Honeymoon is over.

I'm off orientation. I have another RN as partner. When he goes on a break I will cover him and vice versa. He will also be my resource just in case I have trouble with anything.

After report I dug into my charts and made sure things are within normal. I started to assess then pass meds for my patients. After a couple of hours I was told I have an admission. Okay where is this person coming from and what type of illness requires rehabilitation. To my surprise the patient in already in her room and with her daughter. Her daughter started giving me the scoop and she just happened to be a doctor in Pomona Valley Med Center. She is an internist.

The pt's daughter was really cool. She was nice and not pushy at all. While I was doing her admission I heard someone looking for me and that they have been waiting for 25 mins. I was surprised that someone was timing me. According to some of the nurses some of the therapists are like that. I didn't appreciate the attitude with the therapists so went ahead and let her have it. I told her that there are CNAs and that I'm in the middle of an admission. To make a short story shorter, I found a CNA to help me with the patient in the bathroom that needs to be back her wheelchair so the speech therapist can do her work. She will not help me as she is a speech therapist so I have to look for a CNA. She later on reported me to my supervisor and I told the super that she was having an attitude and that I didn't jump her in front of the patient.

Whatever, these therapists are bunch of lazy bastards. i don't care about them much as I'm the one with the key. The key that will open the narcotic keys.

Most of my patient were cool. They understand the dilemma of the nurses and they tolerate us. The older ones are the most challenging as they are either demented or confused. Most of the supervisors are micro managers. Annoying as hell but one of them give me lunch so I forgive them. Food is the key to my heart.

One of the senior nurse told me that I have 6 patients (5 is the max), and she didn't even hear me complain. I told her I've been a nurse so long that the work doesn't bother me anymore. I take a lot of deep breaths and move on. She gave me a pat on the back and a big smile.

Hot weather.

Okay, so it's summer. Temp =100+. Humid as Florida and Manila. I have to do laundry, 3 weeks worth. Using the dry is not an option as my garage is so hot I'm not adding more heat to it. I remembered my brother's mother-in-law talking about not using a clothes dryer.

I dug up my old wooden clothes hanger. It's a folding gizmo that folds out like an accordion. I hang my socks and smaller sized clothes on it. After a few hours, all the clothes are dry. I later on placed denim pants on them after straightening them out so it dries flat and not wrinkly.

I should save a bit of dough on gas bills as I need the money to pay for the electric bill. The ac and pool pump should pump up the electric bill for sure.

There are clothes in the breakfast nook and the dinning room. I bet it's adding to the humidity but that's okay. Really don't mind the humidity.

After turning in some paperwork to human resources, I had the SUV serviced for an oil change and tranny fluid replacement. I've been behind the service on the vehicles. Oh well, they will survive. They are not human afterall.

Talked to my brother about a service his Honda dealer sold him. I told him that fuel injectors don't need a $250 decalcification service as fuels have detergents. Consider it a learning experience. None of my vehicles have seen a dealer since they are purchased. Pepboys and Jiffy lube usually suffice. Sears is also another option but they tend to seel life time warranties on every part they sell. Parts like brakes are cheap, Sears will get you on labor. They were also complaints about their unethical business practices. They will sell you stuff you don't need. Midas is notorious for that. I had a friend who spent $500 on brakes and her car is so old it's not worth $500. Midas touch means they got your money.

I am fortunate enough to have a neighbor that is a mechanic. I asked him where in my Benz is the battery. He said not to worry about it. Wrong answer. As if I will fix the benz by my self. I know it's under the passenger seat. I didn't go back to his garage after that.

One thing that should not be done on new cars, jumping older cars or any other cars. You can zap the crap out of your car's computer. Electric spikes and surges will do bad things to your car's CPU. So decline any request to jump other people's car, specially older model cars. That's why they have AAA (Auto Club) and portable car battries. Those $70 battery cells are the best investment one can have. I personally own 2 of these gizmos.

Last day of orientation.

