MedWorm.com provides a medical RSS filtering service. Over 6000 RSS medical sources are combined and output via different filters. This feed contains the latest items from the 'PixelRN' source. Thu, 06 Nov 2008 02:35:35 +0100 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/427419781/ I wanted to take a moment today and pay tribute to a true hero, Nurse William Mann. William had wanted to be a helicopter nurse since the age of 12, when he had the chance to see the inside of Loyola University’s Lifestar helicopter. Nurse William Mann was one of the victims of the latest medical helicopter crashes which happened in the suburbs of Chicago. It seems like there have been way too many of these types of tragedies lately, including this medical helicopter crash in my neck of the woods. My thoughts and prayers go out to William’s family, as well as to the other victims of this crash, including paramedic Ron Battiato, pilot Delbert Waugh and Baby Kirstin Blockinger, who was being transported. The courageous people who fly in these helicopters to transport the sick a... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1894772 Tue, 21 Oct 2008 12:22:09 +0100 1894772 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/426512452/ Recently at the BlogHer DC conference I had a great time hanging out with Dr. Val. In case you didn’t know, she’s left her old post as medical director for Revolution Health and has ventured out on her own at Getting Better with Dr. Val. This is an excellent health care site, with great content, design, and navigation (the triumvirate of great web publishing, IMHO!) Dr. Val is very prolific so you can always count on having something new to read on her site. I love Dr. Val’s approach to creating content. She features lots of interviews, like this one of a 32 year old who had a stroke. Did you know she’s also an artist? Yes, she also creates comics, and will feature a new one every Friday. I like this one, which will be part of her “fanstasy” series, to i... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1894773 Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:22:21 +0100 1894773 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/423623843/ There’s been a lot of recent discussion about nursing salaries and the nursing shortage. I wanted to chime in because (a) I love to over-simplify things, and (b) I am on the verge of becoming one of those nurses they refer to - the kind who works 2-3 years after school and then quits. The reasons aren’t complicated. Here’s why I’ll probably end up quitting: The money sucks. It takes its toll on you physically. I don’t want to work nights, weekends, or holidays. Sure there are many peripheral issues - nurses dumping on each other, lack of autonomy, lack of time and resources to get the job done right. But other than that it’s a personally rewarding, and (at times) intellectually challenging job. It feels good to help people when they are sick. I lo... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1886235 Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:44:41 +0100 1886235 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/421806694/ On Monday I attended BlogHer DC, put on by the good folks at Blogher. This was an excellent event. I’ll admit, I went there with skepticism. This whole google wordpress drama has kind of put me into a existential tailspin with regards to blogging, plus I never really got the whole “BlogHer” thing. Really the only reason I wanted to go was to get to meet Mother Jones, RN in person and to hang out with the guys from JNJ to talk about social media. As it turns out, the event itself was great. The best part of the day was getting to meet so many other bloggers and to hear about the wonderfully creative things they are doing. (Hmm… Did that sentence make me sound like a high school art teacher? Perhaps I need a couple of drinks.) I had a blast hanging out with MJ! I tau... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1883236 Wed, 15 Oct 2008 17:59:47 +0100 1883236 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/414734352/ So what have I learned from all of this? First of all, here are three steps to keeping your website from getting hacked: Use Google Webmaster Tools - if I had been using them they may have helped me diagnose the problem much earlier. Change your password often and make it a good one! I HATE keeping track of passwords as much as the next person. But guess what I hate even more - Getting my blog hacked. If you are running a self-hosted wordpress blog, you have to be diligent about updating to the latest version. Updates aren’t just about the latest bells and whistles  - they are about security. If you know what you’re doing updating to the latest version shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes. If you don’t know what you’re doing, take a minute to read the instru... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1865377 Wed, 08 Oct 2008 11:42:04 +0100 1865377 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/413095930/ I know I said last word on Google, but guess what? I lied. This is too important not to share with you. So to recap, you know the story of how I lost my google traffic, and then how I tried to figure out why I lost my google traffic. A couple days later, on a whim, I decided to revisit google’s cached pages of PixelRN.com. I wanted to be sure I wasn’t missing anything. So I clicked on one of the cached pages, did a “view source” to see the HTML, and low and behold I scrolled all the way to the bottom and found this: So now I realized that someone had hacked into my wordpress blog and flooded it with hidden spam. This completely freaked me out. I mean, who would want to hack into my lil’ old blog? But at last I had found out exactly why I lost my search engin... