Nurse In Australia

Nurse’s Unfair Sacking?

Ross — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 06:08:21 +0000

A Melbourne Nursing Home received a stern warning this week by the Fair Work Ombudsman over what has been described as a “heartless and shabby treatment” of one of their longstanding aged-care nurses.

The Nursing Home has been placed on notice, and will be monitored closely to ensure that it stays compliant with workplace laws after an incident involving the Nurse.

Here’s the lowdown: while at work, an aged-care nurse fell and broke her hip. After seven months of recovery at home, she was basically told not to come back to work, thank you very much.

What’s intriguing and puts a new twist on this story is the age of the nurse – she is a spritely 74 years old.

More injustices came to light when Fair Work inspectors looked further into the situation. From the article at News.com.au:

“The nurse did not believe she had received her full entitlements on termination and complained to the Fair Work Ombudsman.

When a Fair Work inspector first contacted the nursing home, it initially denied that the complainant had been employed there. However, after demanding to see employment records, inspectors subsequently found the nurse had been underpaid annual leave and long-service leave entitlements and for some hours worked.

The company has now reimbursed the nurse almost $30,000.”

My question therefore, is this:

How much of this has to do with the Nurse’s age? Would a younger worker have received the same treatment?

Additionally, how old is too old to look after ‘aged care’ patients?

From my own foray into the world of aged care several years ago, I know that some patients in Nursing Homes are actually younger then the 74 year old Nurse. Conversely, you also find 90year olds who are living quite happily on their own in the community, so I guess it depends on each individual.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this story?

Crazy Maggot Infestation

Ross — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 03:08:06 +0000

credit: Bennett 4 Senate

It’s been a while since I dealt with maggots, but an experience I had this week reminded me why maggots feature so highly on the gross-o-meter. Quite a few maggot stories were submitted by readers in our recent Cringeworthy Competition also, so it appears I’m not alone in dealing with this crazy phenomenon.

The Scenario:

Elderly guy, some social issues, lives alone. Found on the floor out in a shed, unsure exactly how long he had been there. Brought into emergency by the ambulance guys, legs wrapped up in old towels.

Prior to my taking over his care, he had spent some hour+ in the shower with nursing staff trying to rid him of the incredible smells that were emanating over the entire department, with minimal success.

As I entered the bay where the man was lying, I could see some flickering movements on the floor by some of the miniature, writhing escapees – obviously they could sense what was to come & were desperate to make a break for it.

Now I’m pretty good at dealing with noxious gases and crazy hospital smells, however when I pulled back the sheets I could almost feel a gag coming on – not only did he have an ulcerated wound the size of his fist in his lower leg with tibia + tendons exposed, but inside this wound were literally hundreds of fat, writhing maggots. This wound was creating some crazy, off the chart smells that caused several people to collapse unconscious (nearly!)

Ouch!

The crazy thing was, he was quite oblivious to the entire situation – no pain, no comprehension of how many people he had taken out with the crazy death smells.

Operation Maggot-Removal:

So, armed with some hydrogen peroxide 3%, some irrigation fluid and forceps, I spent about an hour removing as many of the maggots from his leg wound as possible, flushing out the wound as best as I could. The situation was made a hundred times more complex as the maggots, keen to make their escape, were tunneling up inside the man’s leg and burying underneath the exposed tibia bone. Joy!

Crazy thing was, after I thought I was finished, I discovered a new stash of maggots in between his big toe & 1st toe (a cluster of like 30), then maggots between each of his other toes on that leg. The skin was kind of like when you go swimming for like a week or two straight, wrinkle toes etc, and there were little sinus areas where the maggots had buried in & were eating flesh.

So then I tackled the feet – I’m not quite sure I got them all, but I would estimate that in the leg wound & feet there were between 150 – 200 maggots all up. Good times!

Needless to say the smell got a lot better after the maggots were out & the wounds were flushed out & covered, and I strode out of the room with a gleam in my eye and some new founded respect – that day, I was….

The Maggot Whisperer…..