The more I work at Casa the more I learn about how things happen to be the way they are. One revelation I learned from a CNA this morning is the reason why there are way too few CNAs. Well, according to this CNA, an administrator showed up at work in the very early hours and found nurses having a pot luck and only 2 CNAs of 5 were actually busy doing patient care. Based upon this visit, a decision was made. CNAs were removed and the RNs are now expected to pick up the slack. It's weird that decisions are made on one visit. There are many variables to why things are like that at night but to those concerned, they shot themselves in the foot.

Casa (Kulit) Culina

I was hired as a rehabilitation nurse in a rehab hospital 3 miles from my house. Orientation was 3 days long. Typical policies and procedures, safety, fire, and other stuff like payroll and nursing policies.

The company CEO was a very optimistic kinda guy. He has vision and plans for the new hospital. There is even a plan to build a bigger hospital as the new one that opened last year is near capacity. I was realy optimistic about this new job. Man, what a change from Kaiser and Intercommunity Hospital in Covina.

My first day of orientation was going great until the nurses and the day supervisor started arguing about the changes that the nursing administrators are initiating. No one was happy and they joke about calling in sick the next day. Work wise, there is not much stress here. It's like a nursing home with realy nice pay. Considering it is only 3 mile drive for me, it's not bad. The medical insurance is not the best but it's Cigna healthcare, it can be worst.

Today was my second day of clinical orientation. More opinions about team nursing's negative effect and ineffectiveness were voice. By the way, two nursing assitants were hurt yesterday and more patients were given to the already overworked CNAs.

Team nursing consists of an RN, LVN and CNA who as a team will take care of ten patients. The RN will assess and give meds to 5 patients while overseeing the work of the LVN and give all the IV meds of all 10 patients. The RN also need to concur to the LVNs assessments if the LVN does them. Other wise, the RN can't sign the assessment and needs to do his own assessment of the LVNs five patient. The CNA will do all the baths, turning, feeding, passing trays and changing diapers. The system sucks because the CNA is stuck with 10 patients will little help. They cut down on the CNA from 5 to 3. In short there are only 3 CNAs for 30 patients and this is just bad. Each work within the team and not help other team's CNA.

First the RNs can't help the CNAs because there are tons of meds to be given at 9 am, 1pm, and 5pm. There are finger sticks at 7am, 11am, and 5pm. There are the assessments, the phone calls to the PT, OT, Speech therapists, case managers, doctors. There are dressing changes to minor wounds. Thankfully there are wound care nurses that do the bed sore care and dressing changes.

The LVNs can't hang IV meds so the RNs need to hang their IVs. It can be really busy and the patients are complaining that it takes a long time to answer their needs. Food is bad because they fired the chef that cooks great tasting food but made mistakes in diet orders that caused problems with patients with sensitive diets. Now, the food sucks and patients are complaining.

It was a discouraging situation to start off like this. While in the med room, nurses where complaining about almost everything. I just did my job and hang on till 6:30pm, quiting time.

Time will tell if I last here long enough to enjoy rehab nursing. There is another rehab hospital 35 miles away and that is Rancho Los Amigos National Rehab Center.

I'll give this place a few months and if it fails my expectations, off to San Francisco.

Do you bowl?

Check this guy out!
I wonder what his handicap was.

They're back!

Hey, check out 'DIXIE CHICKS' on AOL Sessions: click here

Better than ever and as remorseless as OJ Simpson. These women have the guts to stand by their beliefs, death threats or not. Buy the CDs too as they are not played in some radio stations. Beautiful music. Click above and get a free concert in the comfort of your home.

Crash

I saw the movie Crash today; after yet again another visit to the dentist. I was having pains in an already crowned tooth. The x-ray was good. It must be grinding of the tooth due to stress. It happened before so it's nothing new. Antibiotics and pain killer should do it. If not time for another root canal.

Back to the movie. I'm seeing it again while writing this blog. It's a complex story line of the characters lives. Nothing is predictable. As I try to predict what is going to happen, the story gets twisted another way. Having lived in LA makes me think about how complex life is in a large metropolitan. I don't miss it. I'm happy in my small suburban town. Where the rednecks and the mountian lions roam. LOL.

