Nursing Blog with Expert Insights

Understanding Endocarditis and Its Challenges On a cardiac unit, I see all types of heart and vascular diseases. Many of them appear in the same "type" of patient. Peripheral vascular disease usually affects diabetics or smokers. Coronary artery disease often shows up in people who are a bit heavier than is healthy. And then there's endocarditis. This condition is often found in young people with a history of IV drug use. Endocarditis, an inflammation of heart tissue, is freq

This story is special to me because it was one of the times I had the opportunity to help family through a patient's passing. Most of the time, family isn't around at night. So if someone passes on my shift, pretty often the family isn't there. Sometimes at work we joke about how things tend to unravel or descend into chaos at shift change. Whether it's a rapid response, a code, multiple admissions, or suddenly every patient needs something, it seems like shift change is ofte

Wow, I've been out of work for 3 months now. I have suffered from narcolepsy for almost 10 years, but this year for some reason, my body decided to start having cataplexy episodes. It's been a long, long road, but this post is about describing my experience as a patient on my own unit. At the beginning of May, I arrived at work like normal for the first of 3 in-a-row night shifts. I got report on my patients and stood up to go meet them. After taking 3 steps away from the nur