dthfytr ADN, LPN, LVN, RN, EMT-B, EMT-I

"Any reason" has it's problems. One hospital would fire you for cause if they had solid proof, for "Inadequate charting" if the just want to fire you. This second one if it really existed, is totally subjective and hard to fight because you don't have access to pt records.

It comes up on every site. Buy and keep your own malpractice insurance. The following should be written in stone and posted at the front of every nursing class. 1. You don't need to make a mistake to be sued. 2. Your employer will protect itself, first and foremost. The annual cost of malpractice insurance is about the cost of talking to a lawyer for 1 hour. If you can find a lawyer that will listen to you! When the lawyers circle your employer, you can count on some nurse spending a lot of time looking up at the bottom of a bus.

Walked past an ER patients door, saw him pouring large quantity of Tylenol #3 from bottle into mouth (suicide attempt) told him to stop as I approached but he had them all in his mouth by the time I got to him. Had a moment of inspiration, applied cricoid pressure so that he couldn't swallow any. After about 30 seconds the foul taste got to him and he spit them out.

Any EMT, LPN, RN ever notice a person wasn't quite right and check their glucose, finding a critically low value? Ever do CPR and have the patient regain vital signs before arrival at the hospital, or arrival of the code team? Ever make a suggestion to a doctor resulting in a profound improvement in a persons life? When a doctor says he can't get a history because the patient's asleep and you notice on the monitor he's also in V Tach? In school we study life, ever so difficult to define because it's a process, not a material thing. Can you buy life, say get a glass full (never mind tequila)? No, because life is just a process from "cradle to grave." So whatever your license level you've, improved the quality of a patients life, increased a patients lifespan, or brought a deceased patient to life? Why you must be a God to wield such super human power! You've done what most people consider impossible, and done it all in a days work. So why do you call yourself "just a nurse," "a lowly LPN," or belittle yourself in any way? The word "just" should never be associated with a person who can bring the dead to life, keep the dying alive longer, and bring comfort to the suffering. We should shout from the mountain tops, I am a nurse! I am an EMT! I bring the dead back to life!

Family comes first in my book. OT and the money it brings is seductive, can be habit forming. On your deathbed will you be wishing you'd worked more overtime or had more time with your kids?

Congratulations. If you ever feel dumb, remember you're there to learn, they are there to teach you. Nobody was born knowing all this.

IMHO; I'd agree with her in everything she says! Being oppositional is a no win with her. By agreeing she can either shut up, or make up more and more exaggerated claims that will be so rediculous that nobody's going to believe them anyway. Once you get this all smoothed out for yourself, quietly take a pillow and........... Whoops, sorry, my evil twin nurse got the keyboard for a minute. Forget the pillow part.

Most useful post I've seen in a long time. We've pretty much got every other kind of disaster already in progress, guess Zombies are next! For those of you who believe in high speed behaviour modification (a.k.a. guns), zombie targets are now available on the web. You can never be too ready!!

Forgive me for forgetting, I've seen LPN's function at higher levels than RN's enough times to know that each nurse needs to be judged on their own merits, not title. Big oversight, sorry LPN's.

Take it as a sign of immaturity. We all develop expertise in the area we work the most. No nursing position is less important than another. If any one nursing specialty (OB, OR, ER, Psych, Etc) became unavailable, the entire health care system would collapse. I encourage all nurses to be proud of what they do, to never use the phrase "just a nurse" and if somebody implies that you're position is any less vital than theirs, ask them to cover for you while you take a weeks vacation. If they don't immediately download in their pants, they will if they try to replace you.

For your next post ask what drugs the nurses take the most. Caffeine is a given for number 1!

Plenty of jobs, just not in the paces most people want them. I get recruitment offers several times per week. Have you looked for work in El Paso TX?

Direct from the heart. I've used dthfytr for email and even vanity license plates for at least 15 years. Glad you enjoy it, glad to share it, glad if it helps put nursing in a good perspective for you. Paul

Like they said, prioritization keeps changing in the ER which is why people with ADD would make good ER nurses. Thankfully nobody has said "multi-tasking." True multi-tasking has been studied and found to be detrimental to the tasks at hand, and the actual limitation for the human brain seems to be two tasks at once, like charting while planning your next task.

Holy crap! Did I say all that? I'm gonna write it all down and read it the next time I start to say I'm "just a nurse!"