chelojelo

I agree, i just went one size up. The pants that tie around the waist are a lot better than the elastic band, for the obvious reason of being able to adjust them. As far as tops, i bought one bigger one and wore white tshirts other times because they're stretchy.

I've worked in nursing homes for the past 14 years and have never seen anyone experience what i would call a true deathbed vision, as the few that did talk to dead relatives did so before they were even sick, due to Alzheimer's, etc. But i have seen 2 relatives have deathbed visions. My great grandma started talking to her death mother at her moment of death, and my grandpa saw a light up in the corner of the hospital room that no one else could see, for about an hour as he slipped away. Both of them died of cancer, an both were 100% in their right minds.

i had been working there for a few yrs. i didn't do it all the time. there was another lpn who did it full time. she was going thru some long term health problems and i was sort of a stand in at that time, then after she came back i continued to help her some. she normally did it full time. still tho, she had no special certification to do it, either. once you become and lpn, if u begin working in a ltc facility and stay there for a while, you'll pretty much be able to have any position you want (make sure with each change you ask for a pay raise), excluding don or administrator, because of the education requirements. in my 7 or so yrs there, i did mds's, i was a unit coordinator. i was asked to be the staffing coordinator and also was asked to be the assistant don. at one time i was responsible for only the admissions. all those jobs are dayshift, mon-fri. i don't really know what types of jobs are available to lpn's in a hospital setting, tho, cause i don't have a lot of experience anywhere but in ltc. personal care homes don't pay as well, but if you work in one, you do have the opportunity to become the don there. now once you are the don in a personal care home the pay might average out about the same as ltc, but i have an aunt who is the administrator at one, and at one time i thought i'd like to work for her, but at the one she works with there is no position that's titled don, i'm not sure why, but as a staff "person" there (doing mostly the same duties as in ltc), i would have only made a little over min. wage. but they don't really have a big need for actual nurses, because anybody employed there is allowed to hand out meds, do treatments, etc. it has to do with the level of care and the pay source, i think. i know u didn't ask for that much info, but i thought it might be helpful to know once u do become an lpn. it took a while after i entered the workforce as an lpn before i found out a lot of that stuff!

where i work we tape report. I like the report to be a little more detailed, as a lot of times i'm off work for 4 days at a time, and with 50+ pts, i don't have time to dig thru charts. Recording report has it's pros and cons. On the upside, if you're the nurse going off duty, it saves you time. On the downside, if you're the nurse coming on, you don't have the opportunity to ask the nurse who left any questions. I like to hear about their personality, demands of their families (a big one), things like that on a new admit if i haven't met the pt before, because these are things that are usually not in the chart. Things i don't like to hear are their diet orders, how they take their meds (we usually note this near the bottom of their mar), allergies, and other things that can be easily found on my own.

I'm an LPN in a LTC facility (Ive worked in LTC for about 9yrs, and the facility i work at has a floor that is pretty much the equivalent to med/surg) and i've never been asked, or even "allowed" to work as an Aide, though i have offered to at times when we were short staffed, it just doesn't happen. The RNs and LPNs are interchangable, and as someone else mentioned, sometimes the LPN acts as the charge nurse while the RN passes meds, etc, and sometimes it's the other way around. The med techs are sometimes utilized as aides, but not very often. I did work in a Psych unit once, and there they used the LPNs and the Aides interchangably. This didn't bother me, and it didn't bother any other LPNs i knew at the time, either. It was actually a nice break, at least we got to go home on time when our shift ended. Working as nurses, well, you know how that can be sometimes, you're stuck at work till you've tied up every loose end and all your work is finished, sometimes up to 2hrs after your shift technically ends!

Are you talking about at a vocational school or in a facility? I actually did this part time at the last LTC facility i worked at. I didn't have to have any special certification. It was one of those deals where, as most LTC facilities do now, anyone who was hired in as a nursing assistant, but wasn't already certified, was put into a class there at the facility for about a week to learn the basics, then they were put out on the floor for so long, then back in to the classroom for a few days before going to take their certification tests.

