Tell me about your week in Acute dialysis.

[Sabab20]

I've been in dialysis close to 20 years. Mostly chronics, with the last few years in home therapy. I'm considering a job in Acutes. It would be 1:1, dialyzing patients in their room. 3/12hr with call. Everyone I've talked to thru the years, say the same thing. The work is great, but the hours are bad, long hours, ect.

I want to hear your stories. If you love Acutes, I want to hear from you. Even if you hate it. Tell me what your average week looks like.

Thanks! Much appreciated!

[Chisca, RN]

6 minutes. I can restring a machine and have it ready for reconnection in less than 6 minutes. Sort of like the movie Uforia where the main character describes how well he can drive an 18 wheel tractor trailer. " I can drive that rig up a goats ass, make a u-turn and come out smelling like a rose."

[nikkoangeles]

I worked in an acute setting for 4 years and the last months were like hell, there was one time were I had to work 22 hours then another 8-hour shift the next 2 hours I only had like 45mins. of sleep in the doctors' lounge and that's it.. it started after my normal shift of 6am-2pm i was on call around 4pm where this patient had difficulty breathing, unfortunately this patient's graft was not functioning at all and i had to call the surgeon to come up with a temporary access for dialysis. after 1 hour there was another call for a second patient for emergency dialysis, so that went well. Going back to the first patient it was already 10pm when the OR nurse called me that the surgeon had just finished inserting the IJ catheter. 1 hour passed by i called them again and said they were transferring the patient in ICU because of severe hypotension. So i went to the ICU brought the hdf machine and saw the patient with a blood pressure of 85/45mmhg There was already a dopamine infusion, i called the attending physician to verify the order for dialysis and reported my assessments and he told me to proceed with dialysis. at around 2 am the patient became unresponsive so i had to infuse back all the blood and while all of this i had to inform the physician about what had happened but was already late, i was calling him more than 10 times already and he wasn't picking up. I did what i had to do and referred to the resident doctor and got the order to terminate dialysis. I had to do all the documents and bring back the machine and clean the mess until 4am. that was the last straw for me when the next day the Attending Physician came at me and was mad because he told me that wasn't informed at what happened to the patient last night.