It all boils down to this

Life is short. We are seeing that in the news today. A celebrity and her mother die within days of each other.  Some people say you can't die of a broken heart, but yet, some people do.

This year has flown by quickly. I'm happy that in the grand scheme of things, I've had some time to reflect and relax. It's a privilege not granted to everyone and I know it and cherish it, especially this week. There just aren't enough nurses at the Hotel, or anywhere really. Bedside nurses are a rare enough commodity in these parts, they are paying five figure bonuses to get to work in various institutions.

The mood of this country has been tentative and taxing. The elections didn't really help anything. When I heard about history and Hoover and trying times of the Depression my relatives talked about when I was a kid, I now think, "Wow! Some of this stuff is really happening here to us now."

A lot of things will end this year. New ones will begin next year. I'll work on what I can and do my best. Hope you enjoy the rest of this week and this year. May we all be here to discuss it all again in 2017. There are no promises but we can hope for the best.

See you next year.

Happy Spring Break

Bubba is thrilled. No more school for a week.

Now it's time to entertain the kid and see how it goes. Since we didn't have any plans, it's just a staycation to do some doctors appointments and other things.

The first day wore me out. Today was better. Here's hoping I actually get to rest and relax just a little.

Stay tuned!

Relax...

I'm trying anyway, since I'm going to get grilled (have my oral exams) in less than two months.

So I'm figured I might as well start taking up yoga in small increments.

Otherwise, I'm escaping to the 1980s to relax with Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Back to the old grind at the Hotel tomorrow...

Ah, those were the days...

I felt a lot of relief when I finished nursing school. To date, it has been one of the hardest things I've ever done, childbirth included.

So tonight, I raise a glass to all the graduates of PrivateU, my alma mater, who are getting ready for all the festivities coming up. If I were in charge of the nursing school commencement, here's what I'd tell you all, nurse to graduate nurse.

1. Enjoy waiting for your ATT (Authorization To Test). It'll get there when it's darned good and ready.

2. Take an NCLEX prep class with a guarantee if you can afford it. If not, plan on studying full-time for at least three weeks (Monday through Friday like an 8 hour job). Enjoy the weekends to digest everything.

3. Follow the instructions exactly when taking the test. Know where to go and get there a little early.

4. Breathe and count to 10 if you get the question from hell.

5. Do the same even if you get the TV commercial Viagra (Cialis, fill in your drug of choice) slam dunk easy question.

6. Do not throw up when you're done taking NCLEX. Relax and enjoy. You'll have to wait however long no matter what for results.

7. If you have a job, work hard and realize, yes, you really do need to keep studying those things you don't know on your own time. You need to do them at work.

8. If you don't have a job, make your search your full-time job, Monday through Friday, eight hours a day. Three words: network, network, network. Join a nursing organization if you have to (many have new nurse discounts) and volunteer if you can. Don't despair. Been there, done that, many moons ago (and waited over a year for a full-time degree-appropriate job).

9. Use every resource available to alumni of your institution for your job search. Register with them (if needed) even if you have a job. You never know when you'll look for another one.

10. Nursing is hard and there is a reason why (you'll soon find out) many new grads (somewhere around 50%) quit nursing after one year. Think of it like Survivor. Learn to outwit, outlast and outplay whatever madness comes your way. Always wear good shoes and use the rest room whenever you can.

And finally, make time to have a life. Have friends you can count on, in nursing, and outside nursing. Have family relationships of value. And most of all, take care of your physical and mental well-being, even if it means you get your toes pedicured once a month, get that monthly massage, or have that lunch with a friend monthly. Live so that you may have something to give to your patients and your coworkers at work and to the people you love when you get home.

This is just the beginning. Enjoy the trip. Congratulations!

Reading, 'rithing, rejoicing

Right now, I'm reading a book called Heroic Leadership by Chris Lowney. I don't expect to find a lot of it at the Hotel, but what the heck?! Gotta learn about how the other half lives somehow.

