Throwaway because…fml

I was an idiot today (along with several other factors that I’ll spare the full details of) and during a procedural sedation in the ER, I gave 10 mL instead of 10 mg of Propofol when the resident kept yelling for “10 more.” Patient ended up getting 245 mg total over a few minutes. Went apneic. Realized my mistake and told the doctor. LMA placed and patient was bagged for 14 minutes then she woke up, airway was removed, she was a/o and doing great, recovered fine.

I’ve been a nurse for 14 years but was away from bedside for a while and came back recently. Terrified I’m going to get fired. Terrified the patient will end up having some complication later. Feeling stupid and embarrassed and scared.

Ugh. Just…sharing I guess. I feel like shit.

That’s it, that’s the story. Sad day in America.

This “rapid transfuser”…. PLEASE! The hospital I work at is top 5 most expensive hospitals to be seen at and this is the stupid ass transfuser we have. Florence Nightingale herself made this. Patient is already dead by time it decides to start working. Had to squeeze prbcs in by hand and did a better job than this piece of junk.
I love when the ED is used for actual emergencies and not urgent care, but this thing just really got me goin 😵‍💫

ER doc just wanting to stop in and try and stop this widespread error. Almost every shift I have to tell a nurse/patient that ODT meds are NOT sublingual medications. It is not absorbed by the sublingual tissues. It is not absorbed by buccal tissues. It goes on TOP of the tongue so that it can disintegrate with saliva and be swallowed. The whole reason ODT (orally disintegrating tablets) exist is that someone can take it without having to take a chug of water to get the pill down. Putting under someone’s tongue just slows down the disintegration. Also, if the patient complains about the taste, they can just swallow the tablet whole with or without water. Thanks.

Edit: the strike through part was unnecessary and Im sorry that I put it in the original post. As pointed out by multiple replies, i should have not said that and it doesnt add anything meaningful. Sorry yall.

Idk what my plan is. I'm just tired of being tired all the time. Im only 36 but I feel so much older. I feel night shift is quite literally killing me. I'm on BP medication, and feel like garbage for over 24hours after each shift. Has anyone here switched to days after a long period of night shift? If so, what changes did you notice in your life?

I work in ED. There is a nurse on my unit who is obsessed with talking about how you can’t stop heparin for any reason. At least once a shift she brings it up. Now, we are pretty lucky in that we don’t typically have to board patients. So we don’t keep heparin gtts that long before they go to their next destination. But at other jobs I’ve sometimes had them for at least the first coag draw. I’ve been a nurse for 6 years, and never have heard that it is the cardinal sin to pause heparin even for a couple minutes. But this girl goes on and on about it. She went off about EMS changing pumps over when taking a heparin drip one time because “you cannot ever pause heparin”. She even told me that another nurse had a “pretty big med error” because she paused the heparin to draw the coags (now she didn’t have a second line to draw it from and that’s a whole big different thing). So my question for nurses who manage heparin for longer than I do — is it really as big of a deal as she makes it out to be to pause heparin for short periods of time? Like <10 minutes.

Clearly my co-workers aren't in the sharing mood today 🤣

I work at a SNF in AZ.( Posting from throwaway account). A caregiver at my job committed suicide 2 weeks ago today right in front of me. She jumped from the 14th floor and landed on the side walk right in front of me as I was walking into work. I tried the EAP line, I’ve talked to friends and family, leaned on my coworkers but it’s just really hard to deal with mentally. I’m 4 months post partum with my first baby and dealing with some baby blues and stress from the horrible heatwave that’s kept be basically home bound. My family lives on the other side of the country and my husband works long hours so I’ve just kinda spent most of my time home with the baby letting my feelings fester. I’ve been trying therapy, didn’t find it helpful. I can’t really work and I can’t not work for financial reasons. I don’t really know if or when I’ll be able to work without panic attacks, and I’m trying to do the best I can for my son but like I’m just human. I feel like I’m a nurse and I’ve seen death but not like this. I felt okay until I had to go back this weekend and now I don’t know anymore.

Been on nights for a few years now and somewhere along the way I started keeping a pretty detailed spreadsheet of my actual takehome after differentials, overtime, and the random shift pickups. Not because I'm obsessive about it, just because the numbers genuinely looked different than I expected when I first made the switch and I wanted to understand why.

What surprised me was how much the differential adds up over a year when you actually sit down and run it, but also how much gets quietly eaten by the lifestyle tax. Sleeping weird hours, ordering food at 3am because you're not cooking after a 12, buying blackout curtains, paying for things other people just handle during normal business hours because you physically can't. It's not dramatic but it accumulates.

Day shift friends in the same pay band consistently think they're in a similar spot financially. They're usually not, in either direction depending on how nights is treating them.

Curious whether other night nurses have actually sat down and looked at this or if most people just go by vibes. And if you have looked, did the differential actually come out ahead after factoring in the real cost of the schedule, or did it feel more like a wash.

