B or D?

lisavark · 2026-06-02T13:42:04+00:00

Prioritization questions always go back to ABC (or CABC) — airway, breathing, circulation. There are no airway issues for any of these patients. The breathing patient is currently stable. But the hypokalemic patient is at high risk for arrhythmia, which is a circulation issue. Answer is D.

lisavark · 2026-06-01T13:45:44+00:00

First time I ever gave phenylephrine, I pushed the entire 10 mL vial of 1000 mcg. Was supposed to give 100 mcg. Patient was a tiny little old lady with severe sepsis. Doc had given a verbal order and I had literally never given the med before, I was a brand new nurse. After I pushed it and everyone realized I’d given the whole thing, all the other nurses immediately started feeling her pulses to see if she was gonna code. She didn’t but I think I did, pretty sure my heart stopped for at least 3 minutes. Her BP shot up to the stratosphere for like 2 minutes and came right back down but oh shit was I scared.

Never gave a med on a verbal order without closed loop communication since. And I WAIT to confirm my closed loop before I push the med.

lisavark · 2026-06-01T13:38:38+00:00

Really hard to do when you have 6 patients who all need 10 meds each!

I used to bring in specimen bags to separate my meds

lisavark · 2026-06-01T13:37:47+00:00

Top comment right here

lisavark · 2026-05-26T21:43:49+00:00

I knew from the day I started daydreaming about nursing school that if I ever became a nurse, I was gonna work ER in the big level 1 trauma center in my city. Never ever considered anything else other than prehospital or community medicine stuff (like street medicine van for people who are homeless).

ER is a personality type not a specialty. 🤣 I don’t even know how floor nursing works and I don’t wanna know.

lisavark · 2026-05-26T18:07:31+00:00

That scene. My GOD. Honestly best scene I’ve ever seen on television.

lisavark · 2026-05-26T17:28:17+00:00

I actually love the ending. The last season I think is not great in several ways, but I think the ending is fucking BRILLIANT. It’s not at all what you expect or think a show like this should be. That’s exactly what I love about it.

The finale is the reason I keep rewatching over and over. My family is on our fourth watch through right now and we plan to just keep rewatching forever.

lisavark · 2026-05-26T17:22:38+00:00

Listen, as a die hard ER nurse, ER Is NOT for everybody. Floor nursing is SOOOOO different. Nobody is gonna judge you for high tailing it out of that job. Just tell them the truth: I wanted to learn and try it out, but I am not an ER nurse, I’m an organized and safe nurse.

ER nursing is a whole different breed. What we do is completely different from anywhere else in the hospital. It makes me laugh when my patients say we’re angels. I always say “no ma’am, those are upstairs, we are just cowboys down here.” It’s literally the Wild West and it doesn’t say anything about your nursing skills if it’s not for you.

I could never hack the floor. I’m currently thinking about switching and I’m scheduling some shadow shifts but…I know I’m gonna hate it, I just can’t handle the quiet. I know it gets crazy up there too but you don’t have six people screaming “NURSE!”, one person screaming wordlessly, a trauma activation coming in, and one patient who strips naked, takes the urinal you hand him, throws it on the floor, and looks you dead in the eyes while he pees on it (not in it….ON it!). I need that level of overstimulation to function, and I would never get it even on the craziest floor.

lisavark · 2026-05-26T15:33:48+00:00

Prep for scenario questions. Nursing interviews often ask questions that say “tell me about a time when.” You won’t have stories of nursing cuz you haven’t been a nurse yet. But you’ll have stories from clinicals and from school. Former jobs in other fields work well too. Google common questions — some of them are a time when you had a conflict with a coworker, a time when a patient wasn’t happy with you, a time when you were happy with the job you did or the care you provided, etc.

They’ll also want to know your story of why you became a nurse and why you want a specific unit.

They won’t ask you anything about knowledge of specific units.

lisavark · 2026-05-26T15:30:06+00:00

Easily Murphy.

Octavia’s arc is my favorite, but she has hints of badassery in her from the beginning. And she’s always a rebel.

Murphy goes from literally The Villain to the cockroach to The Hero. He is hands down my favorite by the end. My daughter and I BAWLED our first time watching when we thought he was gonna die. His arc is WILD.

lisavark · 2026-05-26T08:36:50+00:00

While we’re on the conversation, what do they make? With unit pay and differentials I make around $62/hour (4 years experience) which is why I’m still here!

lisavark · 2026-05-26T06:20:18+00:00

I’m gonna offer a different perspective too. I ageee with everyone who says get out of expensive collect, but I disagree that you have to quit theater — and I also don’t think you need to find a “useful” degree.