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1859378 Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:57:25 +0100 1859378 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/412183572/ Okay, last word on Google, I promise. But this word will be a good word because it’s my first video post! Inspired by Emily, Enrico, Kerri, and Dr. Anonymous, I decided to join the fray. So have a look and tell me what you think! (Source: PixelRN) PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1855943 Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:55:46 +0100 1855943 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/407166255/ Okay, last word on Google, I promise. But this word will be a good word because it’s my first video post! Inspired by Emily, Enrico, Kerri, and Dr. Anonymous, I decided to join the fray. So have a look and tell me what you think! (Source: PixelRN) PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1844555 Tue, 30 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1844555 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/406381760/ The first thing I did after finding out that Google was hating on me was to sink into a pit of despair. I’ve been doing a lot of research lately on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and I was starting to pride myself on being someone who was able to give out SEO advice to other bloggers. All of a sudden I’d suffered the opposite of search engine optimization: search engine demoralization. My husband said, “Hey, it least you didn’t lose all of your traffic. I think it shows what a loyal readership you must have.” What a wise man he is. I’d like to thank you, loyal readership. Then I decided to ask Shane for some advice. He took a look at my HTML and realized that the content of my blog didn’t actually start until 2/3 of the way down the page. He gue... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1840867 Mon, 29 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1840867 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/406580488/ Just a quick reminder for everyone to take a deep breath. The financial news is coming out of Wall Street faster than we can absorb it; and the political news is coming out of Washington faster than we care to take it in. I’m not happy about what’s going on, but I’m not really worried about it either. The market needs to be corrected. If a company has been using credit to make its payroll, well then maybe that company has no business being in business in the first place. Even if we have some tough times ahead (and I’m pretty sure we do,) we will continue to do what we do; work hard, play hard, love hard, debate hard, and laugh heartily. That is all. (creative commons photo courtesy of thelizabeth) (Source: PixelRN) PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1840866 Mon, 29 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1840866 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/405558888/ So how did I find out that google wasn’t just knocking me down a few notches but was completely ignoring my blog? I started searching for key words that I knew Google should rank me high for (like nurses on twitter). Google did not seem to acknowledge that I had written that post. In fact, Google was ranking some of your blog posts that linked to my post, but was ignoring the actual post itself. Hardly seems fair, right? So I decided to confirm my suspicions by checking my “google juice.” Here’s how you check your google juice: Choose one of your blog post titles that is fairly long and doesn’t contain any cliches. Pick a phrase that you are fairly certain wouldn’t show up anywhere else on the web, except your blog. Copy and paste the entire title in go... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1837035 Sun, 28 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1837035 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/404095423/ (creative commons image courtesy of Ninha Morandini) Forget about the economic crisis we are facing. Readers, I am in the midst of a full fledged blogger emergency. I’ve recently discovered that Google is blacklisting me for some reason. I have completely lost all of my search engine traffic from Google and I’m not sure why. Luckily I have Shane working on the case, and he suggested changing my wordpress theme around. Instead of getting into that, though, I decided to just revert back to my old theme (which Shane, himself designed!) until I can figure things out. I have some ideas about what happened, and I’ll be posting more on this later. Meanwhile, if there are any other SEO experts that might happen upon this blog, I would love to hear from you. (Source: PixelRN) PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1834527 Fri, 26 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1834527 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/402858784/ (creative commons image courtesy of slack 12) One of the great benefits of attending Blog World Expo 2008 was all of the great advice and inspiration I got that will help me to keep on blogging. Hands down, my favorite blogging advice was dispensed by Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week: Talk to your readers the way you would talk to your friends after 2 drinks. This makes perfect sense to me, and here’s why: What happens when you sit down with some friends and have a couple drinks? You start to get that relaxed, warm fuzzy feeling. You start to loosen your inhibitions. Your enthusiasm starts to bubble up to the top and affects what you say. As people who blog, we all have something to say. The question is, What’s the best way to say it? And how do we write a reall... