Sara-Allison

What is the best way to learn IV skills? Any classes live, online, or books? I am slow on priming a line, and on setting up the IV machine. I can do it, but it takes me way to long. Is there a class to help new nurses with IV priming, starts, hanging blood, and iv blood draws?

I am a new med surg nurse. I am looking to master the med surg skills that night med surg nurses perform about 80% of the time. ("night med surg nurse:) 1. Get med administration times 2. Get out of range labs 3. Give PO meds 4. Give IV meds 5. Give pain meds: assess before, give med, assess after,document 1 after po, 1/2 after iv 6. document assessments 1 x day document pain, IV every 4 hours 7. Check chart checks at beginning of shift 8. Initialize care plan at beginning of **** 9. Check chart at end of shift 10. admin - be able to admit patient in 30 minutes 11. discharge - be able to prepare discharge paperwork and discharge patient What are the most basic skills that a new night med surg nurse must know. I have not included time management, as that is a big issue, but must be addressed separately with a great brain sheet. Also, if you know of any place a new nurse can get those essential skills please let me know. Thank you again for any info.

Hello, I have just finished my first week of orientation. Take a quick pharm test, practice your weak areas. If you are going to monitor EKGs review that. We were tested on pharm on tele. First week was about going over policy, and protocols.

Thank you.

Thank You.

I will be given one week hospital orientation and two week floor orientation with the ability to ask questions whenever I have them. I am new to med surg, but have in home health nurse which consists mostly of assessments, wound care, trach care, iv antibiotics and patient education. I am concerned as I was considered an experienced nurse since I take care of home health med surg patients. Is that sufficient experience, the hospital is one that is truly great and people friendly; something that is extremely important to me. How could I offset my lack of experience? Has anyone completed a med surg cert? or something else to give me the extra support I would need as a new med surg nurse? Is there any online support for new nurses that I could take advantage of to help me through the initial learning curve?

Where I live "tenet" is the name of the company that owns the hospital. We have "tenet" and "hca" hospitals.

My concern was with residual med left in the primary line for incompatible meds. That is probably the reason why when I was given a fast education we just assumed incompatible meds, and always disconnected the iv tubing, flushed, gave med, and flushed again. Is this practice where one disconnects the IV tubing for IV push a common practice.

That makes sense to make sure the saline flush flushes the whole tubing, and that the med actually reaches the patient. If I flush the whole tube, push the med, flush the whole tube again making sure to push the med down with the last flush, that should do it, and I wont have to worry about incompatibility. Is that right? As I am assuming that all meds are incompatible. Comments?

The little snow globe reaction is not one that I would like to see. It's just that the time on the med surg floor is going to be short, so taking the time to look up every med compatibility will take too long. So when I was trained, we just presumed incompatibility and flushed everytime by disconnecting the iv. The tubing was much shorter, so I was concerned about using the port closes to the patient with the IV as I had never actually seen anyone use it to give an IVP especially with incompatible medications.

What kind of training should I look for a new nurse? I am concerned as where I live hospital jobs especially med surg are hard to get, but being safe is most important.

Is there a place where I can look up the facility. Was wondering how others have done as a new nurse at a tenet hospital on a med surg floor.

Do you check for compatibility or do you just disconnect the primary line and give the drug and then flush. What I have been taught is to just give push med through a disconnected IV. We never really gave IV push through primary line. So we would flush, give med, flush never with use of IV. I was thinking I could just take distal port flush, give me, and then flush again. Then restart iv. This way if the med was incompatible, and I needed to use the primary line, I have already flushed with 3-5 ml ns.

Wondering if you can give me some pointers on how to get ready to be a med surg nurse. I am not in a versant position. So I am trying to go over my very basics before I step on the floor. If you guys have a list of must knows please post. I am reviewing: mostly iv care central line care drug endings how to give report and take report electrolyte values memorized how to prepare patient for lab tests - may need a cheat cheat for that on my mp3 player so I can just look up. Are there any great cheat sheets you know of that I should keep on my mp3 player. Any great apps that would help as a reference. Thanks for the help in advance, I am a bit nervous, and want to be as prepared as possible.

Is there an application that will have IV compatibility for my mp3 player?