Neural

Does your facility utilize essential oils for nausea? Ginger oil works like a charm for nausea. I've been told spearmint does too, but I haven't used it. Either way, this nurse sounds like a real piece of work. Page the provider and get the Zofran scheduled q6, and then take the issue up the chain. If this nurse has such an aversion to giving Zofran, I can't help but imagine she's very stingy with the pain meds, among other things.

I work with quite a few Somali staff who mostly work in housekeeping. You can smell their scented oil from a hundred yards away, and it lingers for hours. Despite our hospital policy, they're allowed to still do it for religious reasons because it's a "ceremonial" oil. Personally, I don't wear cologne and use unscented antiperspirant. However, I am prone to break-outs on my neck after shaving if I don't use a high-quality (Armani) after-shave lotion that's scented. The unscented ones I've tried don't seem to work very well. I only put a tiny bit of the scented lotion on.

More and more nurses are wearing long sleeves to cover tattoos nowadays. No one will think anything of it.

If you're having to straight cath a person because they cannot pee, you're going to want to empty the bladder completely so that fewer catheterizations are needed, thus limiting the opportunities to introduce bacteria into the bladder and urinary tract.

Call your local clinic and make an appointment ASAP.

The balance between treating patients like patients or treating them like customers.

Make sure you have another job lined up if you choose to do this. You're gonna need it.

Keep something similar to a night-shift schedule throughout the week. Eat well, drink lots of water, limit caffeine and alcohol. I think many people would agree that a drink after a long night's work sounds appealing, but it's been proven to make one's sleep lees "restful". Darken your bedroom, wear eye shades, and create some ambient noise with a fan or something. Limit distractions, mostly notably the cell phone. Possibly look into sleeping pills such as 5mg Ambien on worknights. Thats is my routine, and it made working nights for a few months bearable. However, I took a day shift position as quickly as possible, and now I work twice as hard and don't get the differentials!

I know that "visiting hours" is a pipe dream, but just I wish our hospital had limits as to how many family members can be in a room at one time. Jeez we have them sleeping on the floors sometimes, a few at a time. 8-15 in a room during the days sometimes. Constantly crowding the patient. Making demands to staff. Prying into medical details and pitching fits when we pull the HIPAA card. Kneeling and praying, oblivious to us, when we're trying to do transports and cares. Talking at all hours of the night. If you kick them out of the room, they'll just stand in the hallways and converse loudly, bothering other patients. Etc. If I get into it with them about inappropriate behavior and end up calling security to have people removed, nobody wins, and the patients are upset, despite the fact that I had their safety and best interest in mind. Its safe to say that family members do far more harm than good. Dealing with them is easily my least favorite part of the job.

Almost undetectable difference in quality, hence the minimal difference in price. I owned a Classic 3, lost it, bought a Classic 2, can barely tell the difference, other than the fact that the 3 is slightly curved.

As far as I'm concerned, the Littman Classic II S.E. ($70) and Classic III ($80) are a wash, and are just about all that a student or average nurse needs. However, if you're in an 'auscultation-heavy' field, you may want to upgrade to the Cardiology III ($150) series, though it's a bit bulky and I've heard it's not very good at detecting different bowel sounds. Personally, I use a Littman II S.E. It gets the job done well, and if it grows legs and walks out on me, I'm not going to shed a tear.

Oh there's tons of these, and hospitals don't always use the same abbreviations. For example, NICU can mean neonatal ICU at one hospital and neurological ICU at another. Don't forget the Progressive Care Units (PCU), either, which are a step-down unit from the ICU, meaning that relatively high-acuity patients leave the ICU and may go to the appropriate PCU for a day or two before going to the floor units. Or vice versa, a patient who is doing poorly on the floor unit may go to PCU prior to being transferred to ICU. There are Neuro Progressive NPCU, Surgical SPCU, Medical MPCU, etc.

The very first one on the list -- the only one I looked at -- mentioned that new grads are eligible.

When people don't show up for work, patient-to-nurse ratios go up, which often results in lower quality patient care and unsatisfied customers (patients/family). That's the bottom line. Your bosses are gonna get on you for that. Don't take it personal, because it's not.

Agreed. Walls of text are rarely even read, to be honest.