Kharma711

Kharma711 has 1 years experience and specializes in Step-down medical.

Latest Activity

1. When family fails the patient... it breaks my heart

   Kharma711 posted a topic in Critical

   This is more a vent post than anything... Had a patient today who any reasonable nurse would say should be on hospice.. trach, tube feeding, dependent on CRRT and IABP... screams in pain (silently) to any touch/turn... extremely cachetic with mutlip...

2. Patients Say the Darnedest Things

   Kharma711 replied to allnurses's topic in General Nursing

   Just this past shift I had an elder lol with dementia.. at the beginning of shift she was a little agitated and I reoriented her and gave her the remote/call light and told her to call me if she needed anything... her response, "I'd rather call roto-...

3. Patients Say the Darnedest Things

   Kharma711 replied to allnurses's topic in General Nursing

   Had a patient in DTs who was hallucinating very vividly all shift. All night she had been calling me Kiki and saying off the wall things... my two favorite quotes from this lady were: "Kiki you better clean this kitchen up" to which I responded ok we...

4. Doctors Say the Darnedest Things

   Kharma711 replied to allnurses's topic in General Nursing

   "Patients current hypervolemic state likely related to a TACO" It took 4 nurses and some help from Dr. Google to figure this one out. None of us, not even the charge nurse who had worked inpatient for 30 years, had ever heard of this acronym. I thou...

5. Nursing Intuition, Part 1: The Visitor is . . . Dying!

   Kharma711 replied to RobbiRN's topic in General Nursing

   A few months ago, I come in and get report like any other shift. The final patient I get report on is one I had about a week ago so I remembered her. As the off-going RN gives me report, I'm looking at the patient and her vital signs. I've had many p...

6. The art of learning to place a PIV

   Kharma711 posted a topic in General Nursing

   I will preface by saying, I'm still a "new" nurse in my practice, with about 1 1/2 years experience. When I was in orientation, it took the full 3 months for me to get my required 3 successful IV starts to be allowed to place an IV independently. Fas...

7. Glad to witness an AMA

   Kharma711 replied to Kharma711's topic in General Nursing

   "Against medical advice" form... it's a way for a patient to sign out of the hospital without being discharged and the hospital is not responsible for the outcome or possible readmission.

8. Glad to witness an AMA

   Kharma711 replied to Kharma711's topic in General Nursing

   If the patient had been a psych patient then I would have just refused to have them again. My unit is good about making sure not to burn one nurse out on a difficult patient and will rotate our nurses. Thank goodness it ended the way it did, is all I...

9. Glad to witness an AMA

   Kharma711 replied to Kharma711's topic in General Nursing

   Thank you so much for this and all previous replies... like I said, long shift and I had to restrain myself from skipping along happily once she said she wanted to leave. At leasthe I know I'm not alone! Haha

10. Glad to witness an AMA

    Kharma711 posted a topic in General Nursing

    Oh boy it's been a shift... First off, I was the code nurse which means I'm responsible for being present if a patient is going downhill or coding and facilitating the process. Which is something I don't mind... However, this shift I started out with...

11. I lost my first patient... how do you cope?

    Kharma711 replied to Kharma711's topic in General Nursing

    I hear that and understand but I feel like I was lacking... I didn't know how to talk to his family and was so afraid of giving him more pain medicine and I just feel inadequate in the face of this tragedy... I don't know how to just file it away now...

12. I lost my first patient... how do you cope?

    Kharma711 posted a topic in General Nursing

    I've seen a couple other people's patients pass on when DNR, but I just lost my first patient assigned to me and it was heartbreaking. First, it was a teenage boy... he was so young and never got to truly live his life. There was absolutely nothing I...

13. What is the lowest HGB you have seen?

    Kharma711 replied to I<3H2O's topic in General Nursing

    2.1 in a mostly asymptomatic patient that should have passed go (stepdown) and gone to ICU... he finally decompensated an hour after he got to my unit with a map of 53 and went to ICU but I stayed over 4 hours with just this one patient and another n...

14. Does the not-so-well-oiled Healthcare machine cause frontline personnel to lose compassion

    Kharma711 replied to Kharma711's topic in General Nursing

    As far as the tech part, the tech was unavailable, but rather than accept my help with repositioning, she left the patient sprawled in what looked to be a terribly uncomfortable position until the tech came back from break. It didn't hurt my feelings...

15. Does the not-so-well-oiled Healthcare machine cause frontline personnel to lose compassion

    Kharma711 replied to Kharma711's topic in General Nursing

    Again, I'm on very little sleep at the moment, but I always prioritize life and death over touchy-feels so to speak... but I have been pushed to the max the last couple weeks. I realize I've been vague and scattered but that is truly how I feel and i...