KittyLuv

You must repeat the order back to the physician. You are required to. You should be charting order repeated back. This should definitely be incorporated into your routine and will clarify what they are saying

No way. I fell into it by accident after deciding against vet school. I wouldnt have chosen that either now but I would have stayed as far from the medical profession as possible.

Absolutely not. No question. It wasnt a calling or a dream. There are no medical people in family. I should have done something else. It pays the bills (mostly) but so do lots of other professions. 26 years in nursing. I have another year to 4 years that I will stay in it and then I am done. I'll go work at Costco (lol) or something. Anything.

Is it a requirement of your facility? Do you work in the ED? Will you be floated to the ED? Are you ICU? If not, it seems odd that you would take it.

Me too. I started out pre-vet.

Yes agreed. I was LTC ADON for a short time until I realize that was just a glorified title for working TWO jobs. The ADONs can actually work the floor because they did it for a long time. It's the higher-ups that can't handle it and get all whiny and take it out on the nurse they can't guilt into staying for a 16 or 24 hr shift. Anyway, I'm off topic and ranting again, lol.

Sorry but it is the job of the supervisor and (gasp) the nursing manager to work the floor when there is no one. Every facility I have ever been at, I've seen managers have to step out of the office to cover on occasion. It's just part of the job. Sounds like your manager was just pissed because she had to do it. After all that's probably why she is a "manager" in the first place. Either can't handle or doesn't like direct care. (not saying ALL managers can't work the floor but I mean, come on, you and I both know that most of them worked as little as possible on the floor before moving up the ranks to get away from it)

Mine isn't but there is extra fee piled on to insurance for nicotine users. The facility would probably like to go nicotine free I'm sure. Already you have to go completely off the property (like down the road and across the street to smoke). Even at night with the weirdos out and about. Awesome. I dont smoke anymore but I am completely against the whole nicotine discrimination thing. I don't think that it is appropriate at all, not until we are going to start monitoring people's weight, alcohol consumption, exercise level, risky behaviors, etc. The day that happens, I'm moving to the wilderness and off the grid.

I switched to telephone triage nursing at 49. Been in it a year and a half now and it's definitely a good fit for me.

Had no idea. Another unnecessary acronym to add to the list.

Orientate, orientated....just ugh. Makes my skin crawl. Glad I'm not alone! Ophthamologist. Can't spell it with that "ph" in it....ever. I'm a telephone triage nurse so.... "oh, you want an appointment? Wouldnt you rather talk to a triage nurse about your (hangnail, chronic cough, child's sniffles, 1 episode of diarrhea)?"

Not ok. They don't have reams of papers with orientation tasks that you and your preceptor(s) must date and initial off on once you have completed them? And that shouldn't mean you can't ask for help after the orientation period is over either. I am in agreement that 6 weeks for a new grad is too short. Should be 12 or so.

Yep that's a lot. When I worked acute care on the geri unit and then float med surg it was 4 to 1. Granted, some nights with 4 adults none of whom were confused or particularly needy it was pretty slow but most nights (and ALL nights of the 6 years I spent on the geri unit) that ratio was a handful. I'll focus more on the geri unit. 20 beds, 5 nurses at night and two CNAs. Sounds good right? Same ratio during the day too, by the way..maybe one more CNA. If you know anything about acutely ill geriatric patients then you know they don't sleep, they need tons of attention, and bad things tend to happen at night. We had telemetry, IV everything except certain drugs restricted to ICU, extremely high fall risks, super confused ambulatory rickety old ladies, angry confused paranoid forgetful old men, orthostatic blood pressures, daily weights (at 4am), morning labs (again, 4am), central lines, feeding tubes, etc. You name it. New-ish nurses had a very hard time keeping up and even us old dogs had frequent nights from hell with (possibly) a late discharge or even a death and probably averaging 6 admissions nightly on the unit. You always knew you were in for it when 2 of the 4 rooms in your assignment were empty at the start of the shift. The ER would begin dumping their patients right at shift change (usually trying to call the oncoming nurse report during the middle of your unit shift change report...ridiculous....and then reporting you because you asked them if they could call back in 15 minutes.) Or even better yet, when the offgoing nurse took report 10 minutes before the start of shift change and there they are rolling down the hall (with crying family following) toward your suspiciously empty room assignment. So, yes. 6 to 1 is IMO too much especially for a new grad. Sorry for the rant

I'm happy to participate but since it is now the 17th, I suspect you didn't make your deadline.

Just a thought, if you are thinking telephone triage nursing then you are not going to be able to have the baby making noises in the background while you are working. You will need privacy and an office with a door so that you can be professional and concentrate on the patient. I know you probably know this already but I suspect this is harder than people think it will be. People are attracted to the work at home aspect but forget about the discipline it will take. I've thought about working from home myself but I know there would be way too many distractions.

If your company accepts you working from home then clearly they accept you not working at the main office so I dont see, really, why they would care if you are actually at a friend's home or a rented office. As long as you can provide privacy, professionalism and reasonably uninterrupted high speed internet/phone access then seems like they would be happy with that. The company I work for, I dont work from home but several of our nurses do. They occasionally are down for severe weather but its not often. They are reliably online and available for calls the vast majority of the time. I think were this not the case then yes, the company probably would not be very pleased. If they need to go offline, they let the lead nurse know and they come back as soon as its all clear for them. Its rare so not really an issue.

Well, I work for a hospital in an access center (not at the hospital but in a "clandestine location" a few miles away.) I work in a cubicle with three "walls" that go up to about 4 feet. My desk is L shaped so the cubicle is as deep as it is wide which is .....5 feet by 5 feet? You cant see over them when sitting but if you stand up you can. I think too that the cubies have some sound dampening quality as the walls are thick and fabric covered. I'm in a fairly large room working afternoon shift (2pm to midnight) which is by far the busy shift with the bulk of calls coming in. There are generally 5 or 6 nurses on each afternoon shift and a few more schedulers/access specialists than nurses. The schedulers have smaller cubies that are half depth and their desks are single, not L shaped. They are on the phones almost constantly. We use headsets with either one ear or two depending on how you like it. We are in "pods" of 6 nursing desks (at which there are generally from 1 to 4 nurses on afternoon shift) alternating with 6 scheduler desks....(again which are rarely all 6 full) then nurses again, then schedulers again, etc. The room is big enough to house more people than are here on any given shift as the nurses all have our own designated desks. The schedulers do have to share some but generally with the same people. Generally speaking, the managers try to space us out a bit so that everyone with desks in a certain area are not all here on that day together. The volume level when people are on calls rarely will actually interfere with your own call but if its slow and people are standing around chatting there can be a little shushing needed sometimes. For the most part, people realize not to be loud but we do have a few bossy types who dont care and will be loud no matter what. However....all of our calls are recorded so when the QA is done, if there are recognizable voices in the background, those people will definitely have a meeting with the manager. You can generally hear one side of the conversations with nurse or schedulers when you are not on a call but we all take confidentiality seriously outside of the call center so while people may be able to overhear inside, we are all sworn to confidentiality and dont talk about patients outside. I dont think the microphones with the headsets pick up a whole lot of sound that isnt right near the mouth so that may make some difference on the receiving end of the conversation too. Hopefully that helps :) I feel like I was rambling, lol. Been a long day.