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Popping in here to say hello. I am a nurse and I work in a large hospital in Northern Minnesota. We have a level II trauma center, a level II NICU, a burn center, and a a slew of cardiac care. We treat the entire northeast section of Minnesota and northwest part of Wisconsin. I have my RN, BSN. I am on float staff for floor nursing, and I work only float schedules. I am a 0.8 so I never know where I will end up when I start work, I really like it. The units I work on are oncology, hospice, the acute mental health ward, neurology, orthopedic surgery, medical/surgical, OB/urology surgical, and inpatient rehabilitation. Mostly I am floated between the psych ward and the med/surg floors. Our birthing center is undergoing renovation/new management, but I hope to cross-train to them as soon as I'm able. I love being a float, you get to see and experience new things every day, no patient will ever be the same. Also you don't get sucked in to floor drama with the other nurses. Sometimes you get really bad assignments because the core nurses dump them on you, but usually it's pretty good. The staffing office has done pretty well for trying to schedule us a few days at a time on one unit for patient care continuity, but usually I'm floated around quite often. Anyway, that's my story. If you're a nursing student and have questions about working on a particular unit, I can try to help you out.
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Oct 17, 2011 06:28
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Lava Lamp posted:Can you do the 8 hour/5 day week shifts right from the get go, or is that mostly for senior nurses? For my first job, I was hired at 0.8 (four days a week) day/evening rotating schedule. However, I picked up enough shifts so that I could work full time. At the hospital I work at, 12 hour shifts are for nurses who work in the ER or the ICUs, and 8 hour shifts are for floor nurses. We have some 8 hour critical care nurses and some 12 hour floor nurses, but it's a lot more common for CCUs to be 12s and floors to be 8s. It all depends on the hospital you get hired at, and what they need. Usually you will get stuck doing night shifts, but like another person said, they really aren't bad at all. I have picked up a few night shifts here and there and I definitely feel like you get better new-grad experience working a day or evening shift, but if night is the only position you can get, you better take it.
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Oct 18, 2011 03:04
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Cardboard Fox posted:Would they really let someone with no background in medicine do blood tests and IVs on patients Short answer: No. Blood tests are for lab techs, and they usually have an associate's degree at minimum. Registered Nurses start IVs, which obviously takes schooling as well. Basically, if you want to have interaction with patients outside of a volunteer setting, you're going to have to get some kind of training/education. Like someone else suggested, you could try being a nursing assistant. That's pretty much the quickest way to get to be able to care for patients. The course is, I believe, sixish weeks long. If you can handle wiping poop, emptying catheter bags, heavy lifting, taking blood pressures, and giving bed baths all day long, maybe you should look into it. Have you considered being an IT person for the hospital? All hospitals need IT people. There are also Health Unit Coordinators (HUCs). HUCs work a lot with patient charts, processing doctor orders, making phone calls, things like that. They're basically unit secretaries. You need to have a bit of training to do the HUC job (like taking medical terminology, for example) but I'm not sure how much you would need. Look at hospital websites, see what positions they have open, and see what kind of requirements they have. For example, this hospital is hiring an IT person, and it's in Broward County. https://sh.webhire.com/servlet/av/jd?ai=782&ji=2581421&sn=I Oxford Comma posted:New LVN grad here, looking for employment. Besides Craigslist, what other websites are good to browse to find nursing jobs? Yeah... the first place you need to look is on hospital websites.
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Oct 28, 2011 05:59
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Etrips posted:This is going to sound strange, but any recommendations on a watch that will withstand the test of time working in the field? I have never spent more than $10 on a watch for work, and I used the watch for a couple of months before I realized I didn't actually need one. You really only need it for the seconds hand, and there are clocks in all patient's rooms anyway. Also, wearing a watch means you can't wash that part of your wrist, and that is gross. Keeping a watch after there's been body fluids on it is unsanitary no matter how well you think you clean it. Watches have all kinds of tiny spaces where germs can hide. If you're careful enough you shouldn't be getting stuff on your watch, but accidents happen, and you can pick up germs from any patient even if you think they are clean. E: Now that I think about it, hardly any of the nurses I work with wear watches. Koivunen fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Nov 10, 2011 |
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Nov 10, 2011 07:06
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Arietta posted:Anyone else in school getting ready to take the ATI? We're taking ours next week (part of the course grade). You're only taking one ATI? While I was in school we took three or four ATI exams each semester in different topics. We got stacks and stacks of ATI study guides but I didn't look at any of them. It was supposed to get us better prepared for the NCLEX, but I honestly don't feel that they helped at all. It was more of a nuisance than anything and it wasn't hard to pass for anyone in our nursing program. Don't stress out, they're not bad at all. I passed the NCLEX on my first try with 75 questions. The thing that helped me the most was taking a course through Kaplan at the end of nursing school. It was a week long and was kind of spendy but it was extremely helpful. I don't think I would have done as well without the Kaplan course.
