What in the World

Not to dwell on the disgusting, but ZayZayEm from Australia posts a story of a man who tried to fool a breathalyzer in an unconventional manner. (not for the squeamish)

Rhymes With Orange

Thanks to GruntDoc

GruntDoc hosts the latest version of Grand Rounds, and I think it's great that he picked one of my posts for 'editor's choice'. I must say, thats probably the ONLY good thing that came of that experience!

I've only been blogging since last November, but I can see the community growing and becoming more cohesive. I've added a few more links on the side to other nurse/student nurse blogs.

Nurse Uniforms

While I was looking for a picture to put with the post below, I ran across a Japanese website selling nurse uniforms - obviously for use in Japan. I'm glad we have more choices here in the US! Here's a picture and a link, in case you want to see the whole page.

My Last Clinical Rotation

Today our class attended an orientation session at the hospital where we will be doing our Mother/Baby clinicals. For some silly reason I wore my uniform. I didn't know we could wear street clothes, but oh well. I just grinned when I walked in (a tad early) and said "I wanted them to know how good we're all going to look when we show up for clinical". I'm such a dork! :P

We introduced ourselves for the umpteenth time. It's actually not so bad, because you seem to get a bit more of the "Why did you want to be a nurse?" story every time someone tells it. I learned more about a few nursing students today, and met my clinical instructor. I'm excited to get started because I know it will be over in no time and I'll be an RN! Finally!

Residency Toss-Up

As any nursing grad knows, finding the perfect residency is about as tough as getting into nursing school in the first place. I'm lucky to live in a top-twenty city with some seriously great hospitals. I have a great deal of selection in where I can go now that I've begun looking.

I am sort of torn in a few directions as to which path I'd like my career to take form this point. I'd love to be an ED nurse, and maybe someday a flight nurse. I'm working in the ICU/CCU right now, and a residency in CCU would be a really great chance to learn (and with some great people, too!). BUT I liked the ED when I worked down there last summer even better. If you've got good CCU experience, flight nurse jobs could be much easier to get. It's just that CCU is a bit boring - even as large as we are, and with the acuity of cases we see. I love the adrenaline rush of the ED. I love the experience I'd get in the CCU. I'm torn.

I was at a rally the other night for a levy to support the hospital and the CCU manager sort of casually asked me if I had chosen where I wanted to have residency. I told her that as much as I liked working with the people in CCU, I didn't know if it was a good place for a new grad. I told her nurses up there were the 'top guns' of nursing, and even though a few of them said they thought I could handle it, I wasn't so sure myself. She looked at me sort of like she was surprised. I wish I had it on video so that I could see the look on her face and check again, becuase I sort of got the feeling she would have said 'yes' without hesitation to my being up there. I am probably overly self-critical. Certainly already working there has given me a lot of knowledge about how things are.

The next day I was at another function and met up with my old manager from the ED. I told her I wanted to make an appointment to talk with her about a residency, and she seemed like she thought that would be a great idea, and we talked a bit more about family and other things. I know both of them like me, and now comes the hard part. Do what I like (ED), or do what would probably be best for my career in the long run (CCU). Sigh. The one thing I do know is that I would absolutely HATE med-surg. I'm really an adrenaline junkie.


This image shamelessly stolen from: http://microvoltradio.com/kbfinine.htm

Oh my GOD...

Work was going fine, I was caught up and just humming along with the variety of patients in our booked-solid-not-a-bed-in-sight ICU on a drizzly Sunday morning. Usually when every bed is full, they'll pull a CNA up from another floor to help me. I didn't have any help, but there's nothing I can do about it. I work the same amount of hours and get pretty much the same amount of stuff done. Unfortunately, that means that a lot of nurses don't get help with little things, and can really only use me when they need to transfer someone or get ABG's run down to the lab. They're 2:1, I'm 16:1 - what can I do?

So, J.,RN asks me to help her patient to the commode. No biggie, this is usually a quick thing and so few of our patients actually can get up to a commode that it doesn't happen often. I'll just do that, and then on to other things. PT says "I might only have gas, I can't tell.. Maybe I don't have to do anything." now she's turning on the bed and lowering her feet toward the side "Well, maybe.." she hesitates "I may have gotten some on the sheets."

"No problem!" I smile at her. "Thats just going to take me a second to change those out, and you'll have nice clean sheets. Lets get you to the commode first."

She's weak, and a bit skinny. As I face her and help her to bring her legs to the floor, I notice there is some very wet poo (yes, that is a technical term :) )on the bed. "We'll have to wash your legs a bit, also." I tell her. Her feet touch lightly to the floor and she stands with my assistance. Not very steady. Some poo is on her gown and sheets.

She's got IV tubing, tele monitor, BP and SpO2 cables strung up to the video screen from all over. O2 via nasal cannula barely long enough to reach. She's not standing up all the way, sort of hunched over. She farts just a small fart and liquid poo dribbles down her legs and onto the floor. She looks at me with a flat affect "I think I got some on the floor". I'm already dreading the mess on her bottom and her legs, and now I sense imminent disaster (You've probably already figured it out). As we make the rotation to the commode, she lets loose with a huge fart. The mother lode of poo sprays out like a firehose - I watch it cover the commode from left to right and spray the wall, the windows, the vertical blinds, the IV pole, the bedside table, and the nightstand. I felt more than saw splatters hitting my pants and shoes. I gently helped her down onto the dripping, filthy commode, having no other choice.

I called J.,RN in to help me. Yeah, I'm sure my voice did have a sort of panicky quality to it. I don't recall a chapter in any textbook on dealing with the combination of explosive diarrhea and vertical blinds. J and I did get the bulk of it cleaned up, although it took about a half hour. Housekeeping took care of the rest. Lucky I had a spare set of scrubs in my locker.

Strangely, with all of the experience the nurses on duty had, they only had second-hand stories of this ever happening before. S0-and-so went quickly into a dark room and slipped and fell in it, someone else got sprayed with urine. I guess this story will get added to the others. I just hope that was my one experience.

Anyway, I had to tell someone, and I'm certainly not going to mention this at school!Thanks for listening.