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1833076 Thu, 25 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1833076 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/403109328/ What could a travel nurse possibly want to know about social networking? How about everything? In my view, every travel nurse should acquaint themselves with at least one or two of the social networking tools that are available. I can’t think of a better way to stay in touch with friends and family while you’re on the road. With that in mind I wrote a series of articles for my friends over at travelnursingblogs.com. You can find part one here. I’d also like to thank Medical Solutions for sponsoring my trip to Blog World Expo. It was well worth it! Also, I just finished writing my about page. I’ve had this blog for a long time and it recently occurred to me that I’d really like to tell the story of how I got here to people who arrive by *accident* Enjoy! (Sourc... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1833075 Thu, 25 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1833075 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/401915737/ You are a nurse. You are out in public, going about your business and you see a person in distress, or a situation where someone has been harmed or injured in some way. What would you do? I had a conversation with some fellow nurses yesterday that I found kind of surprising. Someone was cursing their husband for telling her son’s little league team that she was an ER nurse. Now the coach wanted her to volunteer to run the first aid station at some of the games. “I never tell anyone I’m a nurse,” she says. The other nurse agreed and said that she never wears her scrubs home when taking the subway, because she would be expected to help if something went wrong. Now, I understand where this mentality comes form. Everyone’s afraid of liability. Everyone’s a... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1825386 Wed, 24 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1825386 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/399325570/ Blog World Expo has been an excellent conference. It is so energizing to meet other bloggers. This makes up for every person in my life that says “Huh, what? blogging?” and then their eyes glaze over. I’ve met so many other bloggers and feel completely rejuvenated and inspired to keep on blogging. I can’t say enough about how cool it was to meet Kim (emergiblog) and Dr. Val (Revolution Health) in person. I really felt like Kim was an old friend, especially when she said she remembered when I graduated from nursing school! The exciting thing is that we spent some time planning for next year’s conference. We are planning our own Medblogger/HealthCare track. What this means is that we can plan our own sessions and have an great venue to meet one another in person... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1815181 Mon, 22 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1815181 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/399054940/ Sent from my iPhone Posted by email from pixelrn’s posterous Just finished listening to this guy talk at Blog World Expo. He has some great things to say about staying true to what you are passionate about. One of the most interesting things I learned from him is that Linkin Park actually chose the name of their band because the domain name, lincolnpark.com was already taken! (Source: PixelRN) PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1815183 Sun, 21 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1815183 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/399069659/ Sent from my iPhone Posted by email from pixelrn’s posterous (Source: PixelRN) PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1815182 Sun, 21 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1815182 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/398438522/ Sent from my iPhone Posted by email from pixelrn’s posterous Okay, so who’s who in this picture? Rob Halper, who runs the JNJ Health Channel, yours truly, Shane Pike of Health Care Today fame, the illustrious Kim of emergiblog, and the vivacious Dr. Val. (Source: PixelRN) PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1811248 Sat, 20 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1811248 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/397298604/ Recently I wrote about how companies might use social media to reach out to nurses, and discussed how Johnson & Johnson might use Twitter to start a conversation about their products. After writing that post, I learned that J&J now has a health channel on Youtube and I think this is an exciting step in the right direction. Now let’s take a look at the other medical company that uses an ampersand in its name: Smith & Nephew. One of my favorite products that they make is the Allevyn wound dressing. It’s a highly absorbent, non-adhesive dressing that is very effective for pressure ulcers. So how does S&N get the message out to nurses about this product? Two ways come to mind: 1. Product Demos. This could occur on the unit, perhaps on an education day, or maybe... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1809618 Fri, 19 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1809618 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/394741251/ I knew it was a full moon. Posted by email from pixelrn’s posterous ShareThis (Source: PixelRN) PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1802600 Wed, 17 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1802600 http://www.pixelrn.com/2008/09/15/back-from-vacation-back-to-blogging/ Okay, so It’s been awhile since my last post, I know. Last week I enjoyed the first vacation of our little family; just Bill, Ben and me. We had an excellent time staying in Ocean City, NJ. I actually thought I would blog while on vacation but as the week wore on I started to avoid my computer more and more. I checked up on twitter a few times, checked my email once or twice, but then decided I was done with the computer for the week. And it was a good feeling. I must have really needed a break. But now I am back and have some exciting things to blog about. I’m working on a some articles on how social networking can benefit travel nurses, to be posted at travelnursingblogs.com. This is a great blog for travel nurses, produced by my new sponsor, Medical Solutions. They offer gr... