KYnightnurse

Thank You for what you do, and Thank God for you! :) And thank goodness we all have our specialty areas. I couldn't do PICU because I enjoy a lot of interaction with my patients. I've been pulled to PICU and felt like I was just treating the pumps and monitors sometimes. Still, other parts of the hospital can be just as rewarding and certainly have their happy and sad endings.

We do a 12-hour chart check with the oncoming nurse (or 4 or 8 depending on how much time has gone by since a change of care givers). Going back 24 hrs is overkill, imho. And it is not done for the purpose of finding errors and writing them up. I couldn't work on a floor that operated like this.

Here's what 'Joint' did to us last year: we now have to lock up our IVF bags, which were in a Staff Only supply room to begin with. Now they are in a locked med room and locked AGAIN in a cabinet, in other words double locked. As are other supplies such as IV tubing and saline. Joint would die if they knew what went on when their back was turned *L*. And it's not just staff nurses, it's mgt too that disagree with what they do. They (Joint) need to get a real job.

I want to work nights at your hospital, where there is only paperwork and no docs, no no orders written, no pharmacy and not busy patients. *L*

Three cheers for you!! I couldn't agree with you more! My husband calls it the 'microwave generation'. They want everything now and they want it quick. I've read numerous articles about lack of social skills being due to all interaction being done digitally (e-mail, IM's, etc.). The entitlement people at the hospital I work at went so far as to say (and I paraphrase): you've already had your kids and time off, now it's our turn. Not a good way to start out in a new job.

No kidding on this one: "Strict eyes and nose"

I dealt with this for years before realizing what it was. Here is my experience. I tried to fix it myself by using motrin and icing my heel a few times a day. I got to the point I was driving to work (an hour drive) with my heel on ice and would ice me heel at work every chance I had. I do high impact aerobics about 3 times/wk. and had to cut back to once/wk. It was just my left foot, when my right heel started to hurt too I knew it was time to see a podiatrist. This was a few months ago. He started me on Lodine TID which I can now take BID. He sent me to a local shoe store for Spenco brand inserts which you can boil and bend to make more of an arch if you need to. I wore the inserts for about 3 weeks and took the Lodine, it helped a LOT. What a relief. My left foot still ached some but not near as much as it used to. After 3 weeks I began to get a little paranoid that things weren't 100% better, I went back to the doc and got a long acting cortisone shot in my heel. It was only 1cc and took about 10 seconds to do. It stung but wasn't nearly as bad as I had anticipated. I still use the inserts and take the Lodine because I'm afraid not to. If I go too long without using the inserts I can feel it in my feet but it's not nearly as bad as it was. I still do calf and hamsting stretches frequently. Good luck!!

Does your hospital make you go in the patient room with the oncoming nurse at shift change, introduce yourself, check IVF, etc. etc? The floor I work on just started making us do this, they are 'blaming' it on Joint Commission, which I don't buy. I can't find anything at the Joint website about this being a Joint requirement. A few smaller floors have been doing this for a while, but not the large floor I work on, then suddenly we are made to do this. It doesn't work well in pediatrics and is unnecessarily interruptive.

I work in Louisville with a nurse from the Phillipines. She has been here less than a year, here is what she said (she isn't sure of the cost): take the local exam, it is the prerequisite to take the CGFNS, after passing that take the two English exams (spoken, the TSE and written, the TOEFL). Or the combination of both which is the IELTS (recognized by the US). Then you can apply for visa screen if you pass the CGFNS. The visa screen will not be issued unless you pass the two English exams.

Just curious, how and why did you pick Louisville?

Once you get to L'ville, go to the hospital you are interested in working at and ask to see the Nurse Recruiter. He or she should be able to guide you in the right direction.

Are you sure it is cell phones that your hospital is handing out to the staff? Where I work they hand out cordless phones. No cells allowed in the ICU areas but they are allowed on the general med/surg floors but must be kept at least 3 feet away from the monitors (which aren't telemetry).

The biggest negative to computer charting is the time it takes to log in and wait for the screen(s) you want to pop up. I work on a floor with high pt. turnover. The average pt. stay is 3 days. It would be so much quicker to put I's and O's on paper than to pull them up in order to retrieve them. I think you'll find there are some things you like and some things you don't.

I work in pediatrics (but not a PICU). When I start IVF's on a pt. I show the parents where the Alarm Silence button is located. I've learned over the years if I don't show them, they start pressing all the buttons, inevitably turning off the pump. I also explain that I will try to reset the pump before it beeps (the parental fear being the beep will wake the child, also, where I work we aren't allowed to set the pump for the entire shift). I tell them if they silence the alarm they must call the desk and tell them the pump is beeping. I also tell them pushing any other buttons might mess up the IV and cause the child to get stuck again. I've never had any problems and the parents are grateful to know how to 'shut the machine up'. :)