but then you turn your patients over to another nurse and leave. Working in infection prevention ...

I'm considering returning to work at some point this year, but I will not be willing to commute longer than 30 minutes each way. And no more than 2 days a week.

The previous response was great. I found the "Getting Started in Occupational Health Nursing" CD by AOHP to be super helpful, along with my local AAOHN chapter for education, networking and support. And, of course, the AAOHN Core Curriculum Be prepar...

I've been out of the game for a year now, but have not worked full-time in 3 years because I've been home with my children. I've started networking with old colleagues and found that I've received a pretty positive response so far. Attending local c...

When I worked the floors I found that rounding every 15 minutes to half hour cut down on the number of call lights for things that could wait, by at least 80%. I also made it a point to chart on the mobile computers near the patient's rooms instead o...

I just wanted to get a general idea about working during graduate school. Please tell me if you are working or not during your NP program. If you are, how many hours per week and how many credits are you taking? Thanks in advance :)

I currently work in occupational health and I am responsible for the following: Writing policies and procedures for my department Writing protocols for others in the department Designing systems for documentation and retention of employee health file...

I was told by one of the PACU nurses the other day that the risk for development of malignant hyperthermia extends to 2 hours post-op. This patient had a family (but not personal) history of MH. In recovery they had been taking a temp every fifteen...

Oh, and we had to document the IV site assessment hourly as well. This came after a few lawsuits for infiltrated IVs. We managed to do our hourly rounding, but we usually only had four patients. Even then, we were running around the entire shift a...

In peds we were required to document hourly: Patient alertness, position and activity (ie calm, crying, etc). We had to do hourly pain assessments on all patients in pain, especially sickle cell patients on PCAs. We had to document IV VTBI and PCA...

There are many vector-borne diseases that are making a comeback. I just read a book about the Yellow Fever epidemic in Memphis around the turn of the century, and it certainly serves as a cautionary tale for us today. I know that many people are opp...

At the peds hospital I worked at, the rapid response team consisted of a critical care RN, critical care RT (many times our team from the helicoptor would come by), out team's resident MD, and the senior resident. A few times I had to call in the RRT...

I am still learning, having just started in infection control. I can tell you that our practice right now is not to do titers on new employees who have already gotten the series. Many times it will come back negative, but doing the series over agai...

I know that there can be minimum qualifications for hiring someone, but can they discriminate against someone because they have "too much" education.? I would think that if they made this a written policy as opposed to an informal practice they may ...

PS I hope it's not urgent because you're taking an online test. Because if so, it's cheating to ask others for help....

G stands for gamma, A stands for alpha, M stands for mu, etc. Greek letters

I am exploring the option of becoming an infection control nurse when I graduate from nursing school. I am already an MT(ASCP), so I am reasonably certain that I have adequate academic preparation. However, all the job listings for infection control ...

We had stickers printed out on our unit because of a new IV initiative. It includes date, time, number of attempts, 22 ga or whatever, how IV was secured (statlock, tegaderm, etc), flushes easily and good blood return check, and RN signature. Sticke...

If you want to be pre-med and be serious about it, then you will have to spend some time during undergrad doing research in a lab, heavy duty volunteer work, honors classes, or some other activity that will make you stand out during the med school ad...

Many states do not allow phone triage by RNs without specific physcian protocols. LPNs, because they cannot assess and evaluate, cannot do phone triage. I doubt that MAs can either

When I worked inpatient peds hematology, I had some pretty young adolescents on HUGE doses of morphine or hydromorphone via PCA. One guy had to have a special concentration of morphine prepared (5 mg/1 ml versus the normal 1 mg/1 ml) because otherwi...

I'm trying to think back to when I worked in the lab and used to run 24 hour urine proteins often. I'm sure I've seen them that high before. If you're around long enough, you see everything. High levels like this could also happen with Bence-Jones...

My pay is poor by comparison, especially considering that I'm salary and don't get paid for overtime. On the other hand, I work M-F day shift, which is nice.