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Out of curiosity, why is this thread under BFC, when everything else healthcare-related is under Goon Doctor?
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Nov 1, 2014 23:34
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boquiabierta posted:Out of curiosity, why is this thread under BFC, when everything else healthcare-related is under Goon Doctor? It's best that this thread is somewhat obscure, look at the healthcare stories megathread....
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Nov 2, 2014 01:48
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Really though we don't need a bazillion ex patients blabbering unintelligibly about nurses and nursing school. If you know some nurses or students link them to the thread and it might grow a bit but for the love of all that is good don't ruin this oasis.
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Nov 2, 2014 02:02
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ha no worries, i have no plan or desire to
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Nov 2, 2014 02:41
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Annath posted:Speaking of Grad/Postgrad, what's the word on becoming a Nurse Practitioner? I assume it's a better choice for someone who's absolutely terrible with math than CRNA right? And both are Ph.D now. I'm an NP at an academic medical center (Adult Acute Care NP) and I work for the medicine service on the non-teaching service. An academic service is one attending, one resident, one intern and one student. The non-teaching service means teams of one attending and one PA/NP, each managing half a patient list. In theory the resident-attending teams take the more interesting cases but in practice it has more to do with when patients show up. As for what we do, folks show up in the morning, pick up the patients they had yesterday and divvy up the ones that get admitted overnight. We work seven day stretches for continuity of care. We see patients, call consults, order and interpret tests and prescribe treatment. In theory the paired physician provides oversight and some of the more academic MDs who are used that model do, but the majority of the time they are busy with their own patients and provide little oversight and the NPs and PAs manage their patients functionally independently. Pretty much no one outside our service can tell who is an MD, PA or NP save for the folks who have been there forever and know us all personally. My job is a little different - I admit overnight. That means I show up in the afternoon, cross cover when someone pages and admit whatever the ED manages to slip past our triage doc. It's pretty fun and very autonomous. The academic medical center thing means our patients are medical clusterfucks who are usually pretty interesting (read: so terrifying that the community hospitals refuse to admit them and send them straight to us). I do have an attending I work with and we run patients past them but it's almost always a formality and depending on the MD and how busy we are, it sometimes isn't even that. When we disagree, it's generally settled by the folks involved making their case, comparing evidence and going from there. I admit 3-5 patients a night. I'd be leery of the not liking math thing though. There are a poo poo load of numbers involved in what I do and to use them properly you don't just get to look at the lab screen and hunt for "low" or "high" markers. There are corrections, prognostic calculators, dose adjustments based on kidney disease, drug conversions... I do far more math now than I did as a nurse. I also suspect I do far more math than most CRNAs. If you don't like numbers, maybe be a psych NP?
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Nov 3, 2014 08:01
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NP's work in E.R's as well, as long as you have some history of Urgent Care/E.R nursing you can relate with. We had two Family NP's work in the E.R I was in, and I had a fellow nurse who works out of a rural small town E.R. The job's essentially that of a PA in the same setting, mainly just the non emergent E.R cases that come through. Tooth-aches, musculoskeletal injuries and whatnot. They don't do much/if at all any of the critical care cases that come through. That being said, one of the PA's that worked with our flight company said she would get her fair share of Trauma patients *stabbings etc* but once it was at the point where the patient was ruled with either a crash/failed airway the docs intervened, or if the mechanism of injury was so great *GSW to chest with suspected cardiac injury or large vessel damage*
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Nov 3, 2014 22:21
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As far as the math goes, I can do your basic algebra just fine. Much more complex than that and I'm pretty easily lost. So far in RN school I haven't had any issues reading labs or anything like that... I dunno I guess its just going to be a "see how it goes" sort of thing?
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Nov 3, 2014 23:03
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I decided to get my PhD after working closely with a lot of NP's as well as PhD's in their respective field. It's definitely not something I'd jump straight into after nursing school thats for sure. Having that "fundamental" knowledge of how the hospital system works, and your specialty within a hospital be it E.R or Med/surg/ICU what have you will allow you to do your job as a NP 500% better. I don't even know if NP schools accept students without any prior nursing experience??