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1798009 Mon, 15 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1798009 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/393077453/ Okay, so It’s been awhile since my last post, I know. Last week I enjoyed the first vacation of our little family; just Bill, Ben and me. We had an excellent time staying in Ocean City, NJ. I actually thought I would blog while on vacation but as the week wore on I started to avoid my computer more and more. I checked up on twitter a few times, checked my email once or twice, but then decided I was done with the computer for the week. And it was a good feeling. I must have really needed a break. But now I am back and have some exciting things to blog about. I’m working on a some articles on how social networking can benefit travel nurses, to be posted at travelnursingblogs.com. This is a great blog for travel nurses, produced by my new sponsor, Medical Solutions. They offer gr... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1791566 Mon, 15 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1791566 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/385102773/ Sorry folks, it’s turning out to be a bit of a morbid week but what can I say? Death, dying, and palliative care in the ICU have always been of great interest to me. The Medscape Nurse blog asks, “Who tells a patient’s family that their loved one is dying?” Specifically, should a nurse initiate this conversation, or should it be left up to the medical team? My answer would be that it’s fine for the nurse to initiate this conversation, in fact many situations it’s preferred. Sometimes the medical team is so wrapped up in finding the answer, and finding sucess, that they forget that there is patient there lying in the bed, suffering, day after day. As a new nurse, I was very reluctant to ever bring up the DNR conversation without first getting the blessin... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1770408 Sat, 06 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1770408 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/382632118/ Thought I could make it out of the MICU without a brush with death. I thought wrong. Why is it that every time I have a patient that we are withdrawing life support on, I always feel strangely like a hostess? It’s like planning a party; a pre-wake, if you will. There may be friends and relatives there. You want to make sure everyone has a good seat, tissues, maybe some ice water to sip on. It’s a very sad, intense, confusing time and you want to do everything you can to make sure it goes smoothly. I know it sounds kind of crazy, but the more I think about it, the more true it seems. You want to have everything in place ready to go. You want to have the bereavement packet (”What to do when a loved one dies…”) at arms length, but not in plain view. You have to ... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1759765 Wed, 03 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1759765 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/379139534/ I’ve been playing around with iMovie lately. I have something nurse-related that I’m working on and might be able to show you towards the end of the week, but in the meantime, enjoy this lovely montage of someone we like to refer to around here as “little B.” ShareThis (Source: PixelRN) PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1745978 Sat, 30 Aug 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1745978 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/375396092/ I’ve often heard the complaint that nurses aren’t handmaidens and shouldn’t be treated as such. Head Nurse does a great job of addressing this in her post Handmaidens, Helpmeets and the Problems of Nursing. As much as I want to believe this, though, I have never been able to convince myself that this isn’t true. To illustrate my point, I’ll give you a day in the life of working in the recovery room: The charge nurse hands me a paper with a very minimal patient report. It usually includes the name of the procedure the patient had, any outcomes of the procedure, current vital signs, sedation and any other meds the patient might have received. The patient is rolled in to the recovery room. I hook them up to the monitor and do a very minimal assessment (Are the... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1733711 Tue, 26 Aug 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1733711 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/374214086/ So I was writing this post about how I’m really lukewarm on being a nurse and I came upon this post by Lisa Sabin Wilson, a wordpress designer who is a former nurse. Here’s how she felt about nursing: …I pretty much thought I would be a nurse until the day I retire…Nursing was one of those ok jobs. I didn’t love it. I didn’t hate it. It was . . . fine. I was good at it - - excelled in it, really - and took pride in that fact. But I wasn’t doing what I loved… nor was I loving what I did. I feel like the future “me” could have written this. In the post I was working on, I was going to spell out why I was so lukewarm on nursing, but you know what? I don’t want to waste your time with that. And I certainly don’t want to d... