AvaRose

The hospital I did clinicals at had a beautiful picture of a tree with sunlight streaming through the branches that they used on L&D when a baby passed away. It also said Do Not Disturb at the bottom. I didn't see any special signs for adult patients that passed though that would be a good idea.

Yes it was the medication not the actual IV itself. It was Potassium that was running which is why I never want to administer IV Potassium again (if they can swallow they are getting the capsules if I can at all help it). I'm pretty much to the point where I don't even want to go back to work since I could have easily killed my patient. I actually tried to resign at the end of my shift last night but our new DON wouldn't let me, instead he wrote me up for the error and is going to put me on an action plan to "see if I still have potential as a nurse"...even he doesn't really think I can do this and I don't blame him. Who knows why he wouldn't just let me quit instead of making work even more miserable by basically putting me back in some kind of intensive retraining.

HA..the charge nurses 99% of the time are desk nurses. They whine and cry if they ever have to have a patient or even help with a patient. Half the time I can't even get them to answer a question, like today when I asked how to fix a patient's IV and they didn't answer which led to me following a coworker's advice and making a major med error that required a MIDAS report and got me written up. I'll never ask that charge nurse a question again, or most of my coworker's for that matter. I'll have to look up policies and procedures for everything even if it makes med pass take 2x as long.

I walk away from both. Critiquing someone is RARELY constructive especially when you never give tips for improvement or any kind of positive reinforcement of things done well. And people who insult me don't need to know me or ever talk to me again. It's fine if you hate me for whatever but just leave me alone in that case and I'll be sure to do the same. I have NO patience for 99.99% of people.

OH god flashbacks of the chest tube video. They must have said sont-i-meter at least 50 times while explaining how to set up and use the chest tube. And I've been forced to watch that video about 5 times.

Legal 2000. It's the Nevada legal hold designation (due to the fact that the law was passed in 2000). Even more fun is once they are medically cleared the RN has to go with the patient to their tele-psych hearing with the judge to see if they need placement or can go home. So on a day with 3 or more L2Ks I end up turning over the rest of my patients to the charge nurse because I am off the floor in the psych room in the ED for anywhere from 3-5 hours waiting for judges to decide when I can get rid of the crazies.

Is it a superpower to somehow always get all the L2K patients on the floor on any given shift? If I don't end up crazy myself one of these days then maybe I should just consider a move to Psych nursing...on second thought if I can get Nursery or NICU then I'll just have crazy families not crazy patients. Last night was the best combo, all 3 L2Ks and all of them plus 2 of my other 3 patients were on Special Contact Precautions for CDIFF.

Very true. I just about hit the year mark (I had a bit of time between my first nursing job and this one). At my hospital I even made friends with the Doctor who seemed to hate everyone and especially women. He stops and chats with me if I come to chart while he is dictating and everything. I have a great time asking the doctors about pathophysiology if I get a patient with a diagnosis that is new to me or there are lab results that are odd looking.

I am an organ donor so I don't believe that I can be a DNR/DNI as they would need to intubate me to keep perfusion long enough to procure any viable organs, but that is the only circumstance that would be acceptable. Even at my age (38) I don't want to be given extreme CPR or be stuck attached to tubes and wires for however long my shell of a body would last and needing people to clean me constantly as I void all over the bed. Death is a much better alternative.

I remember the giant vat of Iodine the nurse in elementary school used for cuts and abrasions (of which I had probably thousands during elementary school). It smelled, it burned when she applied it and then it itched like crazy. I always went home and washed it off, picked any gravel out of the scrape which the nurse never bothered to do and then applied peroxide (which I guess is a no-no now) which healed it up practically right away. In middle/high school my guidance counselor told the nurse that I was a faker because I mentioned that I had frequent headaches. I was going through my migraine phase and they got pretty bad sometimes. But the counselor didn't like me because I had to go to her office once a week because of severe bullying. Anyway, one time in 8th grade I was nauseous and dizzy but wasn't allowed to go to the nurse because of my "history of faking" illness so I stood up to go to the restroom and threw up all over the classroom. Turns out after I called my mom and left school without permission plus a trip to the Urgent Care that I had a severe case of samonella.