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Nov 3, 2014 23:16
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MurderBot posted:I don't even know if NP schools accept students without any prior nursing experience?? Good ones do not. There is a minimum of 2 year experience required at my school, but they recommend more. PhD's in nursing research on the other hand they promote doing right after BSN because field is vastly different.
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Nov 3, 2014 23:36
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djfooboo posted:Good ones do not. There is a minimum of 2 year experience required at my school, but they recommend more. That could be university based. Where I applied to required either a Masters in Nursing/DNP or a Masters in another field that correlated with 1: nursing research and 2: showed either the potential to conduct research or completion of a thesis. I also had to take a 6 question written test to prove I was capable of learning about nursing research. I know too much about Martha Rogers now and I can't un-learn it.. It is my Burden
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Nov 4, 2014 01:19
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Oh I have no intention of trying to go straight to a PhD lol. I'm working on my ADN right now. I just am trying to figure out the lay of the land so to speak, and decide where I want to go further down the road. I'm pretty sure on VCU for my BSN for now though.
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Nov 4, 2014 02:08
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So yesterday I had what I would consider the worst lecture of my nursing school career. The class was med-surg and the subject was HIV/AIDS. Basically the lecture, by an APRN whose specialty is definitely not infectious disease, reproductive/sexual health or anything related, seemed straight out of 1994 plus a footnote about Truvada. Outdated, uninformative, incomplete, biased information topped off with the cherry of not even knowing what AIDS stands for. ("Acquired immunodeficiency virus" was written more than once on the slides. I think understanding that HIV is the virus and AIDS is a SYNDROME caused by the virus - hence the loving S - is a pretty basic and fundamental building block to understanding the disease.) Risk factors were not appropriately explained. Needles were pretty much only discussed in the context of protecting ourselves as healthcare providers, but even that was inadequate - nothing about the importance of not recapping needles, for example (I actually had a needlestick injury from being INSTRUCTED to recap in lab earlier this year, after which they hurriedly changed the policy). She barely even touched on IVDU except to editorialize about how safe needle exchanges, which she only just found out about when she was putting the lecture together, seem like a "double-edged sword" in her opinion. Well, maybe hold back on sharing your uninformed and lovely opinion if you've never even been introduced to the public health concept of harm reduction. ABSTINENCE was promoted. Not in a backwards rural high school whose health curriculum is set by bible-thumping parents. In a highly-ranked, well-respected, accelerated second-degree BSN program. Condoms were barely mentioned, just that they should be used for "insertive sex". Nothing about the relative risks associated with different sexual activities, how anal sex is much higher risk than vaginal which is much higher risk than oral. Barely anything about viral loads. Nothing about how it's possible for HIV+ folks to achieve virtually undetectable viral loads and basically eliminate their transmission risk. Risk reduction measures mentioned did not include pos patients being compliant with treatment. Truvada mentioned only in the context of sero-discordant couples, not as a prophylactic measure for high-risk behavior in general. Gay disease, highest risk community MSM, nothing about the fact that black America has been absolutely ravaged by the disease, nothing about prison populations. We were instructed on the following assessment questions to determine risk: Have you had a blood transfusion, and if so, prior to 1985? (HOW is that a priority question? Or even an appropriate question? Is it even possible to have contracted HIV ~30 years ago and remain undiagnosed and alive?) Do you share drug-using equipment with anyone else? (Not needles or syringes, any drug-using equipment; she specifically mentioned pipes, even though HIV is decidedly not transmitted through saliva.) Have you ever had a sexually transmitted infection? (Like that is not even a useful question. Basically everyone who has sex has been exposed to HPV at some point, most people to HSV1 or 2, and gonorrhea/chlamydia are pretty drat common. Yes, having an ACTIVE infection increases HIV transmission risk, and having a past infection might put you at higher risk of re-exposure, but just asking if you've ever had an STI is so vague and non-specific as to be a pretty useless screening tool in my opinion.) When I worked at Planned Parenthood our screening asked about specific sexual behaviors and IVDU and maybe a few other things. But we basically just recommended rapid HIV testing to everyone anyway. She didn't talk about universal screening at all or the number of people who go undiagnosed. I left that lecture SO ANGRY. It makes me really suspicious of everything else she's taught my class and makes me feel like I should just ignore her slides entirely when I study. It makes me suspicious of what I've been taught in nursing school, period, to be honest.
