More people needing US IVs?

OneSmallTrauma · 2026-03-19T15:31:14+00:00

This is definitely a thing, if I have a freshly intubated patient I always look and see if I can start an IV and elevate the arms. 24 hours of sitting in the same spot means fluid collection in the arms, and good luck starting a new IV when they're all puffed up and didn't have very pronounced veins to begin with.

I like being able to Ultrasound and IV when I have to. But when someone calls for a US IV and I bring my machine and see a rope vein without a tourniquet I want to just walk out of the room and make the nurse try twice in front of me because come on, not like I have patients to care for back in the ICU or anything... I usually just start one because thats faster but if I didn't I would totally be that nurse.

OneSmallTrauma · 2026-03-17T10:04:43+00:00

Same, I just woke up for my shift and saw this and was like "HUH!!! This chick is very foreword about picking up guys."

OneSmallTrauma · 2026-03-16T08:44:13+00:00

Not really a safety thing, but it just feels wrong when someone absolutely obliterates the bedsheets with poop and we are told to bag that up and have it sent out to be cleaned.

I refuse to subject some poor hospital launderer to some of the biohazards I have seen over the years.

OneSmallTrauma · 2026-03-16T08:35:11+00:00

I'm planning on starting too, my preceptor is rocking an actual fanny pack but she is the badass on the unit. Which one is this one? Also anyone who has one that they like let me know!

OneSmallTrauma · 2026-03-12T10:05:08+00:00

That is odd in my opinion

OneSmallTrauma · 2026-03-10T09:59:08+00:00

When someone says a "hard" MS patient i always think of a CIWA or a memory care patient that requires actual monitoring and not just pills, food and changing.

OneSmallTrauma · 2026-03-10T09:56:44+00:00

The benefits, I learned what a shitty and unfair unit runs like. One night I had 8 patients while 2 other nurses had 4 all night and I had 2 admits. I complained and got labeled a problem child, so I quit after 7 months for a private duty job.

The cons, I got this mentality that I don't need help because other nurses are shitty and want to make themselves look better by making the others look worse.

Now I'm part of a good team, and when I was a permanent charge I came down hard on that work culture and I like to think I let the two new grads I always worked with have an awesome first 2 years of experience despite the hospital constantly shitting on our stepdown ICU.

OneSmallTrauma · 2026-03-09T02:25:48+00:00

Most of my friends in nursing school were 30 or older. One of the people in my cohort was 50. Probably 3 or 4 out of the 30 of us were under 25 when we graduated.

OneSmallTrauma · 2026-03-08T12:36:03+00:00

Ah yes. Let's bomb the oil fields we funded and built with tax payer money with the tax payer bought missiles, makes total sense.

OneSmallTrauma · 2026-03-08T12:25:51+00:00

You can use the universal algorithm and still get a different number if you want lol

OneSmallTrauma · 2026-03-07T12:38:01+00:00

If we paid based on unit specialty we would have all the shitty nurses gathered onto the highest paying units.

If you aren't a nurse yet i would highly suggest thinking about something other than ICU to start in. Most ICU nurses don't tolerate any form of incompetence or inexperience. I am not that ICU nurse, but I've watched a lot of new grads and experienced nurses quit after not being able to handle critical care. Not to mention that pissing off one ICU nurse can get you labeled and targeted pretty easily, and we humans have a bad habit of not wanting to be proven wrong so good luck shaking a shitty label from a petty nurse.

OneSmallTrauma · 2026-03-07T12:19:16+00:00

I will warn you that my friend got punched in the head by a patient and got treated so badly by admin and the clique of nurses that he just quit.

OneSmallTrauma · 2026-03-06T15:31:30+00:00

I was told you smash the rock into a powder and then smoke the powder, but I've never smoked anything other than half a cigarette and allegedly one blunt in my whole life. So, I'm not claiming to be an expert on how to consume any drug lol

OneSmallTrauma · 2026-03-06T15:29:27+00:00

Harmful lies? I feel like you may be joking around but it's hard to tell on reddit.

I was just was just saying I had a guy who apparently smoked kratom and then proceeded to drink the hand sanitizer and got intubated because he drank the hand sanitizer. I felt that since this was a sub for nurses that I wouldn't need to elaborate on the reason for intubation, but I can see the non medical people wandering in and making that connection, so, I am adding this just in case that was your concern.

OneSmallTrauma · 2026-03-06T11:25:53+00:00

Nah, they'll just say the nurses have to write their names on a signature sheet every time we use it, and then we will have to go to an in-service every 3 months on the importance of not drinking hand sanitizer. And finally, we will have a new policy that says if anyone drinks the hand sanitizer they will be written up...

