stacylethani

I’m 4’11 and 110 pounds. I bought a few pairs of FIGS and although I love the material and feel of them, they’re not the most flattering on my figure. I have the yola in petite XS, and I do often have to pull them up throughout my shift. I just bought a pair of joggers and yola pxxs, and truthfully they look like skinny jeans and IDK how I feel about scrubs that tight at work ? (although I’ve definitely seen other girls wearing them that size). I have the greys anatomy with the active band and I do love those and they look better (a little baggy at times) but I find the material gets worn out quickly and they aren’t soft/feel thin, if that makes any sense. Petite girls, what’s your favorite scrub brands?

Hey! I used to work on an acute care peds cardiac floor, currently in peds cardiac ICU. On the floor it was almost exclusively post op cardiac surgeries or cardiac catheterizations, working up on feeds, weaning respiratory support (HFNC/o2 cannula), occasional VADs, heart failure on a cardiac drip called milrinone to help reduce the workload of the heart while waiting for heart transplant, and kiddos who just got transplanted or are transplanted and rejecting. You usually have anywhere between 2-4 kiddos, lots of oral medications, they’re usually NG/NJ tube fed, working on pain management, especially for the fresher post-ops. Can have super sick kids especially pre/post transplant who are on a lot of drips, need a lot of monitoring. Personally, I loved being on my floor. I learned SO much! Let me know if you have any other questions! ?

I want to preface this by saying, this is a rough time in life for everyone. I have yet to meet someone who isn't struggling. I'm feeling so anxious, overwhelmed, and depressed. I never feel like doing anything anymore on my days off d/t quarantine. My state was one of the harder hit ones, and we've been on a very strict stay at home order for multiple months now. I've been baking a lot and that's basically been my newest hobby but late at night, when I'm lying in bed alone I just feel so unhappy/miserable. Many of my friends are also struggling with anxiety/feelings of frustration and sometimes it feels like we are walking on eggshells around each other. I feel like I can't talk to them about it sometimes because they're struggling so much with it too that its just too stressful for them to talk about it and they just end up getting more anxious and angry. Everything feels kind of meaningless right now. I'm so tired. All the time. I mean, I work night shift so I'm already always tired but this just feels worse. I just want to sleep all the time. Things that used to make me happy before, don't. I feel like I'm just going through the motions of everything in my boring, unexciting, lonely life right now. I've been reading here and there and the weather is finally warming up so I've been trying to get outside more. I live with my family and its constant covid talk - the news is always on and even when I've asked them to stop watching it so much because it just creates anxiety in everyone plus its only so reliable, they won't. I don't know what this post is about, really. I'm just feeling really lonely and really down. It's my birthday soon and I honestly couldn't care less.

Thank you for your help!! I really appreciate it!! ?

Adventure_rn, thank you so much!! That is so helpful! I’ve been lost on which forums to post questions to because peds cardiac ICU doesn’t have its own category - I guess lumping it with PICU makes sense. Thanks for your help guys!

Can someone please explain what an RVOT (right ventricular outflow tract) is? Or LVOT? What does it do? What does that mean? Why would you need surgery on it? For reference I’m in the peds cardiac ICU. thank you! ?

How do you know when you should start bagging your pt with an ETT? I read something saying disconnecting the pt from the vent should be a very last resort because then they lose the recruitment from the vent (someone please explain this to me, what does that even mean?) but if your kids sats are sitting in the 40s and they aren’t coming up with going up on their fio2, how long do you wait/how do you know to bag? Also with cardiac kiddos, you don’t want to automatically increase their oxygen first, right? Cause then their lungs steal blood flow? I’m confused ?

What unit are you interviewing for? What I’ve noticed is everyone is super helpful and eager to help you learn. They want nurses dedicated to learning/improving their practice. Very focused on evidence based practice/research/teaching (it’s a teaching hospital) so anything related is helpful. Just show your passion for nursing and why you’ll be a great fit! do your research on magnet status, awards in the last few years, etc.

I’ve been a peds cardiac nurse for two years and started a new job in the cvicu in August. I’m off orientation in 4 weeks and feel so overwhelmed and not ready at all. I’ve had two evaluations so far and I’ve been told I’m doing really well and they’re very happy with my current performance. However I feel like i still don’t know anything! I had a new preceptor this last weekend and I felt like she disagreed with everything I did. It feels like nothing I do is ever the right way according to her and she really made me feel incompetent. I feel like I’m 12 steps behind where I was before. I’m so terrified of ICU honestly and I don’t know if I made the right decision by doing icu this soon.