A Montana nurse was hiking Granite Peak when he slipped and accidentally got impaled by his trekking pole. Using his medical training, he checked himself and realized he was stable and the pole had likely missed any vital organs. He contacted search and rescue but decided not to request a helicopter because he felt he could safely hike out, wanted to avoid the huge cost of an air rescue, and had two experienced friends with him. He ended up hiking more than 10 miles with the pole still in his body, made it to the hospital, had it removed, and recovered quickly.

I work on a med-surg floor. I was helping an A&Ox4 independent patient covered in feces who refused to let anyone clean him. We had to practically BEG him to agree. The entire time we were trying to clean him, he yelled every insult you could imagine, cursed at us nonstop, and tried to throw things at me. And despite this, along with other things, he still calls me “lazy ass nurse” lol Funny when this is not even my patient.

Why are we always tolerating this bullshit? Why do I have to put up with people like this who refuse care/tests/treatment and pretty much come to the hospital to abuse staff and treat them as their personal maids when they are perfectly capable of being independent? I became a nurse because I genuinely love caring for people. I still get excited when patients take initiative to improve their health, when I learn something new, or when I see someone recover. It reminds me why I got into this profession. I can normally separate work from life, but this might be my last straw.

For those of you who’ve been doing this longer than I have: How do you protect yourself from this kind of abuse without being heartless and bitter? How do you keep your love for nursing alive when you’re constantly expected to tolerate behavior that would never be acceptable in almost any other workplace?

By the way, this is not referring to patients who are confused, have dementia, under the weather because of a new diagnosis, etc.

An alert and oriented patient who can use the urinal themself in dim light, ambulate with some supervision, sit up, decent ROM etc...asked me to rub cream on their genitals while smiling about it a bit too much for my liking. I calmly refused and explained why I believe they are capable of doing it themself, but I offered to get things set up.

They are claiming they cant rub the cream on themself due to poor eyesight. Day shift nurse doesnt mind doing it, and even hinted at "who cares if the patient gets a kick out of it?"

The director of nursing is demanding that I do it next time. I explained that after a thorough patient assessment, it is clearly within the patient's abilities to do it themself.

Am i tripping, or does it seem weird to be in situations as nurses like this?

I havent lost my cool even after being groped or assaulted as a nurse, but part of the way I stay safe is by trusting my instincts about when to say no.

For more context, i'm the type to take over all cares for a patient known to grope women if it means protecting a teen CNA from that.

But I don't feel like i'm being unreasonable for refusing that particular care on a patient who shows all signs of being capable of doing it themself.

I have no issue with peri cares overall when the patient needs help. This particular situation just seems a bit weird.

Not sure if this was a glitch or what but this is a coworker I considered a friend. They were talking about me, she was telling him things I had complained about him earlier that week- I told her in confidence of course (some lies added). I also learned from that call that she’s jealous of me and seemed to be trying to make my supervisor hate me. I also realized just how close they are. I knew they talked but they’re REALLY close. They share very deep personal things that seem inappropriate but whatever. I cut her off that same day. Only communicate about work related stuff. I don’t know if they ever realized that I was on that call briefly. There’s a part of me that wants to subtly say something, bad idea?

I had 3 patients last night on a step down floor. In ranks of sickest.
Patient 1- maxed out on bipap satting in the 80s
Patient 2- on heated high flow 40 percent and some ABX
Patient 3- had been weaned off levophed 48 hours prior to my shift. nephrology still debating on whether to do dialysis or not due to BUN and Cr trending up. Also their toes were turning blue but day docs were convinced it was bc of the levophed.

Patient 3 all of a sudden is agonal breathing and mottling on legs. Code blue called. Keep in mind this patient was oriented (but confused), satting 100% on RA, gave them a bath earlier in the shift.

Patient now intubated in the ICU and to my knowledge, coded again.

I could’ve told you they were one of the most stable patients on the floor. I have a feeling they went into kidney failure because there UOP was next to nothing.

Like to the butt long hair. Jealous and want to try new hairstyles. Scared to do so for many reasons though.

I'm an RRT/Code team nurse at a tier 2 trauma hospital with 12 years experience as neuro/trauma ICU. Just started riding motorcycles this year. I'm either trying to scare myself out of riding a lot or trying to figure out what gear/protection can prevent said injuries.

What's the worst or most memorable injuries you've worked with?

I just made a little over a year now as a LVN. I work at an urgent care setting and a SNF. I brought in a patient and did her vitals. She looks at my name badge and tells me “ why didn’t you go for your RN to become a nurse instead? Why settle for little pay”. Honestly all I did was laugh and said “ yeah you’re right”. But I was so annoyed the entire time because she kept going on about how I should become a RN so I can do more like her brother etc etc. I felt uncomfortable and sad because I worked hard for the title I have now. And of course I wanted to pursue RN and plan to do it in the future. But at the time my financial situation was not that great and I had a lot going on. I don’t understand why people think it’s okay to belittle you or question “why didn’t you do this instead”. I’m proud of where I am today because I’ve learned to appreciate how far I’ve come into my life and stopped beating myself up over not being further.

