87RN

You have no ICU experience and your orientation is one day? Seriously, try not to kill somebody. You need to know your vasoactive drips, sedation and paralysis meds, insulin drips, ACLS, how to prepare for and manage art lines, central lines, PA catheters, ventilators/bipaps, ekg interpretation and so much more. If it were me, I would not accept a position without the proper training. You are putting your license at risk as well as patients lives!

I had no idea it was racist either, I've never seen it written and had assumed it was spelled *******, lol.

My ICU is about a third male staff. It isn't weird at all. It is nice to have help from the guys especially turning heavy patients. Sometimes we take turns doing each others baths if the pt is more comfortable with a man or a woman. There are also a lot of male nurses in the other units throughout the hospital, except L&D. Also there are plenty of male aides, phlebs, radiology techs, etc. I think if you want to be a nurse, go for it! Gender isn't really an issue anymore, as far as I've seen.

We use a lot of propofol, sometimes versed. I've only used precedex once and my pt brady'd down to 30's, our docs don't seem to like it much, although our pharmacists are always talking about it. I work for a small 12 bed community ICU.

I went through a whole cart of dirty linen bags to find my patients dentures because he wrapped it in a pillowcase (why???) then had a huge lactulose induced explosion all over the bed and it was my fault because i didn't check with him before I cleaned him up and took out the dirty linens. Yeah it was one of those today, I wish management would have walked in on that and I would have yelled "above and beyond!"

I would just go meet the managers and let them know you are interested. If they need the staff, they may be willing to train you.

My advice would be to wait to have kids until you have at least one year experience working as a nurse. It would be hard finding your first job as a new grad as it is but a nurse with no experience that long out of school would have a much harder time. I'm not too familiar but there are also rules about inactive licenses that you may want to look up depending on how long you are planning to stay home.

If someone from pharmacy would even answer the phone!

Close your eyes and feel for veins in your arms or your friends and families. The vein will feel bouncy. Some veins are deep and some are close to the surface. Watch your angle at insertion. Look on YouTube or Google iv insertion/ phlebotomy tips. Make sure you set up all your supplies and get them ready so you don't have to open anything once you start. It takes time and practice. Take your time and look for a good vein, sometimes patients with difficult veins will tell you where is best. As you do more, you will get more confident and it will get easier. Watch other nurses or lab techs who are good and copy what they do. Keep trying :)

I also don't have NICU experience but I think getting a position in L&D at the hospital that has the NICU would be good to get your foot in the door. You will develop a relationship with the NICU staff, pediatricians and get some experience with newborns. You will learn what a healthy newborn looks like, normal vitals etc. Then, when a position opens up it will be easier to transfer in house plus you already have some ICU experience.

You should look up your hospitals P&P for drips, if the ED doesn't have a copy, try going to ICU and see if they have one. My ICU has a reference binder with info on all the gtts with starting rate, max rate, etc. I have a little card laminated that I carry with me with all the info. Also on your days off, study your drugs, learn what they are for, how they work, the half- life, etc. Our MD's give us verbal orders and expect us to know how to titrate them they usually just say "start them on ____ drip". If your patient is being started on multiple drips you need to ask your charge to change your pt ratio and work on getting them transfered to ICU ASAP. It will take time to gain experience but you also have to empower yourself to learn more about what you don't know.

6 patients total care is a lot, are you sure there are no aides?

So lately I've been feeling a little blah/ bored/ depressed because all my patients were either terminal extubations or unsuccessful codes. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy helping patients and their families cope with end of life issues and I am honored to be in a position that helps people at their most vulnerable moments but sometimes it sucks when you have to go to the morgue every single shift! It's hard to come home after a shift and your husband asks how was your day and you try not to sound too casual talking about people dying. I know some of you fellow nurses can relate, right? On the brighter side, we finally had some good "action" this weekend. A successful Rosc s/p vfib+ 3 rounds of CPR with neuro intact! Some adenosine magic on 2 rapid response svt patients. A train wreck septic pt weaned off pressors/ extubated. A stroke pt s/p tpa with only very mild residual weakness, she came in aphasic and nih 17. I love when my patients have good outcomes and I feel like I actually helped to fix them for a change. I work in a smaller hospital so it's pretty rare to see all of this in one day, was quite the exhilarating/ hectic day, I'm still reeling, lol.

This is a little off topic but involves a dog in my old ER. In the middle of the night, a woman came into our ER frantically crying because her dog was choking, it was a big lab mix and she was caring it in her arms like a baby. It happened to be a slow night so we brought the dog into a trauma room, suctioned and removed a plastic toy with forceps and gave the dog some o2 via mask. We saved that dog, all the patients in the ER were applauding lol. I don't think it's that big of a deal that he brought his dog. It was in a crate, and well behaved. It's not like it followed him into each patients room. Agree with others that there are far dirtier things that crawl around an ER. If it becomes frequent, then it should be discussed further but I would just try and get over it. Maybe there was a staffing shortage and he agreed to cover if he could bring his dog?

I don't think 2 years away is that bad. If I were you, I would reapply for your license. Take a refresher course/ take acls/pals/NRP and apply for a job. I think it would be easier to get back into L&D since you have experience vs applying in other departments. Also, L&D of all departments should be more understanding of your extended maternity leave. It can't hurt to try, good luck!