I saw the street sweeper clean our street where I live this morning. In LA, you need to move your car every specified day of the week so the street sweepers can pass and clean the road. When I was moving from LA to my present home, my brother parked at the wrong side of the street and the parking officer gave him a ticket. It wasn't even a miute passed by. No warnings, no nothing. The dude wrote the ticket without making a comment, just doing his job. My brother pissed me off for not paying attention, but he paid the ticket. It was a black officer. I wanted to tell him that he's one of the LAPD rejects but I refrained from saying anything. Man, I wanted to verbally abuse that guy but I just shut my trap. I don't know why, I just did.

Everytime I go to LA now a days I ask my self what the fuck am I doing there. The traffic is terrible even in the middle of the day. There is no relief from the traffic. The city is congested and no one wants to use the bus or the rail. Now I know why my brother in law hated LA traffic. It wasn't this bad 15 years ago. We probably meed another earthquake to make people move out. Just kidding, knock on wood.

The movie is so brutally true. The race issue is so real. Cultures are just constantly clashing due to stereotypes and prejudices. I experience racial tension everywhere, even at work. It's sad but it's there. I once talked to an elder Filipino gentleman who told me that racial issues doesn't exist. I wanted to ask him where in Disneylans does he live in. But out of respect, I didn't say anything. It's his world (dementia) why mess with it. It just made me uncomfortable that someone actually believes that.

If you haven't seen Crash, go rent the DVD. You will enjoy it.

Three armed baby.

If I have three arms, and they are working, I can be awefully productive. A baby in China was born with three arms. I have always thought that having an extra arm will be a normal progression of evolution as man needs to be multi-tasking. I didn't expect it to happen this early.

06-06-06

Well, it's almost over and nothing has happened. Oh well. Check out this site for more info.

Expectants mothers with due dates today, check this out

Be an advocate.

Are you bored out of your wits? Nothing to do this summer? Want to help people in your community specially children? Go to this website.

Yaaawwwnnnn.

I saw the Da Vinci Code after I had my new crown in. I think I have 9 new crowns in the past 2 years. My chompers are decaying at an alarming rate due to bad brushing technique. After buying a Braun rotary tooth brush, my teeth haven't been having much trouble. The problem is that older teeth with cracks and large fillings will only last so long. They eventually break with normal use.

Back to the movie. Thank goodnes I didn't have to pay for this one. I use an AMC pass I got from work for floatin to another unit. The movie start of well, then it turned into a freaking bore. Talking, talking, talki......yawn. I almost fell asleep several times. I often found myself in the dark, oops, my eyes are closed. Okay, there is a car chase, there are shootings, but it was just slow.

Wait for the DVD. You will miss nothing by seeing it at home. Not one ounce of special effects. A lot of captioning as there are about 1/3 french chit chat during the movie. Jeez, what a waste of time.

New job.

If the background check and the physical goes through without a hitch, I'll start a new job in rehabilitation nursing.

After 6 months as a registry nurse. I decided to get another full time job. One with benefits and a monthly schedule. I'm not motivated enough to stay in registry as I am often lazy and will not schedule myself to work. I was on part time schedule and just getting by. Time to get back on track and start meeting my financial goals for retirement.

I'm also tired of the different charting, different policies, and meeting too many negative pitiful people, mostly nurses. It's pathetic that the most pleasant people to work with are the costodians.

I was also canceled twice two weeks ago. Thus, no income. I told the registry company that I can't be cancelled like that so I wil be employed full time with a rehab center. The scheduler told me that low census (patient count) was to be blamed. She offered a traveller position but that's like a full time job. I want flexibility if I'm with a registry.

Rehab is like medical/surgical. I'll have five patients and in case of a code we do CPR and call 911. It's less stress than ICU work and I hope I like it. I can use something boring. Stress in ICU is getting to me as the docs are not intensivists anyway. Keeping the dead alive is not my reason for doing nursing.

The rehab center is only 2 miles from home so I'm not going to miss the commute. I will have more time to do other things.