jcsa719

In answer to your question, I have PALS and so does my retiring partner. No one else does except for Anesthesia. The other nurses that are preop giving oral Versed and in the OR with the Peds patients are not and they have no plans to do it. When I talk about general anesthesia patients they are patients with LMA's or ET tubes like other general anesthesia patients. The other nurses may not hide in the linen closet but it is pretty close. They close the doors to the recovery area and disappear until that patient has been discharged. Most Anesthesiologists that I have worked with over the years would have cancelled most of these cases because they don't fit the criteria for ASC patients. We rarely took care of CP patients, stroke patients, and developmentally delayed patients at my last job because of the possible care that could be involved. My current job just seems to do whatever comes in the door and I dread coming into work on these days. We are going up for Accreditation soon and I don't believe we will pass. Our facility isn't up to life code and you know about the rest of the staff. I convinced them two years ago to do ACLS together because they were working without it. I'm going off to back surgery next month and I won't be returning. I don't think I can physically do it anymore and I worry about my license. Thanks for listening.

This has been bothering me for awhile so I wanted to put this out there to get everyone's opinion. I've been a recovery nurse at an Outpatient Eye ASC for the last three years and I no longer feel comfortable working there due to patient safety issues. For the most part, we do conscious sedation cases but usually one day a month we do general anesthesia cases for both adult and pediatric patients until just recently. Now, we do generals randomly and without warning. I am one of two nurses that are qualified to recover these general anesthesia cases (previous ASC experience) and the other six nurses refuse to learn because they don't want the responsibility that is involved. I don't feel that this is a safe environment for patients and I've been told that I will be doing all the generals when the other nurse retires next year and my manager is okay with this. I have raised concerns about certain patients being done in an outpatient facility because they are very sick and we aren't set up to handle these cases. Management's response is "it will be fine, just do it" or I'm made to feel that I'm causing unnecessary problems. We don't even have a code team because the other nurses don't know what to do even though they are all ACLS and I have to direct them on every little thing. Has anyone else heard of ASC's having only one or two nurses recovering generals? Every other place I've worked, the nurses all have to have the same skills and be able to take care of any surgical patient. I'm afraid for my license and am already looking for another job.