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Nov 4, 2014 20:50
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As a whole nurses are pretty dumb. Trust your textbooks and nothing else.
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Nov 4, 2014 22:53
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Bum the Sad posted:As a whole nurses are pretty dumb. Trust your textbooks and nothing else. Pretty much this. I realize it is not true for everyone but the material actually taught in my school was a joke. The teachers just read from a powerpoint that someone prepared years before. They often taught on subjects that were not within their experience or specialty. My psych rotation was taught by an L&D nurse who hadn't stepped foot in a psych facility until our rotation. If you want to actually learn, read your books and actively participate in your clinical hours. Yes, I know I went to a crappy school.
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Nov 4, 2014 23:05
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Bum the Sad posted:As a whole
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Nov 4, 2014 23:16
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Most my profs were doctorates in the subject they taught. Was nice.
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Nov 4, 2014 23:29
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My online Patho class is not going well. I guess I'm rushing in to taking the tests, or am just mixing up the lab values. I'm beginning to feel like there is no way I'm going to get through this class. I'm averaging a 76% after 4 tests. There are 10 tests total and a 80% is passing. I can pass it, this is just really hard, picky poo poo. I'm having a moment right now where I feel like I'm just faking it. Do I really know anything? Ugh.
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Nov 5, 2014 03:19
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Every nurse I've spoken to within the clinical setting has said that 90% of the information and techniques you learn in nursing school are wrong or out of date before you're taught them. The majority have gone on to say that that is OK because nursing school isn't there to teach you facts or techniques. You learn those in preceptor-ship/orienting/on the job training. Nursing school exists to: a. get you through the NCLEX b. teach you critical thinking and time management. YMMV
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Nov 5, 2014 06:06
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Annath posted:Every nurse I've spoken to within the clinical setting has said that 90% of the information and techniques you learn in nursing school are wrong or out of date before you're taught them. The majority have gone on to say that that is OK because nursing school isn't there to teach you facts or techniques. You learn those in preceptor-ship/orienting/on the job training. Nursing school exists to: c. Give you basic pathophys understanding in order to not murder people inadvertently.
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Nov 5, 2014 08:37
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Today was just weird fuckin patient day. Definitely worked on my "therapeutic communication" skills today.
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Nov 8, 2014 03:21
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I finished my final exam for nursing yesterday. It's pretty exciting/thrilling. I'm going to travel up into the Australian outback/bush to work on my photography and writing for about a month, and then next year I'll be spending the entire year in India volunteering and just trying to do good things until my money runs out, then I'll come back and be a nurse. I'm like crafting a new life from the older, shitter life I led. Everything is really great. I don't know if you guys helped me at all get through school, but I watched this thread and all the others all the way through. It was neat. Cheers.
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Nov 8, 2014 07:24
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Helmacron posted:I finished my final exam for nursing yesterday. It's pretty exciting/thrilling. I'm going to travel up into the Australian outback/bush to work on my photography and writing for about a month, and then next year I'll be spending the entire year in India volunteering and just trying to do good things until my money runs out, then I'll come back and be a nurse. A year between grad and bedside? Lol ok
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Nov 8, 2014 11:26
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Helmacron posted:I finished my final exam for nursing yesterday. It's pretty exciting/thrilling. I'm going to travel up into the Australian outback/bush to work on my photography and writing for about a month, and then next year I'll be spending the entire year in India volunteering and just trying to do good things until my money runs out, then I'll come back and be a nurse. What made you decide to go to india? I want to go there for 1-3 months after graduation, but I have to come back due to uncle sam. When are you taking the nclex? Are you going to volunteer/work as a nurse there?
