Norepinephrine

Amen! I do feel a bit badly for this nurse, but I think I would have felt worse for her before last May, when a loved one was seriously injured by a poorly supervised medical intern during a very routine procedure. Sure, it may have been traumatic for the intern, but, and I hate to sound like I'm completely heartless, I don't really care. It was traumatic for my loved one to have emergency surgery, two chest tubes for three months, severe pain, and, worst of all, be unable to breathe. For the first six weeks after the injury it was unclear if my loved one was even going to survive. Couldn't breathe-couldn't walk more than a few yards after having been fit for their entire life. They downplayed it but the pain was horrendous as well. It was a nightmare. I cried more in three months than I have in the past three years. To this day I beg God to protect them, to allow them to fully heal. They're doing much better but they're still not 100%. And the sadness in their eyes-it's like grief for the health they lost. All after a routine day procedure-it was an outcome so rare that two specialists later said that they'd never heard of someone being so badly hurt from this procedure. I live in fear of making such a mistake, and I'd never forgive myself if I ever did. It's so much harder to be sympathetic when it's your loved one, when you see someone who means the world to you suffer for weeks and weeks and know that it was preventible. And I think it does take seeing it happen to a loved one-my own health was permanently damaged by a medical mistake, and I've forgiven that even though it was life-altering. I don't want the responsible parties to harm themselves like Kim Hiatt did. That's tragedy on top of tragedy. But I would be okay with them feeling guilty. They should feel guilty. A lot of neglect was involved, and they caused a lot of suffering. I know this isn't going to be a popular view on AllNurses. I probably would've thought it was a bit harsh before last May when this event happened. But seeing someone who means a lot to you go through more than anyone else ever should (I left off a LOT of details because it's a pretty unique case, and I want to protect their privacy and mine) changes one's views on this sort of thing I think.

I've found that getting experience any time you can is very helpful. You'll learn a lot, and you'll make connections. I volunteered at two hospitals for a few years, and it's already opened doors for me. I have connections at several hospitals now, when I had none going in (I'm still in nursing school). Also, the experience is fantastic. It's often very rewarding, and you'll find that having some familiarity with hospital units will help you in clinical.

No, her feelings can be a symptom of depression. I never had this problem because my chronic depression (well-controlled thanks to better living through pharmaceuticals) is melancholic/anergic, which is slightly different (worse prognosis untreated but much, much more responsive to meds; SSRIs make it worse, while dopaminergics such as bupropion can reduce symptoms dramatically) but some people with "regular" depression can have this issue. Reading through what OP is saying, she sounds just like a family member who's college-aged and has major depressive disorder. I think psychiatric help would be tremendously beneficial here, but I'm just an idiot on the internet.

I know of a case like that! A classmate's brother hit his head against the bottom of the top bunk in his dorm room when he was in college after his roommate startled him. He had a bad headache and mild confusion, so he had a head CT. He wound up having a mild concussion, and finding a tiny malignant brain tumor very early. 6 years later and he's been disease-free since. Was told that had he not had a head CT for an unrelated reason, he would have likely have been diagnosed as late as 2-3 years later, and at that point, it would have almost certainly been terminal. He's 27, engaged to be married, holding a steady job in the field he studied, and healthy when he otherwise would have likely died when he was 23-25. Crazy world sometimes.

Jane Doe, RN, BSN, MSN, DNP, CRNA, CNN, LOL, STD is offended by this post.

I'm a nursing student, and I've noticed this a little bit in some classes. I'm hugely against scripting. I actually got points off in one of my health assessment practicals over it. That was stupidly stubborn of me, but I really think that it's not right to treat patients as if they were customers at Applebee's. Most, though, of my instructors also dislike scripting. I had one professor dedicate 5 minutes of class time to telling us why "having a script" was impersonal and ultimately wasn't good for patients. I have a classmate who I don't want to speak badly of because I really like her, but she more or less has a script. At the end of clinical, she was wondering why she never felt like she bonded with any of her patients. I haven't seen nurses script in the real world at my job or clinical, and I hope it's rare if it happens at all. It's just always bothered me a lot.

I don't know much about your experiances, nor do I have experiance working as an RN because I'm still in school, but I do have a decent amount of general work experiance. I don't have the same insight as most AN members, but here are some things I have worked out about handling workplace drama: - If everyone around you is a problem, you're likely the one with the problem. This is very hard to admit to yourself. I had to do it earlier this year-I realized that I was annoying, overcame my annoying habits, and now things are going a lot better for me for me at work and in life in general. - Figure out what it is about you that people have trouble with. Do you talk too much? (that was my primary issue) Do you interrupt people? Do you refuse to take advice? Are you judgemental? Again, this is not easy to do. But, if you do it, you'll likely wind up a lot happier. Everyone has stuff to work on. - Figure out which traits of yours people like and develop them. - If you're overwhelmed, figure out why and fix it. Do you need more sleep? More experiance? Are your personal problems impacting your preformance? - When in doubt, step back. - One of the best pieces of advice I've ever gotten is "Know your road, know your role, and stay in your lane." Sorry if I'm over-explaining, but: Your road = What you really want, what you're working towards Your role = What needs you're supposed to meet Your lane = Your own business, things related to your role or road - If you have an issue such as anxiety or depression, it may not be as well-hidden as you think. Depression can make you act very insecure or desperate for approval. Seeking help will improve all areas of your life.