I’d say at about one year I felt like I could possibly handle harder assignments (that’s also when they started giving my harder ones) and after a month or two of those I started to feel much more confident. I’d say around 1 year-1.5 years I started feeling pretty good about my assignments and like I could handle most situations. And the thing is, if there was anything I wasn’t sure about, I’d just ask my charge nurse for help! I also started precepting about 1.5 years in and that helped my confidence as well! You will get there, just give yourself some grace. this is a hard job!

Random question, do you think we don’t get enough training on basic emergency medicine/situations? For example, when you’re in a focused speciality, you know so much about your particular specialty but when a patient comes along with another issue do feel like you know enough basics to provide proper care? For example, I’m a peds cardiac nurse and I know a lot about my specialty but if someone is my family is having neurological issues, I’m almost no help. It feels kind of pathetic to be honest. Because of it, some family members like to make rude comments saying nurses don’t know anything and I’m useless when someone is having a medical issue because I don’t know anything. It’s so frustrating to be so belittled all the time, especially because I’m the only one in the family who is in medicine.

I just started a new job on a peds cardiac icu unit. I've had two weeks on the floor so far (which I know isn't much). I'm feeling overwhelmed and kind of anxious. I've been a nurse for two years, coming from a peds cardiac medsurg unit, which helps a lot, however, all the ICU stuff is just kind of going over my head. There's so many lines/tubes/gtts and it's so hard keeping them all straight and remembering what they all do! CVPs, art lines, vents, CVLs, NIRS, oh my! For example, when my preceptor tells me to draw a blood gas, it takes me a minute to figure out which line/lumen I'm supposed to draw off of because there's just so many. I know that you'd draw gases off your art line and use that for bp's as well. I'm still taking care of the stable kids right now, so I want to get my understanding of these down before I move onto the sicker kids in my orientation. Additionally, I think my preceptor is a really good nurse, but I'm second guessing whether it's the best fit. My first preceptor when I started as a nurse was very very by the book, policy driven, and pushed me like crazy, which helped me become a good nurse! This preceptor is a little more laid back, lets me do a lot more on my own, has never pulled up a policy for me, and I feel like I have to ask her to explain what she's doing in more detail sometimes. She's a great nurse and has been a nurse in the cvicu for over eight years, however, sometimes I wish she just talked me through more things and communicated more/watched me a little more. It's interesting because I was a preceptor at my previous job and there's just a lot of things I wish she would do for me as a preceptor that she isn't. I don't know how to approach that conversation though without making it awkward. I just really want to be a good nurse on this unit and get myself in a good place before I end orientation in a few months! Any advice?

Hi, just wanted to jump on here and talk. I recently left my old job (a job I completely loved) on an acute care med surg floor to start on a peds CVICU at a large hospital. I had to relocate due to family reasons/cost/etc. I really didn't want to make this move but it's just a better plan for me long term and it was something that was going to happen eventually. I was so in love with my previous unit and I started there as a new grad. It's been so hard, I know this transition is good but I'm so heartbroken at the fact that I left at all. I am so excited to go to ICU and it was always a goal of mine eventually but I'm so nervous (but also thrilled), since there's such a huge learning curve, I can't possibly know it all, and these are super super sick kids! I finally felt really good/comfortable (not terrified of work every morning) on my previous floor and then I left just a few months later, and now I'm starting all over again and it's so overwhelming. I'm just having a hard time adjusting to the new environment, new place, new hospital and I just miss my old hospital so much. I know it's going to be good, and CVICU was eventually my end goal but I just am so sad ?.

Thanks for all your responses! So the situation was a kiddo in severe heart failure who couldn’t hold their temperatures. They kept dropping to 35C and at one point went as low as 33C. Most of the shift they were 34-35. I had utilized all warming measures I had available - increasing temp in the room, warming blankets, heat packs, etc. At one point the docs just stopped responding to my pages about the kids temps being low. I understand that they have a lot of patients and they don’t want to make changes but in my opinion, temps this low need to be addressed/fixed, especially in a heart failure patient. What do you think?