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Nov 8, 2014 12:34
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Helmacron posted:I finished my final exam for nursing yesterday. It's pretty exciting/thrilling. I'm going to travel up into the Australian outback/bush to work on my photography and writing for about a month, and then next year I'll be spending the entire year in India volunteering and just trying to do good things until my money runs out, then I'll come back and be a nurse. At least tell us you're taking the NCLEX before you take a year off.
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Nov 8, 2014 15:29
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Helmacron posted:I finished my final exam for nursing yesterday. It's pretty exciting/thrilling. I'm going to travel up into the Australian outback/bush to work on my photography and writing for about a month, and then next year I'll be spending the entire year in India volunteering and just trying to do good things until my money runs out, then I'll come back and be a nurse. A graduate nurse with zero experience and 1-year separated from school is the lowest on the totem pole when it comes to getting hired. Unless you have a guaranteed job waiting for you, you better save a little money because you might find the job hunt harder than you expect.
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Nov 8, 2014 15:33
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Does anyone have any not horrible looking, comfortable shoe recommendations? My program requires black or white leather or plastic shoes with no other colors visible (not even trim).
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Nov 8, 2014 16:39
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Helmacron posted:I finished my final exam for nursing yesterday. It's pretty exciting/thrilling. I'm going to travel up into the Australian outback/bush to work on my photography and writing for about a month, and then next year I'll be spending the entire year in India volunteering and just trying to do good things until my money runs out, then I'll come back and be a nurse. Congrats on being done, but heeyyyy that's a terrible idea. Taking a month off is ok, especially if you're actively looking for jobs (you can say "my start date is X") but leaving the country for more than a year is something you should think long and hard about as it will be nearly impossible to find a job when you get back. If you don't use it, you lose it, and employers know that. Even though you might think volunteering will sound great on a resume, the year-plus gap will do far more harm than volunteering will do good. Also, if you're planning on doing medical volunteer work, most organizations require previous experience. Do good things at your work for a few years, save up some money, and then go volunteering for however long. apathetic JAP posted:Does anyone have any not horrible looking, comfortable shoe recommendations? My program requires black or white leather or plastic shoes with no other colors visible (not even trim). K-Swiss Tubes. I've recommended them in this thread before and can't recommend them highly enough. I tried Dansko and hated them and have had several other brands of sneakers but K-Swiss Tubes are by far the best shoes I've worn for work. They come in pure white, too. Tried linking it but the site is currently under construction. Koivunen fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Nov 8, 2014 |
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Nov 8, 2014 16:40
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apathetic JAP posted:Does anyone have any not horrible looking, comfortable shoe recommendations? My program requires black or white leather or plastic shoes with no other colors visible (not even trim). I highly recommend skater shoes of some kind. K-Swiss shoes are also nice.
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Nov 8, 2014 16:43
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Lots of people hate Danskos since Dansko ended its contract with Sanita and moved production all over the place, resulting in lovely inconsistent-quality clogs. Sanita still manufactures the clogs under their own name and they're still pretty great, IMO. I know they're not for everyone, but I like that the lack of squishy padding and glued on parts means they last for years longer than a pair of sneakers. Also my patient population tends to drip and leak everywhere so I like that I can Cavi-wipe them off after a shift. I'm not a fan of porous mesh-topped shoes.
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Nov 8, 2014 17:49
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K-Swiss tubes are great. Got them because of this thread and have been going strong on them for a year now.
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Nov 8, 2014 18:48
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So when do new grads typically apply for jobs? I'm done in May 2015, and have been researching this. New grad programs/fellowships seem to have deadlines 2-3months before graduating, which is fine, but what about jobs? Do you wait until you've gotten your license to go after posted jobs (outside of a new grad program)? I've seen some things saying nurse managers just throw away apps if you don't have a license yet.
