What do I mean obsession? Well, the stuff that interests you the most with nursing, the stuff that you are compulsive about, etc.
My nursing obsession are bowel movements. My patients better be gettin' rid of the brown stuff or I will be questioning it all day! During patient teaching, regardless of the subject, I ALWAYS talk about the importance of fibre.
Side note: the inspiration of this thread stems from this big bowl of strawberry All-Bran I'm eating.
No extra junk in the beds or at the bedside - linens, old wrappers, bits of tape stuck everywhere....bleh.
Making sure that the parents/families understand what I mean, and that I'm not using too much of the med lingo.
Security. I check everybody's band. I don't care if you do look like a grandmother and you have been here every minute for the last 3 days. I was off for three days. Where's your band, lady?! I'm nice about it, but still.
Oh yes....and add me to that cords list. Our single-bed pods have 4 panels of the 4-hole outlets. I drives me nuts when there are 3 IV pumps on one tree, and each one is plugged into a different panel that's 2 feet away, rather than the one underneath the tree. Then, the 2 syringe pumps are sitting on the left and plugged in on the right...snaked over and under the sets of O2 tubes, and the suction tubes are all wrapped up in the IV lines, which are tangled with the EKG leads and the temp probe. I think I may have just given myself hives.....
I won't flip a patient - well, I might if they are coding and gotta have a backboard- unless all the lines are straight and I know for darn tootin' that nothing is going to be pulled out or stretched funny.
My thing is draw sheets. I really hate those funky pad things that look like a hundred year old bunchy icky quilt - because in our facility people invariably try to use them as a draw sheet. Ok folks, a 3foot by 3foot pad is not a good draw sheet when your patient happens to be the size of a volkswagen. (Lots of ours are.) Do you enjoy getting your hand stuck under somebody trying to just find the pad so you can move 'em? I didn't think so! Draw sheets people. And so I'm known as anal because I take a top sheet, fold it in half top to bottom, and make a huge drawsheet that you can move a 400 pound patient with, and all 4 or 6 people moving that patient can easily have something to grab onto without having to go sticking hands in dark places to find it. You know, nothing worse than finding the result of the lactulose when all you wanted to do was grab a draw sheet...
Oh, and I like nutritional needs to be met, and I will not hand a soda to a pneumonia patient just because they like the taste. Yer gettin' some vitamin C buddy, because you are here to get well. The snacks can be configured to what the patient specifically needs, not just soda and whatever else they happen to want.
Specializes in Med-surg; OB/Well baby; pulmonology; RTS.
My thing is draw sheets. I really hate those funky pad things that look like a hundred year old bunchy icky quilt - because in our facility people invariably try to use them as a draw sheet. Ok folks, a 3foot by 3foot pad is not a good draw sheet when your patient happens to be the size of a volkswagen. (Lots of ours are.) Do you enjoy getting your hand stuck under somebody trying to just find the pad so you can move 'em? I didn't think so! Draw sheets people. And so I'm known as anal because I take a top sheet, fold it in half top to bottom, and make a huge drawsheet that you can move a 400 pound patient with, and all 4 or 6 people moving that patient can easily have something to grab onto without having to go sticking hands in dark places to find it. You know, nothing worse than finding the result of the lactulose when all you wanted to do was grab a draw sheet...
I like the big draw sheets too.
My thing is vital signs and I/Os. And I have to change out drinking cups. I hate to go in and find cups that have been sitting there for days-they are disposable people! I take a big stack of cups and straws to my folks as well as fresh ice water. I can't stand for patients not to have fresh water.
i am also funny about the aims test...sometimes i get a patient who's been taking thorazine or risperdal for over a year and has never had an aims done!
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please educate this home health nurse on an "aims", pretty please???
i have a bi-polar pt w/hx conversion disorder (we are there for out of control diabetes) and she is on risperdal--help a sister out here, and learn me real good!! thanks!!
a true conversion disorder?? fascinating. aims- abnormal involuntary movement scale. used when patients are taking antipsychotics. here's a nice pdf...explains it and has worksheet. http://www.doc.state.ok.us/offtech/140201c.pdf
I work in ICU. I am very obsessive about the pads under the pt being straight and being the same color. I know it sounds stupid, but it just irks me if the pads are wrinkled or don't match. LOL....