Got any maggot stories? Share them by commenting below

New Online Cardiology Resource

Ross — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 07:22:36 +0000

In my quest to build up a better page of Research & Resource links for nurses and allied health professionals, I’d like to mention a recently added and relatively new online resource called TheHeart.org

TheHeart.org has a tagline of “10 Years of Online Cardiology”, and appears to be a rather extensive resource platform for all things cardiac related.

The Heart is owned & produced by Medscape (one of my favourite online resources), but has a distinct focus on recent articles, trends and research in the world of cardiology. In particular, there is a focus on providing information on caring for people with disorders of the heart & circulation, and on disease prevention.

While most of the information appears to have originated in the Americas, I will say that the information and research is certainly applicable to medical & nursing professions worldwide, and many of the articles are great for any cardiac related study or research that you may be involved in.

Registration is free for healthcare professionals, & main topics generally revolve around specific cardiology themes such as ACS, Arrhythmias, Heart Failure, Hypertension, Thrombosis etc.

A few sample articles (may have to register before you can view):

Anyway, I love finding new resource sites for nurses in particular – please let me know if there are any others we can add to the Research & Resource pages.

Things that make Nurses Cringe!

Ross — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 14:55:22 +0000

Cringeworthy Competition Winners

Thanks so much to all who entered our ‘Cringeworthy’ competition! It was a close call with so many great entries.

Many of the entries featured faeces and/or maggot related stories, so I guess these rank quite high on the cringe-o-meter!

Winners!

The five winners are:

Di:
patient presented to emergency having a sausage stuck in his throat. After removing such sausage the doctor left it on the overway, patient re-ate it

Sascha:
When opening up a spigated NGT the gastric contents in the tube flicked up and hit me in the face and mouth. Yuck!!

Kim:
During a code blue, a male colleague of mine knelt on a suppository that had popped out of the collapsed patients bottom!

Julie:
Young bloke, Pilonidal sinus. Asked me out while I was pulling out packing from his a***. Then – said I was “stuck up” for saying NO.

Daina:
The removal of a tampon that had been in situ for just under one month. Still makes me shudder.

Congratulations winners! Prizes will be sent after confirmation of your details.

Special thanks to NurseStuff, who stock some awesome nursing gear. If you missed out on a prize this time round, make sure you go check out their current specials.

Special mention should also go to the following great entries – maybe you can relate to one or two:

Feeding a resident in the communal dinning room, only to have their colostomy bag explode down the front of them while spoon feeding them and copping most of it on my shoes.

I could not draw up 1ml of heparin I felt like such a twit since all the staff were watching me.

Explaining to a patient’s wife that she should not be giving her husband soap enemas in hospital. She held a hot water bottle – hose insitu.

We were standing by a dying ladies bed and son asked if anyone knew of a cheap funeral home

Showering a homeless guy who replaced his colostomy bag with newspaper I discovered that hundreds of maggots had kept the site clean as a whistle.

Pt having a gynaecological check-up a couple days post labour, Dr turns to the husband, says ‘does this look the same to you as before!?’

In first week of postgrad was fooled into giving spounge bath to completely mobile patient after he told me he couldn’t move.

I had walked an elderly lady to the toilet and after a few minutes she buzzed for help where she then said to me..”I am having a little trouble sister…do you have a metal spoon”!!!!

While showering an old man years ago and when washing his bottom he said ‘that’s it, wash it good because it needs a good clean’.

Having a elderly gent (80’s) telling me i can help him wash his ‘old fella’ then giving me a wink.. VERY cring-worthy..

helping a new grad..she removed pan full of malaena, put it on the floor and yes…stepped in it. poo in shoes.cringe worthy

To read more cringeworthy stories, head over to the Cringeworthy Stories pages. The rest of the entries received will be added there shortly.

Nursing Stories

Ross — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 11:34:31 +0000

credit: Katie Tegtmeyer

Nurse In Australia is pleased to announce the new Nursing Stories pages!

If you have something to share, we’d love to hear from you!

Pages will be updated regularly, so check back soon for new additions.