Thanks for your advice! I actually went today and signed on with an agency. Not one in Lexington, but one in Somerset, which services facilities closer to me. It took 6 HOURS to apply and get all the paperwork, do the tests, etc. I couldn't BELIEVE it took that long! They said it would take 24hrs before i could start picking up shifts. I'm pretty excited about it. They said they only do "direct deposit" when they pay you, and i wasn't too crazy about that, since i've always had this habit of carrying my "extra" paychecks (i work prn at another facility, and usually my checks from there will be for just one or 2 days of work) around in my purse for days or a couple of weeks before cashing or depositing them, like it gives me a sense of "saving money", lol.

I work the Baylor plan at a LTC facility. Work Sat/Sun night and one night during the week, equaling 36hrs total but i get paid for 44hrs. I have full benefits, insurance, holidays, vacation. I have been told that if i ever took a weekend day off that I wouldn't be paid the extra 8hours for that week. Also, there is no shift dif where i work.

I would definately give at least a 2wk notice. Many LTC facilities are corporate owned, and they would know about you quitting with no notice if you tried to work at one of their other facilities, be it a LTC facility, a hospital, etc. Also, people you work with now, you will most likely run into again sometime in your career at other facilities, and if they seen you applying, or heard that you were trying to get a job somewhere, they might mention to them about you just up and quitting. Definately give a notice!!

We don't post anything in the patients' rooms, either. And they don't wear name bands. We just have to look at their charts. Aside from the paperwork on the inside of the chart, we use a large green sticker dot, about the size of a nickle, on the outside, next the the patient's name if they are a full code. For DNR we use a red one. There are not a lot of pts. who are full codes, though, so we usually just know the ones who are. The sticker dot thing works well, though.

I totally agree that night nurses get the least respect. I worked as a day shift nurse for years, then a year and a half ago switched to night shift at a different facility to be closer to home, to get 12 hr shifts, more $$, etc. I have learned to never "help out" dayshift nurses by doing any of their work, because if something is wrong, even the little bittiest thing that could be corrected in 2 seconds, the dayshift nurses where i work will take it all the way up to the DON and/or Administrator, and you come out looking like an idiot because you're not there to defend yourself or to make the corrections right there on the spot. It's frustrating, and so is going from being treated as a well respected, knowledgable nurse that ppl came to for help and advice (while working day shift), to being "talked down to" at times and coming into work at night to find notes taped to the nurses station with your name on them telling you what all you've done wrong, or telling you about something you did/didn't do that was supposed to be the other way around. Never mind that if you were there when these "mistakes" were found, you could point out then and there that you had made no mistake or that something they thought wasn't done actually was, or vice versa. By the time you come in to work and find these "notes", or get a message on your voicemail, you've already been tied to the stake and everyone thinks you're a moron!

I've seen this happen to several older nurses at my last job over the course of the 7yrs I worked there. It was also a LTC facility. One particular nurse had been there for 20+ yrs. I was sitting outside on break with a younger nurse one day and she said to me, "they're trying to get rid of (insert older nurses name here) so i can have her position and come to 1st shift full time." I didn't think too much of what she said at the time, cause you know how rumors and favoritism fly at any workplace...then about a month later the older nurse was fired for endangering a patient. And loe and behold, that younger nurse who had made the comment immediately slipped right into that position. The nurse who was fired filed a lawsuit and though it took forever, finally won just less than a year ago! I have seen administration do some nurses, and other nursing staff too, pretty bad just because they didn't like the way they looked or because they didn't fit into their "social class". It's ridiculous, but it's real.

how'd u get that little dancing person on there?

Definately agree with you on that one. When i was in clinicals and had to watch procedures in the OR i almost passed out more than once. I had to leave the room and watch from behind the glass. And the masks...can't stand wearing one for longer than 1 or 2 minutes at a time, they make me feel like i can't breathe.......

The manner in which we stage wounds would depend on their severity. For example, a stage I would be where the skin is not broken, but is reddened and the red area does not go away after turning the pt off of that area. A stage II is where the skin is actually broken open, but the wound does not involve any muscle tissue yet, and so on. We also must measure and describe the wounds on a weekly basis. Seems like the treatments for wounds are continuously changing, and from what i've seen, doesnt look like one treatment works much better than the next one, as long as the wound is getting attention, kept clean, and pressure is kept off of it. And we don't stage skin tears, scratches, etc., either...though at one time we did have this DON who insisted we stage every skin tear, scratch or sore (as in bug bite, lol) as a stage II...it was ridiculous, lots of extra time consuming work, as the wound audit book would be overflowing...and lastly, we do make sure to clarify if the wound was present upon admission.