I've worked at three different hospitals over the past five years. Each one has had a different process of dealing with Medication Reconciliation, but I believe my current facility has created the best idea of all: A Medication Reconciliation Technician role.  Her primary responsibility is to interview patients to obtain the most ...

I learned a valuable lesson at work last week.    As an orthopedic operating room (OR) nurse, my manager constantly has to remind me that we have schedule to keep.  I’ve only been working for a few months, but I’ve already been asked the question, “What was the delay in transferring the patient to the room?” multiple times.  ...

My mother was barely 15 years old when she began her first real job working the ticket window of a theater in downtown Kansas City, MO. One day, a group of soldiers came to the window and requested four adult tickets to see the latest hit movie. Newly trained and eager to please, mom did what she was told to do and passed four tickets ...

Editor's note: This blog was written by Elizabeth Rosto Sitko, managing editor of ADVANCE for Long-Term Care Management. Last week, Newsweek published its final print issue. As a magazine enthusiast (I subscribe to many, I've studied them, and I work for one), I was saddened to hear the news. I remember a time when finding one ...

Our unit is currently in a state of ''in between.'' Every week we receive more medical oncology patients, but somehow still manage to fill beds with the classic thoracic surgery or other complicated surgical patients. On any given day one can find one third of our beds with patients admitted for nausea and vomiting or electrolyte imbalance, ...

As of late, I have definitely been feeling more confident in my care. I do not know if it was the whole milestone ''one year'' idea that really helped it set in, but confidence was upon me.  This was truly solidified when I recently had an emergency situation with my patient. I was getting ready to discharge this patient when the patient had ...

A patient came back to my unit to visit this week and it was the most profound experience I have had thus far in my nursing career.  I was in a patient's room when my co-worker waved me outside and explained that someone was looking for me. My immediate reaction was confusion because my co-worker was smiling and telling me to hurry. When I ...

There are days at work in which I can not fathom having the responsibility of the charge nurse. The ability to appropriately and effectively manage the budget, while first and foremost creating a safe work environment (and if possible pleasing the staff) is a seemingly impossible task on some days. As a new nurse, I strive each shift to simply go ...

On my floor, we often have a patient or two at any given time that end up staying on the floor for more than two weeks. Because we are a thoracic surgical floor the situation is typically that the patient had an elective surgery and it was followed by complications which led to more surgeries.  Characteristically the patient is ...

I recently had my first experience calling a rapid response on my own patient. To be honest, I enjoyed the excitement of it and everything I was able to learn from the experience. If I were to break the situation down and evaluate myself I think I did some things well and others not so well. To start, I definitely had a feeling from the morning ...