Well, hello there. I'm Nurse Mo, and this is the Straight A Nursing podcast where I teach concepts and

share tips on how to thrive in school and at the bedside. Well, hello there and welcome

back to the second of my new installment called Mo's Monday Minute, where I share a quick

tip for you that will help you advance in your nursing practice, whether you're a practicing

nurse or a student just starting out. So this week's Mo's Monday Minute, I'm looking at three

things that I think are invaluable to check at the start of your shift. Because guess what,

unexpected things happen. And generally, from my experience, unexpected things happen when you're not prepared.

Or at least that's what it feels like because those are the instances that really stick out in my head as

the most anxiety producing ones. So another thing that I want you to be aware of is that when the

unexpected happens, when an emergency

happens, your adrenaline, your fight or flight response is going haywire. It can make the most

basic task feel overly complicated. And that's because that fight or flight response is using up

all your brain's processing power.

So this is no time to figure things out from scratch.

And since seconds count and many, many cases, I always do these three things at the start of my shift.

So first thing I want to know is where's the code blue button.

If I'm in a room I haven't been in before, because guess what? They're not always in the exact

same spot in every room. They should be, but not always. So just make sure you know where the

code blue button is. Generally, it's going to be at the head of the bed, but I have seen it, you know, sometimes a little bit more towards the left side of the bed, a little bit more to the right side of the bed, make sure there's nothing hanging and covering it up so that you can't see it. You want to know where that button is. Next is you want to ensure that oxygen is functional and that you have that little adapter that we call a Christmas tree.

It's actually called a nipple nut connector or something like that, but we just call it a Christmas tree because it's often green.

Sometimes they're white, but sometimes they're green.

You want to make sure you have that in place because if you don't have one of those, you can't connect any oxygen device to the flow meter. So get your replacement

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