update on steppping on senior nurses toes

[b eyes]

Hi all! and thank you for the replys. Helped alot. However, now I have a addendum to that issue.

here goes, It seems that the senior nurse I was talking about has been trying to set me up for failure. The other day, she set alarms on a patient who was in RAF to go off whenever the hr dropped below 100. Being new, I did not know how to turn these alarms off, and frankly didn't need them on as I was sitting bedside with the patient monitoring him while giving diltiazem. Anyway, monitor ran out of memory because it records every time an alarm sounds, which was numerous, as trying to get this pts hr to decrease was my ultimate goal! Needles to say, all my data was lost for the last 2 hours of this patients stay in the ER. (I have since found out that I need to turn the monitor off and back on to get rid of the alarms! )

Then yesterday, before she left at 3:30 am, she came out to med-surg where I was because there weren't any patients in the ER and said there was nothing to report on. So I stayed out on med-surg and helped the other nurses. well, at 7:30 I received a phone call from the OR tech telling me there is a syringe of morphine laying on the counter and alot of staff walking through the ER. So I go and get it and return it to pharmacy.

Maybe I am just paranoid, I don't want to think these things were done intentionally, but this is all in 4 days. Just want to know if you think I am being paranoid or If you think the first incident was jsut what she said for patients safety and the second incident an error, after all, we are all human, right?! Trying to be oprimistic, but this very difficult.

b eyes

[Gromit]

Pet peave of mine! Expecting nurses to know how to set all equipment! It is rare that that gets addressed in report. How many times has this happened to me in many other situations - plenty! New CPM machines, pca pumps, IV pumps, accuchecks, monitors, wound vacs, TF - some prime for you, some give water for you, we change companies, we change machines but no one gives us the directions! I'm pretty techno savy, but you can waste a lot of time trying to figure out, find somebody who knows what they are doing, etc. Never mind pharmacy, they send over powdered mix medications now with a new set up thats pretty cool (Pre attached, just break the seal and pierce, also snap the plug seperating, which I never would've figured out on my own) Home care alot of time we attach the directions directly to the equipment in a bag, works great!

Yeah, we've been running with those pre-packaged "kits" for a while -comes with the saline bag and the bottle of dry chemical -break the seal, plug 'em together, squeeze the bag and shake :) Kindof a uh, shake and bake meds. I love those things! Takes all the guess work out of 'em.

AS for the 'toys', we are due to get a new brand of IV pumps soon, that will be replacing our old Baxters. These new ones are supposed to be modular, so you can add a pump as you need (should be cool). Haven't seen one in person yet, so I hope I don't miss the in-service. Still... "HOW complicated CAN it be?" (famous last words).

[Bluehair]

There is one person that works the nightshift that habitually turns of the alarms because they keep ringing out and he doesn't like to hear them. I have reported him and reported him, and a couple of times I have missed

drops in sats because he turned them off. The only thing that has changed is now the Charge nurse is responsible for making sure all the alarms are turned on and guess who is in charge most of the time . He doesn't turn them off to set people up he does it just because he doesn't want to hear them.

Wow! This guy is setting you folks up for a serious JCAHO issue! The whole alarm thing is a new pet peeve of theirs. Not to mention the whole Risk Management issue, like what if the patient dies because the alarm didn't sound. In our hospital we are NOT allowed to turn off alarms for ANY reason (we can do the mute for 2 minute thing is all). If any critical alarms are found turned off it is cause for immediate dismissal. Pulse Ox is considered a critical alarm here. Fix the problem that causes the alarm, don't just shut it off!

[Gromit]

Wow! This guy is setting you folks up for a serious JCAHO issue! The whole alarm thing is a new pet peeve of theirs. Not to mention the whole Risk Management issue, like what if the patient dies because the alarm didn't sound. In our hospital we are NOT allowed to turn off alarms for ANY reason (we can do the mute for 2 minute thing is all). If any critical alarms are found turned off it is cause for immediate dismissal. Pulse Ox is considered a critical alarm here. Fix the problem that causes the alarm, don't just shut it off!

Yeah, our floor is the same way -turn off the alarm, be dismissed without passing "GO". Learn to reset the parameters -safest best bet.

[morte, LPN, LVN]

i thought the brand name for the one i am familiar with was Athena, but i dont find it.....you can have up to 4 channells, attached to the "Brain", make sure that no more than three are on one side, lol.....they do weight based heparin....make sure that the weight is entered in the proper measurement.....yup, someone ahead of me had put in lbs instead of kilos...wonder why the ptt was off.....good luck

[Gromit]

Yeah, that name sounds like the ones I'm talking about. We don't have 'em yet -and I'm stuck on "light duty" for the time being (I hope I'm around when they give us the inservice). Up to 4 channels. Cool. Our current max is 3 (Baxters are the ones we have now, and they can do weightbased hep as well -I like them, they seem to work really well. But I'm really looking forward to the 'modular' ones. Hey, I'm a guy, and I like toys (grin))