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Nov 9, 2014 00:23
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Lava Lamp posted:So when do new grads typically apply for jobs? I'm done in May 2015, and have been researching this. New grad programs/fellowships seem to have deadlines 2-3months before graduating, which is fine, but what about jobs? Do you wait until you've gotten your license to go after posted jobs (outside of a new grad program)? I've seen some things saying nurse managers just throw away apps if you don't have a license yet. Correct. I graduated this May and was applying to residency programs as early as last November. If you're not getting hired through a program like this I wouldn't even bother with most places until you have your license.
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Nov 9, 2014 00:34
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Lava Lamp posted:So when do new grads typically apply for jobs? I'm done in May 2015, and have been researching this. New grad programs/fellowships seem to have deadlines 2-3months before graduating, which is fine, but what about jobs? Do you wait until you've gotten your license to go after posted jobs (outside of a new grad program)? I've seen some things saying nurse managers just throw away apps if you don't have a license yet. Have you been networking? I volunteered at the hospital/unit I wanted to work at during the summers while going to school and got to know the nurses and nurse manager. They had a job posting in April, so I applied for it and let the nurse manager know, so she could bump my application to the top of the pile. I interviewed late April and received my offer letter during finals week. If you've done some groundwork with making connections, apply early. If not, wait until you have your license, because no one is going to take a risk on an unlicensed unknown.
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Nov 9, 2014 01:52
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White Chocolate posted:What made you decide to go to india? I want to go there for 1-3 months after graduation, but I have to come back due to uncle sam. When are you taking the nclex? Are you going to volunteer/work as a nurse there? I'm going to volunteer as a nurse for probably some religious organizations in Kolkata, and down in the central east of the country. I worked for two months in a variety of rolls at the start of this year, and Ill go back and continue to do that, whilst hopefully taking on a more hand's on roll with nursing. I also have contacts with non-profit organisations throughout India that, you know, it's possible I might find gainful employment with. Epic Doctor Fetus posted:At least tell us you're taking the NCLEX before you take a year off. I'm Australian, and this is an Australian course. When we finish nursing school, they give us a Diploma/Bachelor and we're a nurse. There's no government/external test. It takes a month or so, and so by end of December I'll be registered in the aussie nurse registry. (if I passed my final exam. I probably did.) Koivunen posted:Congrats on being done, but heeyyyy that's a terrible idea. Taking a month off is ok, especially if you're actively looking for jobs (you can say "my start date is X") but leaving the country for more than a year is something you should think long and hard about as it will be nearly impossible to find a job when you get back. I know, cheers. There's a chance I might come back after six months. I'm not a hundred percent but I believe to keep up nursing registration in Australia I have to work minimum five shifts per year and show the board I've done 20 hours of personal self-development to keep my skills and knowledge contemporary etc. On the other hand, I did this course so I would have the education standard (I failed high school back in the early 2000's) to get into university and continue onto a bachelor of nursing/paramedicine. I've received an offer for uni already, so I'm going to take that and defer. I also worked a number of years in gold mines to fund all this, especially the volunteering aspect, so there's no point wimping out now because Roki B said "Lol ok".
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Nov 9, 2014 03:52
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You'll be fine. One of my friends on my ward did much the same, and came into the job a much more well-rounded person. She's doing a pseudo-grad year in the sense that she's not part of the hospital's programme, but she was given similar support on the ward that a grad would receive with regards to supernumary time and oversight. I've come to see from reading this thread that nursing is much more chill in Australia than America.
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Nov 11, 2014 10:15
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Asclepius posted:You'll be fine. One of my friends on my ward did much the same, and came into the job a much more well-rounded person. She's doing a pseudo-grad year in the sense that she's not part of the hospital's programme, but she was given similar support on the ward that a grad would receive with regards to supernumary time and oversight. How do the scopes compare?