I have 6 patients of various acuity. I believe today there were three 3's and three 4's (5 is where we draw the line and refuse to take a patient). I had 2 that were pain management though one only asked for pain meds twice. The reason one patient fired me was because I didn't spend enough time in his room. Now I was told he was difficult to everyone when I took report, so I don't feel quite as bad about him as I do the other patient who's mother was upset that I took 10 minutes too long to give her daughter pain medication. The patient and I had a good rapport until her mother showed up and then I was the root of all evil somehow. I do total care because I'm tired of being ignored when I do ask the CNA to do something while I pass meds. I have to pick my battles and honestly I just don't have the energy to argue anymore. No one gives a damn if my day is spiraling out of control as long as they don't have to listen to me. As much as I'd like to just up and quit I know I probably won't get another nursing position. I'm already on job number 2 in just under a year (5 months in each job). At the same time though, I'm not overly confident that I have many more chances left to show improvement.

I know most new nurses ask questions similar to this so I apologize in advance. I tried talking to my Charge Nurse but she didn't want to talk to me any of my last 3 shifts and I have no idea how to dig myself out of this rut. PROBLEM: -I seem to be declining in performance. I was fine the first month on my own, but now 5 months into my Med/Surg position (3 months w/preceptor, 2 months solo) I am barely keeping my head above water. For example: I've now had 3 patients in the last 2 weeks "fire" me as their nurse, today alone there were 2 of them and they complained about me to the doctor so they were reassigned supposedly so they wouldn't "make the rest of my shift miserable" (according to Charge RN). In addtion, the CNAs and UC all feel free to criticize how slow they think I am and complain about me asking them for anything at all so I have to total care all my patients because apparently "I don't do enough" during the shift. And finally, no matter what I try for time management the plan does not survive anywhere near intact for more than the first hour of shift. By mid 8 am med pass I am behind, running like a headless chicken, and unable to prioritize because I am constantly told that "everything is important so you need to hurry up and multi-task and get everything done in the next 15 minutes so you aren't any later." I end up crying in my car everyday at lunch time and sometimes in the restroom during shift. We have no DON right now so I can't even go to anyone else to ask to change to night shift, or split my schedule (who knows if they'll give me my schedule request so I can have more than 1 day off in a row), or even change floors even though I'm supposed to stay for 1 year due to New Grad contract. It's so bad I even contemplated turning in my license and going back to working at Wal-Mart. Sorry to unload I just don't know what to think. I've probably burned all my bridges already but I'd at least like to know that so I could quit instead of being fired.

My entire clinical group felt this way during one of our last L&D clinicals. We were waiting outside the unit to get assignment since there was low census even in postpartum that day when we noticed a women being brought directly to the floor by paramedics (the ED does not do L&D). The women was screaming profanity at the paramedics about how she needed her fix and they were kidnapping her. Yet as she lay there the pool of blood on the stretcher was growing. Our instructor went to see what was happening and to let them into the L&D since she delivers a lot of babies there. We students were already agitated because she was clearly high and you could smell the alcohol from across the waiting area. Then our instructor came back out and said they delivered her baby because of the bleeding but the baby was only 24 weeks gestation so there wasn't much chance for it. The mom was three times the legal limit for alcohol and high as a kite. When they tried to show her the baby she said to get rid of it. The following week when we returned for clinical we found out the mom had walked out as soon as she could walk and the county had gotten POA for the baby and were going to discontinue life support that day. We spent an hour of clinical venting to our teacher who was just as livid as we were about the situation. We got to go into the NICU and see the baby as well and he was tiny and looked horrible. We agreed that he was going to a better place instead of trying to forcibly keep him alive.

I'm so much of an introvert that I am now debating how soon to put in my notice at work. As soon as I quit (and I may be the one who puts in a notice and then uses my PTO to cover it...I can't stand the thought of going back to work again) then I'll be putting my nursing license on inactive status. 3 years of my life wasted. I usually love talking to my patients but my coworkers could all disappear and I would be MUCH happier. I've tried to be social but I start feeling overwhelmed and physically sick. I envy those who have and will be able to make a career out of nursing but for patient safety sake I need to be done before I screw up and kill someone.

I have idiopathic HTN now. No abnormal lab findings leading the doctor to believe that it was stress induced. Although after 5 months on medication now I have a fairly normal (120-130) systolic BP but my diastolic is barely keeping above 60 (which doesn't make working very fun some days since I get random symptomatic hypotensive episodes like on Thursday when I had to go home 5 hours into shift). I never had HTN before nursing school and my first job.