Cords. I have to untangle cords. It drives me crazy.
Untangle and tidy up the room. Can't stand linen all over and garbage on the table. First and foremost is untangle. Irritating to come in and the patient is tied up, tangled and has NO slack in them at all. Cords, lines, O2 tubing, call light.
My other is CAPPING the IV tubing with a fresh cap - would you want that on you? I can't stand finding the wrong cap on the blunt and it is dangling - ya, that's clean. Or sticking it in the hub of the tubing.
USING SECONDARY TUBING. I can't believe how many people do NOT know secondary tubing exists nor that you can back flush. Primary lines and a separate one for every one of them.
Oh....and PLEASE put the draw sheet and blue pad LOW. I don't know how many techs will set it up high with only inches and within minutes it is useless. Why can't they see that?
I have to do another. When people have an order to elevate feet and both nurses and techs think that means to put both feet up on the pillow when they are on their sides. That looks terribly uncomfortable. Think of their arthritis.
Patient's scrunched in the bed, folded at the neck and c/o sore back or can't breath.
And obese patients that don't lie on their side to get up. They don't look like they have done situps in awhile, why start now. They clearly have had no practice getting up out of bed often to have mastered the technique.
I hate to see babies laying flat in their beds like little frogs. Good positioning is so important! That also goes for ventilated babies with heads not in alignment! Just because it's possible to have the baby on it's back and it's head to one side or the other doesn't make it right. That's when I have to carefully explain what is wrong with the picture!
Clean and neat environment. I take a pillowcase and cover the overbed table the meal tray sits on. Baths MUST incluse clean teeth, clean under breas, axilly , back and frontside, "possible" legs and the feet MUST be soaked in the basin. That pillowcase will protect the floor then. CLean bed, extra towels, My name on the white board, the tech and the LON. Head Nurse and all their beepers. also if theyre shortsighted the same info on a 3x5 card on the bed rail.
Nails must be clean, hair must be combed. And if you do this the simple way you can do it in less than 7 minutes. Check back often even to say howdy!
Let them know when you go to lunch and who to call if they need things then. I am totally obssessive because if a rumpled dirty bed is all tht belongs to you in the hospital and it can really skew a returned eval. Those evals make or break your salary.
Specializes in trauma, ortho, burns, plastic surgery.
My obession is that patients need to be better monitorized each moment of them hospitalization.
In each and every of them I saw my parents my friends my heart closed and I really would like that them to be better and better monitorized. Each and every hour of the hospitalization need to be know by nurses, each and every moment from them past medical hystory need to be know by nurses, THE PATIENT, is a total is not ONLY a "broken left humerus"
Yup I know I am a dreamer, but I really dream at that.
Did you wakeup in the night because you know that somenthing is not ok with your last patient and you can't deal with it?
That is my obession... to be sure that each in every moment everybody know everythink about them and will can action if is a change in condition from the first sign!
ilstu99
320 Posts
Oral care and skin care!
No extra junk in the beds or at the bedside - linens, old wrappers, bits of tape stuck everywhere....bleh.
Making sure that the parents/families understand what I mean, and that I'm not using too much of the med lingo.
Security. I check everybody's band. I don't care if you do look like a grandmother and you have been here every minute for the last 3 days. I was off for three days. Where's your band, lady?! I'm nice about it, but still.
Oh yes....and add me to that cords list. Our single-bed pods have 4 panels of the 4-hole outlets. I drives me nuts when there are 3 IV pumps on one tree, and each one is plugged into a different panel that's 2 feet away, rather than the one underneath the tree. Then, the 2 syringe pumps are sitting on the left and plugged in on the right...snaked over and under the sets of O2 tubes, and the suction tubes are all wrapped up in the IV lines, which are tangled with the EKG leads and the temp probe. I think I may have just given myself hives.....