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Nov 12, 2014 00:07
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Keep in mind this is in Victoria, in a major metropolitan trauma centre. Other states and areas of practice will be different. From reading here, I've always felt like my scope of practice is more limited, but I'm more involved in direct patient care. This seems to feed back into the education, as well. Education here is more in the English manner: your foundational studies are intended to be completed in secondary college (high school), so that you can go directly to a specialised baccalaureate. This is as opposed to having to go to tertiary college in the US to do prerequisites and whatnot before doing your specialised degree. From what I've read here, I feel like the education is less exacting here, which is maybe reflected in our scope of practice. I never found uni terribly demanding. You received an honours grade (A) for >80%, and I think passing was >60%, for example. In terms of the actual work: on an acute surgical/trauma ward, our ratios are strictly 4:1 or 8:2 on day shifts (or 4:2 in our high acuity bay), between 6:1 and 8:1 depending on ward area on night shifts. We don't have nursing assistants, and at worst you'll be teaming with an 'enrolled' nurse, some of whom are endorsed to administer medications, some of whom are not. So for 4 patients, we're performing all direct care for them, whether feeding, washing, or whatever, and also doing routine assessments and administering medications. I feel like my assessments are less comprehensive than what would be expected in America, because we almost always have residents on the ward available to bounce ideas off, confirm our assessments, or perform more comprehensive assessments when needed. Again, I have no basis for this other than what I've read here, but I feel like part of our somewhat reduced scope here comes from how closely we work in a team with the allied health and medical staff, and how accessible they are, which lessens the amount of specialised stuff we have to do, and increases the amount of basic nursing we do. Expanding a bit further on some procedures I commonly do/don't do: we have blood nurses in the morning, but for most urgent bloods, or bloods in the afternoon, we're expected to take them, including blood cultures but never ABGs. Inserting NGTs. We're allowed to insert IDCs male and female, but for some reason this is a recent thing, as it used to be docs would do males. I'm one of the few comfortable with popping in a male IDC, and it probably makes the patient more comfortable, anyway, so I do tonnes of those and like zero female IDCs. Putting in IVCs is only after doing hospital training, which I've done but a lot of the other nurses haven't, so if I'm not working, usually the residents get paged to cannulate. We manage traches on the ward, but other than our ward/the ENT ward that's fairly rare outside of ICU. We tend to keep specialised drains (LDs, EVDs) in our high acuity bay. I'm not sure how else to help draw comparisons, unless anyone has specific questions. Asclepius fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Nov 12, 2014 |
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Nov 12, 2014 00:25
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An A for >80%?! Holy hell I should have gone to school in Oz. Here an 80 is a C (2.0 GPA) but is only juuust considered satisfactory. You pull constant 80s and the faculty get on your case to improve. While a 79 is a D, it's still considered a failing grade in that a grade of D for a course will not allow you to progress on. An A is 94% or better.
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Nov 12, 2014 19:49
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Annath posted:An A for >80%?! Holy hell I should have gone to school in Oz. This is how it works for my wife, and it causes her to be crazy about every point. Just picked up her pins, and am excited to finally be done this year! I want to ask, how important is an MSN vs a BSN? We have a choice of either program and I'm not quite sure what the real world differences are in terms of job prospects.
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Nov 12, 2014 19:55
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Does anyone have any recommendations for Nurse Aid Training programs? Should I avoid for-profit Kaplan-esque places, or are they fine for something like this? I'll be done with my pre-reqs this May, finally. Then on to the waiting list. But I need to complete Nurse Aid training before they will let me into the program (yet they don't list it as a pre-req...). Unfortunately, the school I'm going to only offers it during the week, and at 8 hours at a pop for 10 weeks. I can't afford to quit my job until I can go to school full time, so I can't take it through the school. I've found a couple places that do night or weekend classes, but I'm not sure if I trust these places. Good news is I don't need to then go and pass the certification test, I just need to have a certificate saying "Finagle has completed this class". Ugh. Its depressing sometimes to realize its been almost 1 1/2 years since I decided to finally do this and started trying to find out how to get out of the IT field and into Nursing. And I haven't even started -actual- classes yet!  Getting there though, one step at a time. Its just difficult and hard to switch job paths completely.
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Nov 12, 2014 21:35
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