2. When meth is combined with cocaine and booze, it can destroy a 28 year old heart.
3. When you have one random patient across the unit from your other patients, and that patient is the only patient without psych issues, that poor patient is unfortunately going to be a bit neglected.
4. A discharge with EMS transport, ICU transfer and admission happening simultaneously (literally all less than 5 minutes apart from one another) 2 hours before you're supposed to be giving report means you'll be giving report before your last round of (very late) meds will be given.
5. Never been happier for vacation time. (Today is day 4/15.)
6. All play and no work makes ixchel a very happy girl. :)
That's all I got this week! Not much to learn when all I've been doing is playing! :)
I learned that doctors from different services do not actually speak to each other, and the nurse must play go between. When the nurse says to service # 1, "I can't do that until you talk to the service #2", service #1 gets huffy until service #2 comes in the next day and says to service #1, "Why didn't you talk to me before putting in that lame-brained order?"
To which I want to scream...you've been doctors for all of one month! Listen to the nurse, especially where procedure and protocol is concerned!!!
Managers at my facility will take applicants for one position & offer them a position in an unrelated unit that they didn't apply for with virtually no prior relevant experience (no acute inpatient experience to a critical care position); we'll see how that plays out.
My large family suffered a tragic loss & is learning how to pick up the pieces.
We had a special on procedures for isolation pts & no one told the staff (seriously, every 3rd or 4th pt was MRSA, ESBL or VRE)!
I learned that in the days before your scheduled vacation, your shifts mysteriously become longer and more grueling, with that last day being a complete nightmare. And when you're finally ready to leave (LATE) on that last day, you can't jump up and down for joy and dance your way out of the building like you had anticipated, because your mind is going crazy... Did you forget something/screw something up? ...Is that one patient going to die? ...Will that patient from hell still be there when you come back? ...etc.
(With my luck of course, a new, WORSE patient from hell will probably be there waiting for me, perhaps even the devil himself, right next door to current patient from hell who is still there, will never leave, and is learning new tricks from the devil patient).
Managers at my facility will take applicants for one position & offer them a position in an unrelated unit that they didn't apply for with virtually no prior relevant experience (no acute inpatient experience to a critical care position); we'll see how that plays out.
My large family suffered a tragic loss & is learning how to pick up the pieces.
We had a special on procedures for isolation pts & no one told the staff (seriously, every 3rd or 4th pt was MRSA, ESBL or VRE)!
I keep trying to remember my tidbits for this post...and then I fall asleep and forget to post
- Just because your surgeon says you may stay in the hospital for a week after surgery, it does not mean you should try to stay a week.
- When I ask you if you're passing gas, "I don't know, am I?" is not the appropriate response
- I learned that uterine tumors can rupture in your abdomen. What?
- I really won't pity you for not being able to have laproscopic surgery due to said ruptured tumor. You still have all of your colon, spleen, liver, lung lobes, no NG tube, chest tube, or drains.
- Pharmacy will frequently overfill your chemo, despite the volume they claim is in the bag
- If your patient is receiving IA chemo, I expect pharmacy to prepare my chemo for an IA line! I cannot put a secondary line on a primary line with no ports! Argh!
- If your patient pulls out their IV and wraps the IV tubing neatly around the IV pump, that IV didn't accidentally remove itself.
- IV team will do whatever is possible to not place a PICC line
- Last week I saw too much blood come out to places that blood shouldn't come out from
- Sometimes doctors really should put their foot down and let patients be a full code, as they're being coded
- The staff on my floor kick butt when it comes to codes
- "So, how fast does neutropenic fever resolve?" Does not build confidence in the rapid response B-team
- If you have two patients with constantly beeping IVs, sometimes the normal heparin locked patient will get ignored
- Its really hard to run to take care of a bedpan when your patient on IA chemo is also getting lasix.
- I may have to deal with a year of my bf complaining about our new apt, but I don't care because I no longer have to circle the blocks for half an hour trying to find parking! (Totally worth the three hundred dollar decrease in rent and extra ten minute commute time)
- I'm so looking forward to reading in the sun with a book at my run down apt pool
I also learned that if your leads think you would be a good preceptor, they should probably tell you more than a week before the preceptor class. Especially when the preceptor is in the middle of your work week. I guess I'll learn to be a preceptor in November!
I haven't seen anyone say Opana is a hell of a drug yet... are you guys not getting these ones that crush it up and inject it and give themselves bad endocarditis? And live in the ICU on pressors until they can get to surgery? And then get valve transplants, shoot up the Opana again, and end up with ANOTHER round of vegetation on their heart valves and another ICU admission with every pressor in the book? And then get mad when the ethics committee has to get involved because the CV surgeons don't want to give them another heart valve so they can ruin yet another one and waste everybody's time?
I am tired of people ruining their lives by shooting up things! You'd think a 30 day long hospital stay would be enough time to detox off the drugs to the point that you could avoid shooting up again first thing when you get home, but apparently not. I don't know why some of these people don't just put a bullet in their brains when they first get D/Ced from the hospital. It would be a much faster, much more merciful way to die.
/hijack.
I learned from this thread that some people are experiencing some weird phenomenon called "summer low census" and I would like to know what that is. We are constantly 30/30 beds and are so short on help that we have offered critical staffing pay for every single shift, both nights and days, for the past two weeks, and we still end up tripled anyway. While I'm coming in on incentive on my main job, my second job blows up my phone about critical staffing needs at least three times per week. It's hard to believe people are actually getting cancelled for low census anywhere when it seems like everywhere around here is bursting at the seams with really crazy sick patients and we don't have enough help to take care of them.
I have been working 60-72 hours/week and I am burning out on the overtime.
Specializes in M/S, LTC, Corrections, PDN & drug rehab.
Oh, I have to add after reading the heart wrenching thread I don't think I can ever work in a hospital. No one has a heart wrenching post about corrections.
dudette10, MSN, RN
3,530 Posts
I learned that doctors from different services do not actually speak to each other, and the nurse must play go between. When the nurse says to service # 1, "I can't do that until you talk to the service #2", service #1 gets huffy until service #2 comes in the next day and says to service #1, "Why didn't you talk to me before putting in that lame-brained order?"
To which I want to scream...you've been doctors for all of one month! Listen to the nurse, especially where procedure and protocol is concerned!!!