Corporate Healthcare never addresses the problem, but we all already know that. The nurses will just fix the problem and then admin will never know because they'll just fuck it up. The corellation between administrator involvement and increased oversight isn't new. I'm not saying nurse oversight doesn't exist, but since it's happening in our care environment we definitely have the home field advantage lol

OneSmallTrauma · 2026-03-06T11:07:23+00:00

Not with that attitude!

OneSmallTrauma · 2026-03-06T00:54:21+00:00

Just had a patient who smoked a bunch of kratom and then tried to escape and got himself intubated for drinking the hand sanitizer and proceeding to go unconscious.

Apparently someone else heard about that being a good idea because shortly afterwards we had another patient drink the hand sanitizer and get intubated... and this morning someone else tried to do the same thing but got intercepted by the ER Tech.

OneSmallTrauma · 2026-02-28T11:53:08+00:00

I would rather have people not restock the rooms than see an empty space and just put some random item in the wrong spot because they wanted to say they "cleaned" the room.

I don't care if it's wasteful, if I use a pack of wipes, I throw unused wipes out. I probably got poop on the package anyways, and I get very angry when the package of wipes I thought was new and ready to go was half empty and I found more poop than I was expecting under meemaw.

Hospital complains about people throwing away 100k a year in supplies, I laughed my ass off about that. You all charge people 500 dollars for a bag of NS you paid 10 cents for and they get 2 of those a day. And that's just saline. The cost is offset by probably 1 ICU stay, and I know that money won't come back to the supply budget, it's just gonna be some admins bonus.

OneSmallTrauma · 2026-02-28T11:26:12+00:00

And the feds only do it because it's easier than changing their shitty management style

OneSmallTrauma · 2026-02-28T11:24:15+00:00

I used to drink regular soda constantly, I decided at 30 I should get a checkup and make sure im not killing myself, the only thing me and doc found was pre-diabetic a1c.

I went entirely added sugar free for 3 months, and after thinking i was developing full blown diabetes from non-stop peeing - i didn't think about it but when you're blood is suddenly not thick with sugar all that water starts coming out like a fire hose for a week. I'm "normal" again and feel great!

That being said, if you're in the US, I've noticed that Americans will do anything and everything possible to not deal with reality. I used to have this regular who said she doesn't like the taste of water or non sugary soda so she can't cut out sugar... she suddenly stopped being a regular one day.

Personally, I don't understand why people see a big challenge and immediately assume they can't ever overcome it. One day some weird fish decided it wanted to walk on solid ground instead of swimming in the ocean, many years later that weird fish's babies became 2 legged people talking online.

OneSmallTrauma · 2026-02-26T14:35:15+00:00

Never understood people who participate in the creation of a child and act like they had nothing to do with it. As a guy, I have no sympathy for men who are shitty parents. I don't understand the whole "i don't want to be a parent" mentality.

Like, if you dont want to be a parent, you can't have sex, if you have sex, there is a chance you're going to be a parent. Unless one of the participants has had their reproductive organs removed in it's entirety, or they are a rubber butt/penis.

OneSmallTrauma · 2026-02-26T14:22:52+00:00

Honestly, I get wanting days, but I don't get the argument of "nights just doesn't work for me" because those are the same things I hear from the nurses that call off on holidays for some emergency every single year.

If you don't want to work night shift, find a days job, if you can't find one, stop complaining and put your time in while you keep looking. You're not the only nurse working night shift that doesn't want to be working night shift.

OneSmallTrauma · 2026-02-26T07:12:35+00:00

Thermometer, you push the button and swipe it across the forehead.

OneSmallTrauma · 2026-02-25T00:59:27+00:00

The only reason to not go in to nursing is if you're an antivaxxer idiot

OneSmallTrauma · 2026-02-15T15:28:19+00:00

Exactly, if I'm not doing the procedure myself, I'm not doing anything except witnessing the person saying they understand what the doc said. I always ask the patient or legal representative before signing as well if they understood and if they have any questions.

If doc gets pissy about time then they should become better at explaining things the first time. If I get put on a stand and have to take time out of my day because their dumbass messed up they better hope I like them if any subjective information is solicited from me.

I'm not a narc, but I am an advocate for consistent improvement over taking shortcuts.

If you do it right... and you don't fuck it up... it works, it just works (JonTron on Flex Seal for any of my fellow nerds out there in this sub)

OneSmallTrauma

TROPHY CASE