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1733713 Mon, 25 Aug 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1733713 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/374591447/ Conclusion: The more content you provide, the more traffic you will get. It’s that simple. And I know from experience this is easier said than done. But trust me, unless you really don’t care about how much traffic you get, you might want to set some blogging goals or create a blogging schedule. I’ll leave you with this final thought: Once I stopped thinking too much about what would be the best thing to write about, and just started writing about whatever the hell I wanted to, my stats started to go up again. ShareThis (Source: PixelRN) PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1733712 Mon, 25 Aug 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1733712 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/373620129/ I’ve been trying to knock out this post about how Smith & Nephew could be using their website to start a conversation with nurses about wound care products. But to be honest with you, I’m just not feeling it. Instead, I think I’d like to explain to my readers where this blog is headed. I know I’ve been sending out a lot of messages lately to the tune of, “I really want to get out of nursing,” and some might be wondering why I continue to write a nursing blog, and work on projects like OrientedX3, if I’m not so keen on nursing. Over the next week I’m going to start writing some posts that spell out where PixelRN is headed. Also, I’ve noticed many nurses lately playing around with the idea of blogging under their own domain name and ... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1730623 Sun, 24 Aug 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1730623 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/371792305/ Last week I wrote this about companies using twitter to reach out to nurses: Imagine this scenario: You are using a Johnson & Johnson wound care product. Overall, it’s an effective product but there are ways that you see it could be improved… Turns out I should have done my homework. Apparently J&J is divesting itself of its wound care business. Okay, so scratch that example. Later in the day I’m going to be discussing the other medical company that uses an ampersand in its name: Smith & Nephew. I’ll be talking about one product in particular, and how they could be using other Web 2.0 apps (like Twitter) to reach out to nurses. ShareThis (Source: PixelRN) PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1726295 Fri, 22 Aug 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1726295 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/371070281/ There are people in the world who actually think that you can get pneumonia because “the nurses wouldn’t put enough blankets on him.” It’s a good thing that Medicare has removed VAP (Ventilator Acquired Pneumonia) from its proposed no-pay list because otherwise, MICUs everywhere would probably not be able to afford to stay open. If you’re planning on throwing a “let’s bleed out of our esophagus party” please request that your guests wear raincoats and galoshes. When all the patients are receiving the same kind of tube feeds, all of their poop smells amazingly identical. And yet your nose treats it as a brand new smell that it must accommodate itself to every single time. And finally, better that your patient be intubated at the beginning o... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1723346 Thu, 21 Aug 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1723346 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/368967629/ As you all know, I’ve been searching for and following nurses on Twitter and as promised, I have come up with a list of everyone I’ve found. Bear in mind that this list is not specifically nurses, more like nurse-type people. I’d estimate that maybe half of the people on this list are nursing students, with a few EMTs sprinkled in. So have fun with it! If you were previously on the fence about joining Twitter, you might want to use this list as a starting point. All you have to do is create an account, then click on any of these links and hit the “follow” button. (Trust me, people on Twitter love to be followed. It makes us feel special.) I’ve found that this is a really fun and welcoming community of nurses and nursing students. There are also plenty o... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1717073 Tue, 19 Aug 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1717073 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/365554802/ I just wrote that in the comment section of Nurse Sean’s blog, and I want everyone to help prove me right. If you have a few minutes today go and read Sean’s post about ICU orientation. He’s having a tough time of it and I think he could really use some words of encouragement. Personally, I don’t think I could have gotten through my first 2 years of nursing without encouragement from the nurse blogging community. It’s a really tough time, no matter what specialty you choose. Nursing students? I’m sure you don’t need to be reminded that it’s no walk in the park for you guys, either. Read this excellent post by Head Nurse to help you psych yourself up for the upcoming semester. ShareThis (Source: PixelRN) PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1708836 Fri, 15 Aug 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1708836 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/364934051/ I got this comment the other day from Trish, and I really have mixed feelings about it: I just wanted to let you know I like your blog and you have impacted someone’s life (mine), in an unexpected way. I’m starting college this fall after being out of school many years. I was planning on going into nursing. Deep down I suspected I would suck at being a nurse, especially when I found myself gagging while washing out my pottytraining toddler’s poopy underpants. Your blog, and this post, has pretty much confirmed my suspicions and I’m planning on doing something else now. Thanks for opening my eyes! On the one hand, I feel bad. We need nurses and I hate to think that I’ve influenced someone to not be a nurse. On the other hand, everything I write here is my hones... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1708837 Thu, 14 Aug 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1708837 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/363892052/ I just read this post from Jeremiah Owyang, web strategist extraordinaire, and was inspired to write my own. As many of you know, I have been using Twitter for some time now to talk with other nurses online, and I use OrientedX3.com to actually find other nurses on Twitter. I search the term “nurse” on all tweets and often find people who are nurses. There’s been a lot of talk lately about companies using twitter to start conversations about their products. I think this is an exciting concept for companies that need to get feedback from nurses who use their products. Imagine this scenario: You are using a Johnson & Johnson wound care product. Overall, it’s an effective product but there are ways that you see it could be improved. You start a conversation with ... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1704628 Wed, 13 Aug 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1704628 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/362842443/ Working in the Recovery Room today. ShareThis (Source: PixelRN) PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1700569 Fri, 08 Aug 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1700569 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/359451337/greetings-from-hopkins.html Working in the Recovery Room today. ShareThis (Source: PixelRN) PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1692081 Fri, 08 Aug 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1692081 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/358504408/too-much-poo-in-the-icu.html To the person who found my blog using the keyword phrase: “how much poop does ICU nurse have to clean?” The answer is: A SHIT LOAD. And if you have to ask, you probably don’t want to work there. Might I suggest the PACU instead? Patients rarely have bowel movements as they are waking up from general anesthesia. ShareThis (Source: PixelRN) PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1688919 Thu, 07 Aug 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1688919 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/358719750/greys-anatomy-spinoff-show-about-nurses.html Temple University nurse can be fired for having sex with patient No, it’s the just the latest ruling in a case about a nurse who had sex with his patient. Yes, you read that right. A male nurse had consensual sex with a female patient 2 days after she had double bypass surgery. Disturbing on so many levels, I’m sure you all will agree, but do you know what the most disturbing part of it is? The nurses’ union at Temple is still trying to decide whether to pursue an appeal to the State Supreme Court. Hello? ? ? He had sex. With a patient. After her bypass surgery. AND he admitted it. What does this say about nursing unions if they are even considering trying to get this guy reinstated? I understand that there may be more to this story than what I am reading in the news med... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1688918 Thu, 07 Aug 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1688918 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/357500611/nursing-care-plan-tools.html I wish I had one of these when I was in nursing school: Care Plan Constructor It would have made my homework go by a lot quicker, although I’m not sure my instructors would have appreciated computer generated care plans. At any rate, it’s a good way to learn the lingo quickly if you find yourself having to write a lot of care plans before your clinicals. Also, I wrote this last summer for NursingLink. It’s basically a How to guide for Nursing Care Plans. As for me, I rarely have to think about care plans any more. In the recovery room it’s get ‘em in get ‘em out: slaps some leads on, take some vital signs, give report to the floor nurse, or hand out discharge instructions. Kind of like turning tables at the a restaurant. I do have some upcoming shifts ... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1686132 Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1686132 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/357769677/twitter-blogging-for-lazy-people.html I’ve been meaning to write another post on twitter, to try and explain it better to those of you who are not yet converted (ahem. Mom? Cate?) Then I came across this video on the twitter blog: How Do You Use Twitter? from biz stone on Vimeo. My favorite reason? When you see someone you haven’t seen in a long time and the conversation goes like this: “Hey! What you been up to?” “Not much. And you?” “Not much either.” And then the conversation just kind of stalls. But you know you’ve been up to a lot of interesting things! It’s just that when you are put on the spot like that, you never seem to recall any of it. Twitter eliminates the need for such awkwardness. ShareThis (Source: PixelRN) PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1686131 Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1686131 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/345593669/view-from-the-parking-lot.html Testing out the Wordpress iPhone app. They raised the parking rate to $11 a day. : ( ShareThis (Source: PixelRN) PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1655369 Fri, 25 Jul 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1655369 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/344483937/we-are-fully-staffed-kind-of.html I may be giving up my sweet gig at the Recovery Room. They have told me that they won’t be needing any agency employees anymore. They tried very hard to convince me to come on as staff there, but I just don’t think I could do it. It would effectively cut my hourly rate in half. Can you imagine cutting your salary in half? How much would you have to love a job to agree to do it for half the price? I’m fond of the Recovery room, it’s true. But I don’t love it that much. My strategy is to do nothing. If I leave them my phone number, I am sure they will eventually call me and ask me to work. This is is a common theme I’ve noticed in nursing. Every once awhile a nurse manager loves to get up and say, “We are so pleased to announce that we are fully st... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1652231 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1652231 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/345003765/hopkins-episode-4.html Just watched Hopkins, episode 4 and let me tell you, there is not a dry eye in the house. That little Peyton reminded me of my Ben. I’ve always felt that it takes very special people to work in pediatrics, and I’m sure I’m not one of them. I don’t believe I could hold my shit together, not for a second, if I were confronted with a 2 year old, cardiac arresting. I wish I knew some pediatric bloggers - I would go over to their blogs right now and say “THANK YOU FOR BEING SO SPECIAL.” in the comments. Unfortunately I don’t know any pediatric bloggers. They must be too busy saving lives to bother with blogging. Ben’s pediatrician did her rotation through Hopkins and the last time Ben had a visit, I got her to talking about it. She told me how sh... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1652230 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1652230 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/340521069/nurse-carmela.html No. Nurse Jackie! Edie Falco is set to play the title role in an up and coming new series on Showtime. Apparently nurse Jackie is a “complicated woman, working in an inner-city hospital.” My only question is, does it take place in the 1940’s? She looks more like the lunch lady than any actual nurses I’ve seen lately. It’s a cute picture, though. I wonder what Kim would give her on the Emergiblog Cap Rating Scale. ShareThis (Source: PixelRN) PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1638993 Sun, 20 Jul 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1638993 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/338134458/is-hopkins-watching-hopkins.html I saw some of my MICU friends at their lunch table the other day. (We nurses are so clannish. The MICU nurses sit at their table and the recovery room nurses sit at their table, and the only way we would sit together is if we were out of tables.) So I asked them, “Who’s been watching Hopkins, the series?” The answer? Not a single one of them has been following it. “So why is that?” I asked. “Why watch it?” they said. “We live it,” and everyone kind of rolled their eyes at me for asking such a ridiculous question. ShareThis (Source: PixelRN) PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1634785 Thu, 17 Jul 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1634785 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/338344841/the-right-place-at-the-right-time.html Here’s a diagram of post-procedural patient flow that I made, because that’s just the kind of geeky nurse that I am: As you can see, I recover radiology patients and cardiology patients. So what do you call a radiology patient that has an acute MI in my recovery room? DAMNED LUCKY!!! I had written a long, finely crafted post to tell you this story, but then I read Phil Baumann’s post on HIPAA and I remembered exactly why I typically do not blog about patient encounters. So here’s the Cliff Notes version, scrubbed of details: (imagine the following paragraph being recited by an auctioneer) “You just had a radiology procedure done and you’re lying in the recovery room after your procedure when OUCH! you’re having chest pain and the 12 lead was do... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1634784 Thu, 17 Jul 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1634784 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/337657122/my-most-amazing-day-as-a-nurse.html This morning as I was walking from my car to the recovery room, I had the brilliant idea of live-tweeting my day at Hopkins. (for those of you not yet down with the tweet, live-tweeting means using twitter to send out commentary on a given event. “This will be great!” I thought. “I always have so much downtime in the recovery room. I can use it to tell everyone about a day in the life of a Hopkins nurse.” But then two things happened: 1. My email wasn’t working, so I couldn’t upload my pictures to twitpic. 2. I got busy. Really busy. And then one of my patients had an acute MI, right. in. front. of. me. We saved his life by getting him to the cath lab in about less time than it takes to listen to Bust a Move. So twitter was pretty much out of the quest... PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1630895 Thu, 17 Jul 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1630895 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PixelRN/~3/336156371/in-case-of-emergency.html Both Trauma Queen and ImpactEDnurse are blogging about ICE this week. ShareThis (Source: PixelRN) PixelRN blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1625503 Tue, 15 Jul 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1625503