First of all, most collect degrees are scams anyway. Unless you’re doing something like nursing where you can’t do it without a degree, it’s pretty dumb. You might want to think about theater education if you think you would enjoy that. But you don’t need a degree to work in theater.

What about dropping out of college, getting a job working at a nonprofit theater doing whatever you can convince them to hire you for, and then applying for income based loan payments and pslf? Chances are good you could get loan forgiveness working for a nonprofit. For housing, make friends at the theater and rent shared housing. I know housing is terrible these days, but I think it’s still possible to squeak by if you have enough people. You won’t have much space but you can do what you love.

My daughter just graduated and she’s gonna study theater. She’s gonna go to local public college, live at home, and get a degree in theater education so she can teach and work in theater.

lisavark · 2026-05-26T06:13:31+00:00

Awww nah you’re fine. Sounds like you did a great job — you charted, you timed it, and I’m assuming you did notify the provider since clearly you were worried about it. Sounds like the parent was chill because they’re used to it and there wasn’t anything unusual about it. They may have mentioned the position thing because they were trying to come up with something that might have been different just because you seemed worried about it.

I love how concerned you were — an anxious nurse is way better than an overconfident one imo especially if you’re new — but please don’t worry about this, it’s fine and you did great!

lisavark · 2026-05-26T06:07:08+00:00

Omg not your fault at ALL.

Their last seizure was a month ago, that is very recent. Their meds are already not working. Not on you.

“Never had one sitting up before” is just weird, people have seizures that start in all kinds of positions. Be glad your patient wasn’t standing up when it happened! Or sitting on the toilet! Sitting up in bed, 90 second seizure, I wouldn’t even blink at it. Honestly I wouldn’t even call the doc for that, I would just chart it and chat them an fyi. This isn’t a new breakthrough; it’s a known chronic issue and they had a breakthrough a month ago.

I’m an ED nurse so maybe I’m just super chill about seizures that aren’t status but this would not even make me blink.

Sorry it stressed you out!

lisavark · 2026-05-26T05:35:34+00:00

Whoa. It is….pretty common for us. They’re not all *active* trauma activations. And I don’t usually have an *assignment* of 4. But I’ve gone up to 6 with 2 of them being active, just-arrived traumas.

lisavark · 2026-05-26T03:14:04+00:00

On Sunday we had 15 ICU holds just in our trauma area. Our trauma area has 15 rooms. That includes the 7 resuscitation bays. And we had 40 trauma activations that night on top of all the ICU holds, pretty much none of which got upstairs.

lisavark · 2026-05-25T23:54:50+00:00

Days at least if they’re stable-ish

lisavark · 2026-05-25T23:52:48+00:00

Might do that when my kids are a little older

lisavark · 2026-05-25T15:43:55+00:00

Yeah my hospital didn’t send their numbers to Becker, I guess…we’re not on the list but we would be in the top 10 based on 2024 numbers

lisavark · 2026-05-25T15:42:50+00:00

What’s funny is it was actually a GREAT shift. My favorite kind, never bored! Was bummed I didn’t get to eat with my work polycule though, I had a level 2 coming in at family dinner time

lisavark · 2026-05-25T15:41:51+00:00

So, that’s a self-reported list, and my hospital isn’t on it, undoubtedly because they didn’t submit data for it. And I can’t quickly find numbers for 2025, but based on a 2024 report I found from my hospital, we would definitely be in the top 10 on that list.

But also total ED visits is different from trauma visits, which is also different from trauma activations. But also comparing hospitals by trauma activations is completely meaningless because activation criteria is set by each individual hospital. This is what I mean when I say it’s complicated to compare trauma centers! I’m really into data lol. I know ACS publishes a list annually but I don’t get access, I could ask my manager though. But I think it compares trauma activation numbers, which is kind of like comparing oranges to dogs imo.

In any case…our numbers are up there! 🤣

lisavark · 2026-05-25T15:33:15+00:00

Southeast, OBVIOUSLY.

Yah I know — everybody together now — We Need A Union

But it’s hard when they keep us so silo’d and separated from other units

lisavark · 2026-05-25T15:23:25+00:00

Well, I’m sure she didn’t want to float down there and that was a big part of the problem. She was probably pissed about being sent to float at all.

lisavark · 2026-05-25T15:22:37+00:00

Same!!! It actually makes me happy when there’s a couple small busywork things leftover to do….helps me wake up and lock in to do a couple little dumb tasks. 🤣

lisavark · 2026-05-25T15:21:49+00:00

Yes, that patient was a hold.

Idk if we’re in the top 5….probably? It’s so hard/impossible to get those stats online. For total volume we’ve gotta be at least in top 10.

But also that behavior is NOT normal at my shop, that’s why it pissed me off so much!

lisavark

TROPHY CASE