I’ve been a nurse for two years on a cardiac step down peds unit. As I’ve grown as a nurse, it’s hit me how much pushback I get from doctors, team members, and charge nurses to make changes in the middle of the night when my pt isn’t looking good. Unless my patient is actively crumping, I get a lot of “we’ll pass it along to day team.” Or “it’s not an immediate issue right now, we can wait a few hours to address that.” It’s so frustrating as a newer nurse though because a lot of the time it feels like my concerns are not being validated. Then day shift comes on and states they feel uncomfortable with the patient and the team does 20 interventions. Sometimes it makes me feel incompetent even though I know what I’m doing at this point and feel comfortable on my floor, because of how much pushback I get. Yes, you can call an rrt if it’s bad, but i deal with a lot of chronically sick kids who always look bad. When “looks like crap” is your baseline, it’s hard to get you moved to icu. Ive just been so frustrated lately with the lack of action on night shift/the lack of concern. I don’t know what to do anymore. Almost every shift I come home frustrated that we didn’t do something else for the patient.

Lately I've been getting put in this tough assignment pretty often where I have a well known severely delayed CP/DD kiddo on our floor. This kid is notoriously very difficult to take care of. Parents are super particular about care, the kid needs q2 turns and changes and is honestly as big as me. He gets agitated and cries very easily and is very difficult to calm down. I find myself getting super frustrated very easily when taking care of him. He wears me out so badly emotionally, physically and mentally. I feel so exhausted after a night with him because it's nonstop crying and whining and it feels like nothing I do to help him calm down is good enough. I feel like an awful nurse for feeling this way but I honestly just dread work when I get him in my assignment. Moreover, I've been moved from my original assignment multiple times in the middle of my stretch to take care of him on my second day. I dont know if I should talk to charge about it because I don't want to sound difficult or create problems or make them think I'm a bad nurse cause I'm asking for a different assignment. I am just so so tired. 😩

I'm one year into nursing and the other night I had my second ever code blue, my patient seized and O2 sats fell to the teens, HR skyrocketed, she was apenic and blue. I called a code, and all I could think about was respiratory support. I immediately grabbed the bag mask to start bagging but her sats started coming back up and the seizure stopped. The code team finally got there and she was fine again. I didn't even think to make someone grab Ativan because all I was thinking about was that she stopped breathing, so I was so focused on respiratory support, I completely ignored the cause: the seizure. I feel so stupid and like I totally screwed up... the scariest part was that I was alone in the room the whole time because by the time the code team/docs/staff got there, he was recovering ������

I'm just a few short months away from hitting my one year mark as a new nurse. I have my dream job, amazing coworkers, an amazing boss, and I work with the most amazing kiddos and families every day. But the honest truth? I feel so miserable and alone. I'm on nights so whenever I'm awake, the rest of the world is asleep. My roommate and I are super close but literally never see each other (maybe 1 day/week if we're lucky.) im so tired all the time, all I want to do on my few and far between days off is sleep. I feel so alone. I want to meet new friends, I want to meet a guy, but how the heck do you do that when your life is the opposite of everyone else's? I feel so lonely and being single makes it so much worse but at work, I'm surrounded by girls, I can't seem to find any nice guys when I do finally muster the energy to go out and I'm starting to feel hopeless. My family is a few states away and I only see them every few months. At this point, I feel numb. I'm just going through the motions of everything and not actually enjoying anything... I hate this person I've become, especially since "on paper" everything looks like it's worked out perfectly for me.

Last night was my first night of three and I was floated to a different floor. I had a mom who was refusing midnight and 4am vitals on her kid, she was getting super frustrated every time I went to assess him because she just wanted him to sleep. All night she kept making comments saying he was healthy and didn't need all these interventions and assessments and pain meds and that he just needed sleep (she was an RN herself which made it more difficult). It was just super frustrating to deal with. Additionally, I hung a piggyback med wrong and spiked it with primary tubing instead of secondary tubing (med error?) but then I just hooked up the patients med rinse to the primary and flushed t that way. Not sure what I was thinking that I spiked it with primary tubing. Anyways, every time I get floated up to this other floor, I always feel so incompetent and like super busy with tasks and I never get my breaks till 5am. The worst part is that this floor has much more stable patients than my normal floor does so it literally makes no sense that I struggle so much on this floor only. 😩

If I call an RRT on my patient an hour or two into shift is it the previous shift nurse's fault? The other day I got report on a patient and called an RRT not long afterwards when I was told he looked ok, and last week I gave report of my patient and found out he RRT'd not long after either. I don't know if I missed something in my assessments or if the patient just suddenly went downhill. 🙄 I'm kind of blaming myself..

