Topics About 'Long Term Care'.
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Found 42 results
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Take Ed, our resident Oscar the Grouch. He's a World War II vet who also worked as a train conductor; his manner is gruff, and his language is often as colorful as the Oregon Ducks cap he wears. He enjoys nothing more than to wheel himself about the ...
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Basically, on the 3-11 shift, I am the only one left in charge to handle emergencies, family concerns, and personnel issues. Close to ten years in this position, now with iron clad nerve fiber, intestinal fortitude, and a sense of humor, there is not...
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She lies in her narrow nursing-home bed with eyes closed and feet elevated on pillows, looking much like the little girl in the faded black-and-white photographs she showed me that first day in her new apartment. In her pink fleecy oversized pajamas ...
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Geriatric residents are major fall risks because of forgetfulness and dementia. A syndrome called "Sundowner's" is prevalent when someone is lucid during the daytime hours but as the evening hours progress they act "bonkers". Many a time while respon...
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Not every long-term care nurse chooses LTC as a profession. Sometimes, it chooses us. But no matter how you've arrived at your first job in a nursing facility, there are challenges awaiting you that you didn't anticipate, especially if you're coming ...
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On this particular night my patient, I'll call him Ray, approached the nursing station with his headphones in his ears and his big black glasses on. You know, the kind they give you after you get your pupils dilated. He wore these, with cotton balls ...
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You get out of bed, unsteady, dizzy...where am I? How do I get out...must get out, this door that door? A long dim corridor full of brown doors, where are they, where are they?! Someone coming, someone in white, more white.....talking at me. What is ...
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Working in rural areas has its challenges, especially when working in a long term care facility in the middle of nowhere. I was a new RN grad and full of enthusiasm, even though I was in my late thirties. As I scanned the local job listings and word ...
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It is a question I am often asked whenever I meet new people. After the how-do-you-dos are said and the subject inevitably turns to "what do you do?", I almost always get sympathetic looks and comments on how I must be such a saint to work in a nursi...
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But let's not forget the CNA's; they really work hard and do a great job keeping the residents/patients clean, dry, and happy! I feel my time as a CNA was an important part of my nursing experience and enhanced my career. I started as a CNA at age 22...
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Nursing homes are finding this new method of bringing residents to a dining room setting to be very effective in managing weight loss. Part of my supervisory responsibilities on a 3-11 shift was to oversee the dining room, assisting anyone in need, a...
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Anyone who works around the demented elderly population can attest to the fact that they sometimes say the darndest things. Mr. Rider is a pseudonym for the slightly plump octogenarian nursing home resident who had some cognitive decline due to vascu...
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I peek into the night-light lit darkness and she sees me; The plaintive voice whispers, the old wrinkled hand reaches for me. I step in and reach for her fingers brushing the tips with mine. Sitting up slowly She pats the bed next to her moves an inc...
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AHRQ commissioned two systematic reviews of research on the topic. The first addressed risk assessment tools and treatment. In an effort to minimize costs and potential complications, clinicians use many tools to assess a patient's risk for pressure ...
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I believe rules can be bent at times. Heck, I feel that some rules can even be outright broken as long as doing so has brightened someone's day. Billie is a pseudonym for the septuagenarian nursing home resident whom I first met seven years ago when ...
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Long-term care nursing is a specialty that involves helping patients who need extended care as they deal with chronic illnesses and disabilities. Long-term care nurses coordinate the care of patients, perform nursing skills, respond to changes in con...
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Right now I have three different residents in three different stages in the process of casting off the human shell that has housed their souls for over eight decades. One of them, Allie*, had been in fairly good shape until the night she had a massiv...
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This past month has been literally four and a half solid WEEKS of that kind of shift, leading me to formulate yet another list of thoughts that we nurses harbor, but would never utter........at least, not unless we find standing in an unemployment li...
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Ida came to us from an understaffed and unsafe local nursing home. She had type II diabetes and as a result, had necrotic toes on her feet. Infections were common in her feet, and they tried relentlessly to treat in the nursing home. But one of the s...
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Making rounds one weekend, I walked into check on a patient who was sitting in her wheelchair laughing hysterically. Her roommate was sitting in the middle of her bed with her legs tucked up under chin rocking back and forth. Since I had been working...
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Here I am moseying down the hall taking care of business. VS before dig, crush so and so's meds, not the Dilantin capsule though, put it in a bit of applesauce. Flush the peg. "Med pass for you." "Open wide, here you go." "Now swallow." "Big drink." ...
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I am a seasoned long-term care nurse. I deal with life and death matters all the time. My voice is often the last one a patient hears, and my hand the last human touch he or she feels. It's OK most of the time, that's why I was built strong enough to...
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Mary and John are great friends. Mary is 94, John is 96. John still has much of his mind, whereas Mary has dementia that's been progressing a lot lately. They met when John moved to the nursing home about 2 years ago. They do everything together. Eve...
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Many aspire to feel that rush or excitement of ER nursing, some want to cradle the precious newborns in the nursery or NICUs. Some want to be super-heros to sick kids. The list can go on and on, and that's the beautiful thing about this profession. L...
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We should never have gotten involved with this guy. First of all, Donald Lee* (name changed to protect privacy) was, in my humble opinion, much too young for assisted living. A short, compact man with salt-and-pepper hair, he was barely three years o...
