Bedpan Banter

34 Episodes

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Insulin for the NCLEX: Types, Peak Times and Safety Rules w/ Nurse Mike

2026-11-0910:51

Insulin can make a patient feel better in hours, and it can also crash a patient in minutes. That’s why we’re treating insulin like the high-risk medication it is and breaking it down with the kind of bedside thinking NCLEX actually rewards: timing, pattern recognition, and safety guardrails you can use under pressure. We start with the context that prevents easy test misses: type 1 diabetes means no insulin production, so insulin is never optional, while type 2 diabetes is insulin resistanc...

Follow The Fluid To Understand Heart Failure w/ Nurse Mike

2026-10-1910:23

Heart failure doesn’t have to feel like a blur of random symptoms. We make it click by using one guiding rule: when the heart fails as a pump, blood can’t move forward, it backs up and fluid follows. Once you can track where the fluid goes and why it’s there, assessment findings stop feeling scattered, medications start to make more sense, and NCLEX-style questions get a lot easier to decode. We walk through right-sided versus left-sided heart failure as two directions of fluid backup. Right...

NCLEX Electrolyte Imbalances Review with Nurse Mike

2026-10-0509:28

A tiny lab value can be the difference between a stable patient and a rapid crash, and that is exactly why electrolyte imbalances show up nonstop on nursing exams and the NCLEX. We walk through the Fab Five electrolytes in a way that actually sticks: simple ranges, what each electrolyte does in the body, what high looks like, what low looks like, and how to turn symptom clues into the safest next step. We start with the core test-taking mindset: the NCLEX is a safety exam, so the most danger...

A Nurse-Friendly Guide To Reading EKG Strips Fast with Nurse Mike

2026-09-2115:27

Your patient says, “My chest feels fluttering,” and suddenly that monitor feels louder than your own thoughts. We’re taking the fear out of ECG interpretation by turning EKG strips into a simple, repeatable process you can use on exams and at the bedside. I’m Nurse Mike, and I walk you through the heart’s electrical pathway in plain English, then connect each waveform to what the heart is actually doing so the squiggles finally mean something. From there, we get practical: PR interval ...

Anxiety Medications Breakdown using Memory Tricks w/ Nurse Mike

2026-08-3107:37

Most nursing pharmacology mistakes happen when a question quietly hints at sedation, and you miss what that means for airway and breathing. We slow anxiety medications down into a simple, test-ready framework built around patient safety, ABCs (airway, breathing, circulation), and the patterns that show up again and again on the NCLEX and in nursing school exams. We walk through the “three big players” you must recognize on sight: benzodiazepines, barbiturates, and buspirone. You’ll hea...

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