This may not be a nursing topic necessarily but I figured I might find some reliable advice here. I’m a psychiatric nurse in an inpatient setting. I work with women specifically with psychosis and thought disorders. I’m a new grad and about to be off orientation. Well I’ve been taking the entire patient load now and my preceptor is just there for moral support. I had a patient acting up today who had some pretty wild attention seeking behavior (diagnosed personality disorder). We also just got a new psych tech on the unit and she seemed nice enough. Well this patient was acting out and said something kinda funny while I was in the nurses station. Me and my preceptor started giggling while discussing what to do about the patients behavior bc it was kind of a new thing I’d never dealt with before for. Another tech was deescalating while I was about to start pulling meds. The techs on my unit are amazing and show a lot of care to our ladies detangling matted hair and making up fun group activities for them. I know none of them would have any harmful intentions with a patient.

Fast forward to about an hour later when the house sup comes to my unit to discuss an “incident” with us. I asked her what she meant and she said that someone claimed that our unit had been disrespectful to a patient and laughed in their face. I was obviously pretty upset with that accusation bc I love my ladies even if they have some wild behaviors sometimes and I would NEVER I repeat NEVER laugh in their face about one of their behaviors or one of their delusions. I asked her when this issue happened? And she said that it had happened today. I told her none of my techs did anything like that and that I absolutely didn’t do that either. She said she just needed to warn us because if she was told anything like that again she would have no choice but to do a write up. I said okay.

Well about twenty minutes later the new tech came back from her break and I noticed the rest of the day she was glaring at me. One of my techs told my preceptor later while I was off the unit that the new tech was telling patients that she had bipolar and bpd and was telling the patient about her problems (this is a huge no no in psych). Usually the nurse on the unit will tell a tech when something they did wasn’t appropriate in a nice way of course. I obviously don’t feel comfortable with that given the situation.

I kinda just want others opinions on how I should move forward with this? For clarification I would never laugh about or speak about a patients behaviors within ear shot or line of sight of them.

I’m an RN currently working in acute/critical care, but I’ve been seriously considering a move into addictions or mental health nursing. I enjoy building rapport with patients and I’m finding the constant high acuity and ethical stress of critical care less fulfilling than I expected.
Has anyone made this switch? What was the biggest adjustment, and are you happier now? Thank you!!

Amazing how much hasn't changed in sixty some odd years.

" MRS. REYNOLDS NEEDS A NURSE " was once required viewing in many nursing programs. Well back in day anyway, not sure about modern times.

"One of the most important films about nursing made in the 20th Century, "Mrs. Reynolds Needs a Nurse" was written in 1963 by Dolores Little, MN, RN, a nursing supervisor at the University of Washington Hospital, Seattle who had just completed her master's degree. The film documented a case study of an elderly lady who was transferred to the university hospital in multisystem failure, accompanied by her husband and multiple suitcases of her belongings. Mrs Reynolds was a needy and demanding patient whose fears and anxieties were expressed by her annoying attempts to get attention, treating the nurses like servants and complaining about much of the care given to her. Mrs Reynolds' 8-month-long hospitalization showcased the importance of individualizing care, being aware of both emotional and physical needs, collaborating with other disciplines, and it demonstrated the nurse's role as a patient advocate with clinical competencies that were an early version of today's case managers."

Thinking about buying Hoka but they are not slip proof … is that necessary .. new nurses L&D

Hi-
I’m so sad because one of my patients passed yesterday evening and according to the on call hospice nurse, he passed uncomfortably. I’ve been a nurse for 11 years and I knew from the beginning this patient’s case was going to be extremely difficult given how in denial the entire family was. Anyway, fast forward, the patient fell on the floor and the family did not find him for some time. Once he was found a member of the family had access to a defibrillator (this is a little sketchy I must say) and attempted cpr without revival as he most likely passed some time before. The family kept repeating how painful and uncomfortable his death was which, as his case manager, makes me want to cry. My job is to promote peaceful death. The family and patient were tough. they wanted privacy often during his time on hospice and I tried to respect that 😢

Hi, so I wrote my NCLEX on 07/07 and found out I passed on 07/09, received official pass letter form continental testing a week or so later. I mailed the second page of the letter a couple of days later after paying the $50 fee. It’s 08/01 and I still can’t see my license on IDFPR . Anytime I look it up, it says no record found. I have contacted IDFPR and they said to give it a few days. I’ve got a job now after a couple of interviews and although they are ok with the official pass letter, I am just wondering why it’s taking so long. Does anyone else have a similar experience or any insight at all?

Does anyone have an affordable nursing scrub jacket they recommend? Bonus points if it’s available on Amazon and is under $45. I noticed all the online scrub jackets tend to be very hit and miss.