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Nov 24, 2011 23:20
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Arietta posted:Was that Kaplan course online or in a classroom? I just briefly skimmed over their website and saw they had NCLEX prep classes for almost $500. It was a classroom course with an instructor that taught it, and it also had an online component where you could do an endless amount of practice questions and then see why certain answers were right and why some were wrong. Most of my classmates also took the course. It was eight hours a day for five days and I studied the online stuff for over 100 hours on my own between when the course ended and a month later when I took the exam. My school reimbursed half the cost so we only had to pay $250. It's still a big chunk of money especially for a college student, but taking the NCLEX more than once costs money, too. It was such a huge relief to go into the NCLEX feeling totally prepared. I feel like a spokesperson for Kaplan but it really was a great investment.
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Nov 25, 2011 08:10
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I had a pair of Dansko nursing clogs that I wore for about three years. http://www.scrubsandbeyond.com/Dansko-Professional-nursing-clogs-67084.html Lots of people I work with wear those, too. They come in some pretty cute patterns, not just black and white. The people at work all seem to love them, but they were really terrible for me for some reason. They have a really hard sole with great arch support, but there's no cushion. I think they're kind of clunky, too, and I've nearly sprained my ankle walking on uneven sidewalks many times because there's no give to the material on the bottom. They also made my hips hurt like crazy because it threw out the alignment of my knees. (Enough ranting already!) Now, I wear a pair of sneakers designed for walking. I have no idea what they're actually called, but I got them half off at a sports store. Honestly I can't tell the difference between a walking sneaker and regular sneakers, but my feet always feel fine at the end of the day. Whatever you do, don't get the shoes that are supposed to tone your legs with the rocking soles. http://web-images.chacha.com/toning-shoes/toning-shoes-jul-14-2011-3-600.jpg They are horrible for your joints because they throw your joints all out of whack and don't offer proper support. They may feel great initially, but down the road you will develop problems with joint pain. Edit to add: the psych nurses at my hospital wear scrub bottoms and tshirts with the hospital logo on it. If it's chilly they'll wear long sleeved button up scrub tops. Whenever I float there I'm in full scrubs, it doesn't really matter. Don't be a psych nurse because you think you can sympathize with the patients. There are so many different kinds of psych disorders, even if someone comes in with the same diagnoses that you had/have, they could experience it in a completely different way. As a mentally healthy nurse, there are so many people you simply won't be able to connect with, especially if you work in an inpatient unit. Even if you can't relate, they need the same care as everyone else, regardless of your personal feelings. Also, it's not like you can really share your personal psych history with patients. (You can, but you shouldn't.) Finally, if you try to involve yourself too personally with psych patients, it may hurt your own progress with your psych issues, depending on the severity of your diagnosis. For example, if you suffered from depression, it may be difficult to care for a patient with depression because it could bring back memories of how you felt during that time, and that might be hard to deal with. Unless you have been symptom free for a very long time and things are totally under control, you may want to think hard before entering the world of psych nursing. Koivunen fucked around with this message at 10:58 on Dec 8, 2011 |
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Dec 8, 2011 10:45
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Avian Pneumonia posted:Am I better off spending another year taking additional prerequisites, pulling my GPA up, and applying to top/good nursing schools; or can/should I just go somehwere that will put me in the position to pass RNexams as quickly as possible? The thing is, if you go to a school that hurries to get you in and out, you will not be prepared to pass the NCLEX, and you won't feel prepared to go out into the real world and be a nurse. As a nurse, people's lives are in your hands every single day, and you owe it to them to be fully prepared and educated as best as you are able. When you're looking at schools, really pay attention to how many clinical hours their nursing program offers. Also see if they do training to prepare for boards, like ATI testing. You're going to want to go somewhere that offers a ton of clinical experience, because when it comes down to it, that is what matters the most because it exposes you to what nursing is actually like in a real hospital with real patients. Employers will notice what school you went to and will generally have an idea about what the program was like. Also, if you get lots of education and a great clinical experience, it will show with your confidence.
