What is the most complex clinical procedure you had to do in your career?

[Guest878640]

As a student in her final year, the most complex clinical procedure for me has to be cleaning and packing a wound. I did this numerous times during clinical. What about you?

[PMFB-RN, RN]

Scrach my previous post Most complicated - careing for and running ECMO;

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What the room / patient looks like:

[Livewire]

These are great to read, yet terrifying for a current nursing student!

Do they prep us for all this?!

[PMFB-RN, RN]

These are great to read, yet terrifying for a current nursing student!

Do they prep us for all this?!

If you mean nursing school, absolutly not! Nearly everything you really need to know to be a nurse is OJT. Nursing school provides knowlage base background and that's pretty much it. I strong suggest that nursing student's first job is in a clinical residency program. As a new grad I was hired into a 9 month very intense nurse residency program for new grads going into critical care.

[ArtClassRN, ADN, RN]

As a student in her final year, the most complex clinical procedure for me has to be cleaning and packing a wound. I did this numerous times during clinical. What about you?

The most complex procecure for me was getting a patient who had been faking seizures to get ativan to leave the hospital after he was discharged and didn't want to go. After I bounced him, the Social Worker, Attending MD, and charge nurse all treated me like some kind of hero.

[btab3]

Following

[JustBeachyNurse, LPN]

Remember many of these stories are not clinical student stories some are but many are not. Most students aren't assisting with a complicated birth, observe maybe but generally too risky for a student to assist

[spacemonkey15]

Scrach my previous post Most complicated - careing for and running ECMO;

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What the room / patient looks like:

How do you guys manage staffing for patients on ECMO? I know you do your staffing different to us in the UK, for someone on ECMO they typically have two nurses look after them.

[Twinmom06, ASN, APN]

Packing man's abdomen and wrapping his testicles in wet Kerlix after a Fourniers Gangrene diagnosis. He was cut open from hip to hip and had his scrotum and all the skin on the shaft of his member removed. Of course he was 400 lbs and I needed an assistant to hold up the pannus while I stuffed 5-6 rolls of wet Kerlix in the wound and covered with ABD's.

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

The most complex procecure for me was getting a patient who had been faking seizures to get ativan to leave the hospital after he was discharged and didn't want to go. After I bounced him, the Social Worker, Attending MD, and charge nurse all treated me like some kind of hero.

Once I got a crazy elder into another facility's last geripsych bed on a Friday afternoon WITHOUT A PSYCH CONSULT!! A damn miracle.

[Julius Seizure]

What the room / patient looks like:

Picture doesnt work!

[Julius Seizure]

How do you guys manage staffing for patients on ECMO? I know you do your staffing different to us in the UK, for someone on ECMO they typically have two nurses look after them.

Personally, I can only speak for peds, but for what its worth, in the peds world its a bedside nurse, and then a perfusionist (a RN or a respiratory therapist with specialized training to run the machine). We would tell parents, "one nurse for the child, one nurse for the machine!"

[Nurse SMS, MSN, RN]

Nothing I have done is really as impressive as everyone else's.

We had a 700+ lb patient with stage 4s almost everywhere. It took eight of us to do the wound care, mostly to help turn, partly to run interference to keep the patient from harming anyone. The patient had severe anxiety and would scratch, hit, pinch, grab and scream through the whole thing despite medication. They also had a rectal tube that constantly leaked. Caring for this individual was a huge challenge and cause a lot of back pain for us in the attempt to keep them rolled for access but not tipping off the side of the bed, bless their heart. Every SNF we sent them to eventually found reasons to send them back and then would refuse readmission when the time came. Wound up having to send out of state. Patient eventually passed from massive sepsis.

I will never ever forget the first time I did compressions on a postoperative open heart that coded. Snap,crackle, pop, staples coming out, incision opening and bleeding. Worried my gloves would perf.

Trying to keep stable and clean a patient fresh from ER with what turned out to be toxic mega colon. Patient passed within 2 hours of admission. The smell was so foul we had to close patients doors on that hallway as it was making other patients nauseous.

Several codes for GI bleeds and/or obstructions. Stool and blood flooding out both ends. None of them made it.