annabanana2

Tooooooootally different story in Canada than in the US, which is where all of these previous replies are coming from. OP, if your manager says you're fine then you're fine. Your college is not going to rip away your license because you mistakenly threw a controlled substance in the wrong bin. Chill out. And when you get a chance, go on the website for your college and read some of the disciplinary actions to get an idea of the kind of things people are disciplined for. Making a one-time mistake in properly disposing of a controlled substance, unless you were also drunk at work or something, is not going to appear there. Those wondering if the OP is lying somehow - methadone is dosed in a single-dose bottle, usually I'd hand it over to the client, they'd knock it back and then hand me back the tiny bottle which I would then toss. If you're used to that and the client only took half of their methadone for whatever reason and handed you the other half back in the tiny bottle it's easy to see how you might accidentally toss that in the trash as you usually would.

As a student I got to observe a total knee and total hip. Both were very, very cool to see as a student. They let me scrub in for the knee and hold something in place (I can't remember exactly what) and help close the incision even. I was very lucky that the surgeon was perpetually thrilled to have students in the OR (the resident a bit less so, but we can't have it all). So far I haven't ended up in the OR but it did open my mind a little bit as prior to that experience I would never have even considered it.

Do other home health nurses really use "nursing diagnoses"? We learned about them in nursing school, I've been in home health for five years now and haven't used a single one since.

Back in my day (the early 90s) this PSA did all the education we needed:

Crap like this is why I'm surprised when folks say they don't want unions. That sounds horrifying and I'd never put up with it in a million years.

We had a 105-year-old gentleman, functioning just fine at home, kept being referred to home health for chronic disease management by his GP, despite not actually having any chronic diseases. And no, aging is not a chronic disease for the purpose of securing home health services. The man had ZERO nursing needs and would visibly sigh when he saw us at his door yet again!

I agree with this. I think there's a big general idea of "it's okay, nursing will do it." Physio not available to walk the patient? Nursing will do it. The phlebotomist is backed up? Nursing will do it. No unit clerk available this afternoon? Nursing will put the charts together. Porter's on a break? Nursing will bring the patient down to x-ray. Everything, in the end, falls to nursing. I don't even work in acute care and I see this all the time. In a primary care office, the physician wants the client to be referred for dental work? That's tasked to nursing to figure that out. A client needs help getting to and from an appointment - task it to nursing. A client doesn't have a phone and needs a message sent to them from the doc? Ask the outreach nurses to run it over. I'm actually working hard in our office at the moment to push for non-nursing tasks to go to non-nurses, but it's hard, because our providers are very used to just asking nursing to do it.

Yeah, if you hate nursing then by all means, get out and go back to accounting. I don't really get how you can be just totally stuck in inpatient psych though. Have you looked at community mental health teams? ACT teams? Intensive case management teams? What about rehab or detox? Outpatient addictions? Facilities that do ECT?

I wouldn't mention anything to a stranger unless I was pretty sure they were going to die more or less immediately. Friend or family member I have a lower bar for minding my own business so I might speak up sooner. But generally I try to mind my own business unless I'm directly asked about it.

I mean, the "way" is for you to go to nursing school and graduate. You will not be allowed to write the NCLEX without information submitted directly by a school to the BON. They will know that you didn't graduate from there. I would suggest that it's fraud to forge a diploma. Why don't you just go to nursing school and get it done? It sounds like with all your experience you won't find it terribly challenging. Just tick the boxes and get your license the legal way.

This is something I looked into a long time ago around the time I graduated high school. Hands down, RN is the way to go. Far more job security, more flexibility in terms of career (what if one day you wake up and realize you hate kids?!), and way way way more work available. Child life specialists can do one thing: child life. RNs can do a million things - work in acute care, work in the community, work in research, work in pharmaceutical or medical device sales, work in insurance, work in schools, work in nursing homes... many many more opportunities available.

I hear you. That sounds completely frustrating. That would be an incredible ethical problem for me.

I mean, you guys gotta do what you legally gotta do. I get it. Report, have meetings, whatever. But jeez, is that ever the best way possible to ensure nobody ever comes to talk to the school nurse about sex ever again!