Christmas ‘Cringeworthy’ Competition

Ross — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:46:19 +0000

Our Christmas Cringeworthy Competition had some fantastic entries, see the winning entries over at Things that make Nurses Cringe!

Thanks also to NurseStuff.com.au for supplying nursing gear (as featured in each prize pack) such as:

Silicone FOB Watches
Silicone Watch Bands
Neurological Torches
Coloured Scissors
Retractable ID Reels

The innovative nurseStuff™ brand brings colour, innovation and practicality to Nursing equipment and is backed with a 100% refund or replacement guarantee.

* Competition winners will be announced in early January 2010

We’ve all been through it from time to time – nurses and nursing students alike – situations that just make you cringe!

Check out some of the entries of Nursing situations that made people cringe over at the nursing stories pages.

Nurse “Webinars” The Future of Education?

Ross — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 02:41:19 +0000

credit: cogdogblog

** Guest Post by Richard Williams of Rich Nurse Poor Nurse

Nurse “Webinars” in 2010

I have been nursing for 21 years now and for the past ten years I have been working in Patient Transport here in Bathurst. In Patient Transport I get to visit a lot or rural and metropolitan hospitals. I notice that they all have one thing in common…the nurses are always very busy and health dollars have never been tighter. I have been thinking about how hard it must be for nurses to:

Find the time to attend educational in-services on their wards,
Get released from work or funded to attend conferences or seminars (domestically or internationally) to be able to keep abreast of the latest information pertaining to nursing or their specialty area.

I believe that I have a possible solution to this problem. I recently presented a paper at a conference and I felt very privileged to firstly have my paper accepted and secondly to be able to attend the interstate conference. I did my presentation on PowerPoint and it was well received and I had requests from the audience to forward on my findings.

I am now aware of relatively new technology that would enable a nurse anywhere in the world to view my presentation either live and be able to ask me questions and interact with me or view it on playback after it was recorded. This is if I turned my PowerPoint presentation into what is called a “webinar”. A webinar is a presentation eg PowerPoint that is broadcast over the internet where people can register and join in and view it at a scheduled time and can interact with the presenter and ask questions. If they miss the live version they can view it online and play it back like a video file.

Webinar Technology

What is really exciting is that there are nurses all around Australia and the world who present papers at a conferences or seminars who could easily record their power point presentation(how most are presented nowadays) with their own commentary as a webinar. Any nurse that has a PowerPoint presentation (not just those that have been presented at a conference) could turn their presentation into a webinar for the benefit of all nurses. The webinars would run at a scheduled time and my subscriber members would be notified via email when it was to be live. I would have instructional videos on my website that teach members how to use the webinar software, so that they could record their own webinar.

Once recorded a webinar can then be added to a website. I would add the webinars (or have a video to teach members how to do it themselves) to my website to build a library of pre-recorded webinars given by a variety of speakers on a large variety of topics. My website would be a bit like YouTube where the users add their own content, visitors comment on them and can see how many times a webinar has been viewed. On the website there would be a schedule of upcoming webinars showing the topic and speaker so nurses could join in and hear them live or view them at a latter time when it suited them.

I believe that my concept of pooling and sharing our presentations as webinars can benefit nurses from all round the world. It will be a big undertaking for me to set this up so I need to know via a short survey if nurses would watch webinars and use my website? Nurses could either use the webinars as a training tool at work and/or at home where there maybe more time and fewer distractions. A nurse could subscribe as an individual and/or an Area Health Service could subscribe so that their nursing staff could view the webinars. I am looking at doing a professional job of this so would need to charge an affordable fee for service for the end users.

Short Survey

Please click on the link to complete the short survey on webinars for nurses. Click Here to take survey

Just think that one day soon you may not be disappointed when you miss out on attending a national nursing conference as you know you can catch the speaker’s presentation at a latter time as a webinar. Or maybe you yourself will be giving a webinar that is watched live on-line by up to a thousand nurses from all around the world and then viewed by thousands of nurses once it’s downloaded onto my website.

Thanks Rich