Charge nurse success!
I survived my first time officially in "Charge"! What started out as just the first four hours of the shift, ended up being the full eight hour shift in charge. It just made more sense when the 7pm nurse came on, and things were still so insane.Yes, our Thanksgiving was a very busy and full time on L&D this year. It usually is, for some reason!Evening shift, which is usually staffed with 9-10 nurses, had only 7 nurses scheduled - including me, the brand new charge nurse. The unit was full. We had 3 patients that would need to be one-to-one with a nurse right from the start. That left 9 other patients to be divided up between 4 nurses (including

Charge nurse
Guess who is going to be taking the charge nurse role in just a few days? Guess who has never done charge nurse before?No orientation. No training. Just - "you're the most senior nurse that day, would you like to take charge?"It's now or never folks. I accepted.

Leave it to the Joint (Commission)
Perinatal Care OutcomesI'm actually happy to see the Joint Commission put out these Perinatal Performance quality measures.Elective deliveryCesarean sectionAntenatal steroidsHealth care-associated blood stream infections in newbornsExclusive breast milk feedingGo ahead and read through the data that they will be collecting, starting in April 2010. No doubt that this *should* help change some practices that occur in hospitals. Or else, the 'bad docs' will find ways to docu

Say hello to my little friend
Yep, that's Mr. BadAss himself - Rusty - my four legged beast of a big baby. He was a little perturbed at my audacity to actually take his picture. Can you tell by his body language?

Coffee addiction
Ugh. So much for not counting calories. This is what I normally have (or the equivalent of) each day when I head in to work:I either need to quit - cold turkey - the horror! Or switch to this instead: