Military Monday!

Be sure to link up at Semper Wifey's blog! :)

I hate coworkers who will say to you, "that's not patient" and therefore they won't help you. Nursing is a team effort. I try to pitch in and help those who are "not my patients" when I have the time. Not only will your fellow coworkers be thankful, it also earns you brownie points with your team and management. Not that I'm in for it for just brownie points. I truly enjoy helping others. Obviously, because I'm a nurse.

Work has been hell lately. We have one side where ALL of our totals as well as patients with sitters/in restraints are. I typically do my shifts in threes and of course I got stuck on that side for all 3 nights. I didn't really say anything except on my last night, telling the charge that side really needs to be split up. I mean, 3 out of my 4 patients were totals. It was awful. One night one kept climbing out of bed and became very agitated (and even a happy dose of Haldol only worked for about 30 minutes) and that went on until around 0500 when my "special bed" finally arrived (the other nights were fine thanks to my special bed :D)...my other patient down the hall was confused and kept pulling all of their wires off (thank goodness they didn't pull out my IV!)...and then of course my other patient was a 150kg bed-bound patient who can transfer from bed to chair (including a bedside commode) but decided they just wanted to lay in bed, oh, and they were going through a bowel prep...with a bleed. -_-

Speaking of bowel preps, I can't help but laugh at the names of those prep solutions. Especially "GoLytely." Seriously? haha.

Yesterday I took my ACLS course. For 10 hours. Normally they split the course up over 2 days - videos/teaching/practice and then the second day you do your skills test and written test. In this class we did the whole thing in one day. It was a very long day, but I passed my megacode and everything else and now I am ACLS-certified! Just don't go and expect me to run a code haha. Docs typically run them, anyway. By the time we find a patient and initiate CPR and get them hooked up to the crash cart, the ER doc is already in the room leading everything.

And I wish I didn't have to get recertified in BLS every 2 years now. They test you on BLS in ACLS, so having a BLS certification in addition to ACLS is kind of redundant, IMO. Oh well...

Next up is NRP (neonatal resucitation program) and PALS (pediatric advanced live support), even though I refuse to take kiddos on my unit.