You're all right! Sorry, I got that bit wrong. I edited the original post.

Not sure. I thought that was unusual as well. It's possible my friend misspoke or I misunderstood.

I am actually asking this for a friend, but I really would like to know myself because I'm 100% certain this is going to come up one day. My friend and I are both nursing students, though my friend is a year ahead. My friend is doing her community health clinical, and her patient, among other things, has a broken leg. Trouble is, the leg is horribly swollen (not infected). The patient is already on as many painkillers as they can have, but they're still in quite a bit of pain. My question is-is there anything at all the nurse could do, asides from medication, to ease the pain of the leg, even a little? My friend is already going to ask her instructor about it and I'll do my own research as well, but I want to know what you guys would do. I like to hear from as many experienced people as possible, so I can have many things up my sleeve so to speak :-) Thanks! EDIT: I misunderstood. Derp! My excuse is that I'm pretty sick and very sleep deprived from beings sick. The Lovenox shot is not in the leg, but they are quite uncomfortable for the patient anyway. That's what was said to me, and in my haze I misunderstood. I am a huge idiot when I'm very sleep deprived (haven't slept more than 3 hours in over a week now, plus I'm sick) and that's why I would never go to work in this condition (which doesn't happen often at all-I haven't been this sick since I was a kid).

That gave me chills! Hopefully it wasn't a glio, but even if it was, you gave the family time to prepare and saved the girl from being blamed for her symptoms. I've heard of countless cases of young brain tumor patients being repremanded for things outside of their control, and I think that makes what may be their final months more difficult. The thing that weirds me out the most with mine is that I was not at work. I was at home, several miles away, in my bed, when I woke up at 1:26am completely alert. Also happened again at 2:24am last night. Once more, something had happend at "around 2:20-2:30ish" this morning. We live in a weird, weird world.

I just want to see if anyone's had a similar experience. For background, I used to be Catholic, then agnostic, now I'm a there's-something-for-sure-but-I-have-no-idea-what-ist. Sorry if this is sloppily written-I accidentally exposed my thyroid meds to excessive heat last week (they were in my purse when I was out in 90 degree heat all day) and ruined them like an idiot. I pick up a replacement script today, but I am not on my A-game at the moment. I'm also working in a clerical role right now, so no patient care will be compromised because I (temporarily) am! I'm still a in nursing school, but I'm working in a supportive role at a large city hospital. There's a patient at work who I'm actually getting quite close with, which happens periodically with me. I know getting overly emotionally invested is a great way to burn out, but I'm willing to deal with it because I think it's helping me to stay motivated overall. I'm going to refer to the patient as Patient (I'm so creative!), use they/them pronouns, and not mention what their exact medical issues are to make this as HIPAA-friendly as possible. I couldn't stop thinking about this patient all week. That's unusual. I've had cases of patients who I got very close to where I thought of them for a day or two after work, but never for a week. I had various moments throughout the week where I just suddenly thought there's something wrong with Patient”. I sometimes woke up in the night thinking the same thing. I came into work today (clerical role) and found out that the patient had several negative events this week. All of those events matched up perfectly with when I thought about the patient. I swear I'm telling the truth. For example, they had something major happen at, according to the covering clinician, around 1:30am on Thursday morning. I woke up at exactly 1:26am Thursday morning with such a strong feeling of dread and there's something wrong with Patient” that I was genuinely concerned that they had coded or even passed away. That's just one example. I don't think this is a coincidence. But I'm weirded out. I'm normally a very concrete, lineal person. One of my parents is an engineer and I definitely inherited their thinking style! Also, I am not prone to panic attacks or anxiety, and I haven't had a problem with waking up in the night since my junior year of high school. I'm also a skeptic. So this is very, very unusual for me. I'm open to considering all ideas, and I respect all world religions (if someone asks me to pray for them, I will for example, even if I am not of faith). I just want to know if anyone has had an experience like this one. I don't want to talk about it in real life because I know people will think I'm a few bagels short of a breakfast at best and a complete liar at worst.