She did everything right. She handled the situation as well as she possibly could have. Security did not step in because they almost certainly would have gotten themselves also arrested with charges of assaulting a police officer, if not shot. I hope we don't forget this, I hope the media and the public watch this story over the coming weeks and months, and we don't let that officer off the hook. I hope (but this is probably too optimistic) that his fellow officers call him out for his unprofessional and dangerous behaviour as well. Unfortunately, he makes them all look bad.

My vote is that you did the right thing, 100%. Very little I would've done differently other than maybe push to avoid unnecessary testing (like you mentioned) and I might not have done the BPs, but then, I work in hospice so it's a different setting. Honestly, the man was dying quickly as it was. Even if you did hasten his death (which, questionable at best) - what would have been worse, speed up his comfortable, peaceful death by an hour, or let him live an hour longer in agony?

I don't know, guys, I felt pretty glamorous with an elbow-length glove on, digging impacted stool out of my cursing, aggressive home health client the other day. While his care aide looked on in horror and sympathy. Did I mention it was like thirty degrees Celsius in that tiny room? Yeah, you guys definitely have to get on board with my extremely cool and glamorous job.

Just to clarify, typically calling someone "a queer" would still be (for many folks) considered offensive. It's the turning it into a noun that's the not-okay bit. These days it's used as an adjective.

Sorry, you haven't worked in eight years (EIGHT YEARS) and it's discrimination because nobody wants to hire you without a refresher course? Not only that but it's the WORST kind of discrimination? You are not living in reality, my friend. Is this for real?

I probably would inform the family kindly that our goals at the moment are for comfort and that taking a set of vitals that the patient might find uncomfortable or disturbing probably wouldn't yield us any useful information. I would ALSO, though, explain that just because we're not taking vitals doesn't mean I'm not assessing the patient frequently, and fill them in on things they might not have noticed me looking at like RR, CWMS, whatever. It sounds like the family was maybe less concerned about the actual vitals and more concerned that their loved one is getting the care they need and deserve.

I don't have advice for you, I just want to say that your working conditions are complete BS and your management are incompetent idiots. Staffing should NOT be your job. You are a NURSE. You did not sign up to be a staffing clerk as well! And for your DON to tell you "not my job" when you called for help that night... oh man. I don't even know you and I feel angry on your behalf. That is astonishing. I'm lucky enough to work in a unionized environment in Canada and not in a MILLION YEARS would something like that fly. Never ever ever. Get out of there, you deserve better.

Lots of my nursing school classes were on the top floor of a smallish university hospital, so I spent a lot of time drinking hospital cafeteria coffee. Like, a lot, because one day one of the very sweet and motherly cafeteria ladies took me aside and very gently expressed concern about my caffeine consumption. I thanked her for her concern and started bringing my own coffee to school :)

I mean, yeah, OP is dependent on that medication to not have seizures. I mean, good lord. Do you tell diabetics to take a good hard look at their insulin dependence? Jeez.

This was sweet. I mean, not the part where his kid gets sick. You can tell how traumatizing it was for him and his family by the way he's three millimetres from tears the whole time. But the fact that he found out, remembered, wrote down, and individually read out the names of most of the staff involved in his kid's care - man. I have some strong feelings about that. I hope his kid recovers fully and easily from this and his future surgeries.

I find it interesting that if Jon had come in and complained that he hadn't gotten a wink of sleep all night and was just so tired that nobody would've batted an eye, even though practising fatigued arguably presents a significant risk of harm to patients. But a whisper of suspicion that he might've gotten high the day before and it's a federal investigation even though he ostensibly provided nothing but excellent care. Sounds like this is less about your concern for patient safety and more a bit of moralizing about drug use.

I initially missed that this was in the school nurse forum and thought we were talking about hospital food. Reminded me of the short time I was on a stroke unit during nursing school. For the ones with difficulty swallowing who needed pureed food they'd just throw exactly what was for lunch for everyone else in a blender and then in a bowl. Turkey sandwich, peas, orange slices, milk, liquidized, all in a big bowl! It was horrifying. If I ever survived a stroke I know it wouldn't be long before I straight-up starved to death.