We had a few people writhing around. Don't you just hate it when people jump and make putting IVs in a bear, since you tend to blow veins (or go through them) when they're squirming. For some figurative squirming, Marissa (not her real name) finally left the Hotel for a job as a wound RN at World Renown. It's about time. How many years has she b*t&ed about her job? Alas, that writhing IS over, too.

Finally, I am still rejoicing that I managed to get an A for the semester in my grad class. It was, by far, the hardest one I've had so far. Hope the next ones aren't terrible! One class like that is enough.

Back to relaxing the night away...more to come.

Chew and digest

Sometimes, if I get a free moment, I actually enjoy my lunch. The other day I saw this article at the New York Times website about nurses and their lunch hours. I loved this quote:

"Workers cannot just drop patient care when the lunch hour arrives. We are not like an assembly line, which can shut down at lunchtime, or a bank, where people work 9 to 5.”

This is the understatement of the year. Some days, my lunch hours are a mess, especially on the day shift. So many things are crammed into the day shift for the convenience of outside groups, that nursing inevitably is one group that often bears the brunt of the cramming. Take services for example. In our outpost hospital, all of the services, you'd expect to have 24/7 (i.e. radiology, lab, pharmacy, etc.) are not 24/7. No, these groups have daytime hours at Madison, and when it's time for them to go home, they go home and the main hospital, Washington, picks up the slack on certain things, like lab and pharmacy. Emergent stuff has to be sent to an ER that's often on diversion, so most of the time we know that Saint Suburban down the street will get our people.

Interruptions are also key. For some strange reason, no one wants to watch anyone else's people while we're at lunch. Sure the boss assigns lunch times, but he/she still hasn't figured out that if you have a person to feed at noon and dietary doesn't bring anything until then, you will not get your lunch at noon.

My resolution: I eat whenever I have a break, or I take my lunch early when all my work is done. I enjoy having lunch in a lunch room that is quieter, since the lazy folks, usually don't start their AM work until after 9.  By that time, even with complex patients, I'm nearly halfway (or more) done. I have problems smelling and feeding someone food when I'm hungry because I have 1) a huge desire to eat whatever's on their plate, 2) a huge desire to pass out as I feel my blood sugar dropping and 3) a desire to run right to the fridge and devour my own lunch.

I have a strategy for what I eat, too. I try not to bring anything that needs a microwave. It limits what I can eat, but makes things a bit easier. I mix it up, so all I have to do is unpack and eat. I try to eat lots of fruit, nuts, vegetables and grains, which I don't feel like doing. Having a quiet lunch room also helps when enjoying a fresh cup of coffee.

Our lunch room may be spartan, and not much of an oasis, but any little bit of free time, along with a good lunch can make the day go by quickly.

Nuggets for June 19

There were just too many good things I found out there this week, that I had to add this special edition of Nuggets (special because they only usually appear once a week...).

Enjoy!

Rehab-o-rama

As a rehab nurse, I know the FIM, but truthfully, it sometimes drives me crazy when I have to look at someone and when we talk about them in a meeting spit out their FIM numbers. Some are easy, since we take care of bowel and bladder all the time. Those other ones, however, tend to mess me up.

I found this article about how one hospital educated staff on their FIM scoring. It's very clever and involves a cartoon character. Hey, if it works, go for it!

Play nice

Since my OR pal reminded me...It really sucks that they have to write articles like this, but a recent one from AdvanceWEB talks about how nurses in the OR sometimes need to be reminded to be civil.

Relax

Need a quick, contemplative moment? This article by a certified hospice nurse may help you achieve your goal (also from AdvanceWEB).

And from the blogosphere....

Not Nurse Ratched is a new nurse who talks about making her first big med error. Listen up, all you new nurses!

Crass-Pollination had this great post about the inpatient shell game. Just call it bed bingo on steroids or you know it's bad when someone needs to die for you to get a free bed.

And Keith wins the most interesting day post for this one: Bat in a Basket. We have critters all around Madison, but thankfully, no bats.