Hey! I'm late to the party but I have a math-based learning disorder and I'm actually doing well with MedCalc. The trick is to work out what your problem actually is. Are you better at verbal tasks, such as English, History, etc. while having issues with anything visual/spatial? Or is it more of an issue of the numbers jumbling up in your head (dyslexia-like)? Either way, you are going to want to convert the math into a format” your mind can understand. In my case, it's the former because I have nonverbal learning disorder (It also causes issues with body language and tone of voice which in turn causes poor social skills, which is why it is often mistaken for an autism spectrum disorder. So if you have issues with social skills as well, this could be worth looking into. I've compensated for it by manually learning how to read body language and understand tone of voice. A counselor I saw was actually shocked that I have it because I really don't act it”-so there is hope!). For the first issue: 1. Convert to a more or less if-then” format. Proportions also work well. That's what I do for MedCalc. Unit analysis or whatever your school will wind up calling it is perfectly useless if you're not visual. As a rule, in college, no one cares how you solve a problem as long as you don't use the peeky-poo-at-your-neighbor's-paper method. 2. Proportions are awesome because they are basically an if-then statement. If you can convert any problem into a proportion, do so. For the second issue: 1. You're probably more visual. Try to convert the numbers into shapes” in your head. Begin to see the shapes” as representative of a given quantity-teach yourself to say, imagine eight units of something when you see 8”. For the tens place, imagine eight boxes, each with 10 units in them, giving you 80”. 2. Unit analysis will be your friend. I hope this helps! If anyone more visual wants to add to my second part please do! And if you have an issue not listed here, describe it to me. I'm very interested in neurology and have taught myself about various issues; because I know firsthand how valuable it is when someone knows what you should do to learn. I was lucky enough to have a professor who, on her own time during office hours, essentially taught me how I should learn. I'd figured some of it out beforehand, but I wasn't 1/100 as efficient, and I couldn't do everything I can do now.

I'm still in school, but I'm working in a large, urban hospital and see a lot of death. Most are chronically ill adults, and many are dying from cancer. It's almost normalized the dying process for me. I think most fears stem from the unknown-I'm not afraid of the dying process, but the idea of what comes after concerns me. I'm not religious. I tried to be (went to Catholic school most of my life), but I just can't. I had an experiance that's hard to describe and would make me sound a little bit insane, but something did change my mind. I do think there is some kind of *something* in the universe, and that there's *something* after death. Call it love, life, ka, etc., I think there is *something*. Still, that *something* is so, so nebulous. I like things to be concrete. I find it comforting that I know what the dying process from various causes is like. No matter how I die, I'm 95% sure that I'll know pretty much exactly what to expect. For myself at least, that takes away most of the fear. There are forms of death I would certainly dread, but I'm not afraid of them. I hope there's something, I really do. But it's that What Comes After that makes me nervous about death. As for others? I think we all fear mortality for different reasons. Some fear pain. Some fear having their lives be meaningless. Some fear unfinished business. Some, like me, fear the unknown of what comes after death. How you'd manage it would definitely be case-by-case. I know several patients almost need "permission" to die from loved ones before they feel comfortable letting go. I don't think the moment of death is frightning. Most patients at the very end are very calm, even those who die very quickly. I myself was the passenger in a car that narrowly avoided veering off the highway (the driver was 100% sober and competant-the road was just in bad, bad shape). If we had veered off, we'd have died for sure. In the moment where I thought "we're going over" as we started to veer off, I was the calmest I've ever been in my life. And I have anxiety that's well controlled now, but wasn't then. It freaked me out how calm I was (I thought I may have a secret death wish) until I heard how common it was.

I think this varies school by school. Also, the medication calculation exams aren't always based on whether or not you got the math right. I got an 88% on one, despite getting 100% of the math right. Why? Before my Med/Surg I course where we learned these things, I went by the instructions on the test. The instructions said "round to the nearest tenth unless otherwise indicated". The questions on drop factors/drops per minute did not have any special instructions on them. So, I rounded to the nearest tenth. I got every one of those questions marked wrong because I should have rounded to the nearest whole number. All the math was right though (for example, I put "12.4" when the answer would have been "12"). So, I don't think that my not knowing that at the time means I'd be an unsafe nurse. I would have gotten a 100% without that. I'm not blaming my school; I should have known that. But, it wasn't a math issue. So sometimes, there are extenuating circumstances. I'm not disagreeing with you on principle at all, but on this, sometimes the math isn't the issue. Most of the people who had to retake it were in my same boat-all or most of the math was 100% correct, but they had to retake over confusion on rounding/labels. As for retaking classes? I think that varies person to person. I had to retake orgo chem because I got a 76. I had PVFS (weird reaction to the flu-I had never heard of it before I was dx'ed. It's basically a temporary version of CFS, or that's how it was explained to me) at the time. The fatigue is equivalent to mono, and my memory was so shot that I still barely remember that year, so I really think that played a role (for the record, I would *never* work in that state-I just wanted to do my pre-reqs and be a 'normal' college student) The PVFS "started" in December of my senior year of high school and "broke" in February of my freshman year of college, during my second term. I got an 85 the second time. I've never had to retake since. But, at my school, the policy was that you can retake two classes only once (each). Get below a 77 on that third class and you're out. Our school does allow students to take time off (usually for family emergencies-the only case I know of was a student who was her mother's caretaker when she was battling cancer), but not because they failed. I agree with what you say in theory for sure; I'm just saying that there's sometimes more than meets the eye. Even if I hadn't been pretty sick when I took that first class, there's a chance I'd have to retake it just because it was really hard. A third of the class retook. But yeah, letting people skirt through without basic knowledge is one thing, but I think having some leeway is fine.