Help! When I got onto shift yesterday my kid had TPN and lipids running. During report, the day shift RN and I did our double check for the hanging medication and everything looked perfect. He was getting TPN at 28ml/hr. I didn't touch the TPN or lipids all night. I drew his labs around 5am and paused the TPN and lipids to access his line but otherwise didn't do anything else to the pump. When I gave handoff report in the morning, the day shift RN saw that his TPN was running at 29ml/hr instead of 28! I know it's only a l difference but I'm kinda freaked out because it's my first medication error. The TPN and lipids were already running when I got onto shift but I can't figure out where in the night the rate got changed since I didn't do any IV meds or access his line at all except for labs! I don't know if he got an extra 2ml of TPN between 0500-0700 when the day shift Rn caught it or if it was running at the wrong rate all night, so he got 12ml extra of TPN. I also didn't even think to page the team about it cause we were in the middle of handoff and the day shift RN brushed it off so quickly. Im going to talk to my charge about it tonight and probably fill out a med error report. This is my first med error ever (even though I didn't hang it, I didn't catch the wrong rate!) and I'm kinda freaking out. Obviously I'm a new nurse, this is my 6th month. Help please!

Over the last month or so, I've come home from work each day feeling distressed, discouraged, and frustrated with myself. I've made some mistakes, like forgetting to double check TPN and lipids against the patient's hard chart (all the electrolytes), I've walked out of a room and walked back in ten minutes later because I forgot to do something like check I/Os, I've forgotten to chart some I/Os (everyone is q2 I/O ~ cardiac floor). I just feel so incompetent sometimes and I feel like the other new RNs are doing so good and I'm not. I know confidence comes with time but at this point I've been off orientation for one month and I still sometimes (always) feel like I'm running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I'm constantly running from room to room all shift and all the other nurses are just chilling at the cluster. What am I doing wrong? How do I become better/more efficient? I feel so frustrated because I'm so busy all the time and I don't have time to critically think about my patients and their diagnoses! And its a peds cardiac floor, so these kids have complicated diseases! I just dont know what to do anymore and although I love my job, I feel frustrated with myself and discouraged.

I started on a pediatric cardiac med surg floor a few weeks ago and I'm feeling so lost and overwhelmed. I feel like 75% of the time, I don't even truly understand the kid's hx/admission reason because they have such weird/complex cardiac diseases and syndromes. AND, sometimes I barely have time to even comprehend what is wrong with their heart physiologically, because I'm just trying to understand why we are doing the interventions for them that we are and how to do them! I'm super freaked out that I won't notice signs of deterioration on these kids and that I'll miss something critical. I don't know what to do. I feel so frustrated with myself and so dumb all the time.

I recently started my first RN job at a Children's hospital on a cardiac floor. I passed my NCLEX in 75 questions (still can't believe it) and I did well in nursing school (B+/A- average). Now, anatomy was the hardest class I ever took and cardiac is one of the systems I really struggle with. I've been brushing up on peds cardiac patho and cardiac drugs but I honestly go onto the floor and I'm freaked out all the time that a kid is going to deteriorate and I won't recognize the signs. I know I just started nursing and I'm only a few weeks in, however, I feel SO INCOMPETENT!! I feel like everyone around me is progressing amazingly and I'm still ten steps behind. I'm at my dream job right out of school yet theres been days that I just want to come home and cry, and I've only just started! I don't know what to do besides pray that one day soon I'll actually feel confident in my skills and abilities and not feel so scared of a kid crashing all the time. I feel like a crap nurse.

Hi all, I'm a senior nursing student currently in my senior practicum at the Children's hospital where I go to school. I am currently on a med-surg floor and I had my pediatric clinical at this hospital on the oncology floor. I love pediatric nursing and I truly see myself in this specialty throughout my entire career! Today, I was talking to a nurse recruiter about the RN residency program at this hospital and she said that there's only four cohorts accepted during the year and that the last cohort took 25 people and that the upcoming one is taking 40. That's such a small amount of people!! I am so freaked out!! So, what I am asking is: 1) what can I do to make my resume/cover letters really stand out to this hospital? I have a CNA job currently on a postpartum floor (so I have experience with newborns), I had my peds clinical and practicum at this hospital, I have experience working with children with disabilities and with babysitting. I also am getting three letters of recommendation, one of them from my peds clinical instructor who works at this hospital currently. I also have 6 references for my application, 3 of which work at this hospital currently as well. Is that above and beyond enough? 2) what can I do during my practicum that will really make me stand out and shine above other students? What will show them that I am a great team player, am compassionate, and willing to work hard to take care of my patients the best I can? Thank you! Any advice is much appreciated :)