This is my journey from S.N to R.N

I’ve been getting questions on the pros and cons of various types of nursing. Which is totally fitting because now that I am in the home stretch (only 10 more months!!), everyone around me is trying to figure out what kind of nurse they want to be after graduation.  So, I’m  going to start trying to add in different units of nursing and take an unbiased view of the pros and cons. This will be from lecture, observation, clinical experiences, answers from nurses in that unit, and posts on the interwebs.

Feel free to add your own!

Since I just left this floor, I’m gonna start with:

Postpartum Nursing

Pros: Get to see babies, care for mom and dad in a stressful time, lots of patient education for newborn care and postpartum care, monitor for signs of postpartum blues/depression, lots of teaching, patients are healthy (if you don’t like overly sick populations), since it is more education it isn’t as physically taxing as other areas of nursing, slower paced

Cons: Patients are generally healthy (if you want a sicker population), there are not a lot of skills done (such as IVs), most of the job is doing assessments and monitoring for complications followed by sending mom/baby home, not incredibly fast paced.

Please add some more! It’s almost 1am and I can’t think of anything else. My brain is dead.

Love,

Laney

Nope, the title isn’t a reference to the temperature outside. It is actually a patient quote.
Let me explain.

This is a flashback to the PACU floor. At school the other day, we were having a conversation about our very first catheter insertion on a real live, breathing person.
Mine was in the PACU. My patient was super distended, in lots of pain, and asking if there was anything we could do to make him void since it was so uncomfortable.

“Sure!”, my instructor said. “What would you do in this situation?”

I assessed his stomach and found he was extremely distended. I gave him the urinal to try once more on his own and of course closed the curtain for privacy.
Nothing.

Straight cath was the next option. His MD happened to stroll in and checked him out. He reached the same conclusion and gave the go-ahead.

I was nervous, feeling ill prepared. I hadn’t expected to do any catheters here and hadn’t reviewed.

“Calm down,” Mrs. D said. We reviewed the steps. Easy.

So, I get to work. As I’m wiping with Betadine, my patient- still groggy from anesthesia- decides it is a good idea to start talking to me.

“Hey, just so you know, it’s really cold in here,” he said with eyes half-mast.

“Oh. Uh-huh,” I nervously reply with an awkward chuckle. I mean, what do you say to that?
I insert the catheter and am having trouble getting it past the prostate. My coassigned nurse comes over and teaches me how to “walk the catheter in” because it keeps popping back out the second I let go.

“Yeah, it’s just cold in here. Just so everyone knows,” my patient states again.
More nervous laughter.

My coassigned and I finally get the catheter in and he leaves me to drain it. It was slow going. 800ml slowly drained. (Note: never drain more than 1000ml at a time!)
And while it drained, my patient decides to triple check and make sure I knew the temperature of the room.
Hint: it was not warm.

Thanks male patient. Long story short, I successfully completed my first straight cath and it was incredibly awkward.
Any good stories from you guys?

Love,
Laney

Hey everyone!

Snow day is over and it’s back to the nurse-y posts. At least for a little while…

Anyways, this has saved my life in clinicals. My coassigned on the oncology floor showed it to me and I haven’t taken a second glance back since.
Apparently, this is the way MDs write lab values, which I had never seen/heard of before. It’s called different things including fish scales and a basic lab values worksheet. There may be other ways to write it, but this is how I learned it. I looked up some samples online and the consensus seems to be the same.
Hopefully this will be helpful to someone else down the road!

This is a chem 7 basic metabolic panel.

So you’ve got:
Sodium, Chloride, BUN
Potasium, Bicarb, Creatine
with Glucose.

And then for your CBC stuff:

White Blood Cells
Hemoglobin
Hematocrit
Platelets

I love it. And, as mentioned in the comments section on a previous post, I like to put the abnormals in red. It makes it real simple. Anything else I need to add (calcium occasionally…) I put on the side, but this usually keeps me covered.

Love,
Laney

My car wouldn’t make it out of the driveway! Too much ice.
Ishaq’s car did, however.

So, we spent yesterday at his parents house sledding with his brothers and watching movies.
It was a little too icy to go home, so we’re still here.
I just woke up and Ishaq is asleep behind me.

Pictures to come as soon as I get home!

I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend!!

Love,
Laney

[PS- more nurse-y posts will be written when I get home]