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Dec 11, 2011 17:23
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Just in time for the holidays, this has been circulating around the internet and was posted in the bathrooms at my hospital. Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the floor Lasix was given, filling foleys galore. Stockings were worn to prevent emboli, they came in two sizes, knee and thigh high. The patients were nestled cockeyed in their beds, while visions of stool softeners danced in their heads. We in our scrubs, and they in their gowns, Fashion created to hide extra pounds. When down in the ER it became such a zoo, they called with admissions for me and you. They're coming, they're going, and they're all looking the same. My patience for patients is starting to wane. Now call lights are ringing, the guy two rooms down, says "Didn't get pericare, send my nurse now". And now delegation seems the best plan, We try to send others, for the needs of this man. When what to my wondering eyes should appear, But Santa himself and 8 tiny reindeer. Hey says he comes from Central Supply. To bring us LR, NS, & D5. The doctors then scribbled what no one could read. Orders on patients, to measure their pee. We try to decipher illegible words, orders for patients, to guaiac their turds. The new shift arriving, our day is now through, How did this emesis get in my shoe? We give them report and pass on the facts, and tell them of duoderm lining the cracks. And the nurses exclaim as they limp out of sight, "Ambien to all, and to all a good night".
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Dec 11, 2011 17:25
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Nurse Fanny posted:Excelsior programs suck, EMS folks have this idea that they are a golden ticket into nursing. Go through school like everybody else, preferably a BSN or dual degree BSN program, or heck a direct entry masters program. ADNs are great and all but hospitals are beginning to turn preferences towards bachelor's prepared nurses. Quoted these things for truth. EMS people are wonderful, it takes a certain type of person to work emergency medicine, but it makes no no lesser or no greater than anyone else who furthers their education to become a nurse. EMS people are great at what they do, but it does not compare to true nursing. If you want to get your CRNA, you must first become a BSN. This is a requirement no matter where you look. I would highly, HIGHLY recommend working as an RN with floor nursing first. If you're too impatient, perhaps working as a floor RN while obtaining your BSN if that is a possibility. You can not become a CRNA without your BSN degree. Becoming a CRNA involves patient interaction, and pre-operative time is the most important, stressful, anxiety-ridden time for patients. Even though you only deal with patients pre-operatively, you must be familiar with a patient's outcome post-op before deciding to devote your life to anesthetizing them. As a CRNA, you have to obtain consent from your patients. This means you have to explain the risks/benefits/what to expect from their operation. It means so much more if you have actually experienced what a patient will go through from start to finish. Having firsthand knowledge will only make you that much better, that much more compassionate, of of a CRNA. For the sake of your future patients, work as a post-op RN before (or while) you are working towards your CRNA. It takes more time, but in the long run, it is totally worth it to yourself, but more importantly, your patients. (Edited for rambling.) Koivunen fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Dec 23, 2011 |
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Dec 23, 2011 08:09
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Dr. Capco posted:Anybody have any other recommendations for NCLEX books or question banks I can use? I have the Kaplan and the Lacharity Prioritization book, but I don't test for another 3 weeks and I'd like to have a couple more sets of questions to practice with before I test. Relax. You're already using two different sources to study, you don't need a third. You only have three weeks to study, don't stress yourself out by taking on a third resource. I swear by Kaplan. They have about a billion questions in their online question bank, if you focus on those and look at the reasons why an answer is correct/incorrect, you'll be fine. I found it was more helpful to take the short exams and then look at the reasoning behind the questions and the answers. You'll be especially fine if you've been studying two different sources for questions. Finding a third source to study from is overkill, honestly. Unless you're seriously struggling with the question formatting, don't waste your money, time, and sanity getting yet another resource to study from. --- In other news, I had my very first patient death tonight. I was floated to hospice so it wasn't unexpected, but it is still sad. 
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Jan 23, 2012 09:11
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Hellacopter posted:So... I'm going to be on graveyard for my final preceptorship. What will your schedule look like, exactly? How many nights do you have to work each week? If you're going to be doing a lot of hours each week, you might want to consider quitting your job, or at least cutting way back on the hours, especially since you'll be doing school as well. Also, not everyone starts out on night shifts. My first job was day/evening rotating. To be honest, I kind of wish it was day/nights, because at least then I'm never at work from 4pm to 11pm. Working day/evening really kills your opportunities for getting involved with community activities, like a yoga class or something with a weekly schedule. If you only have one job, working nights isn't that bad if you can regulate your sleep schedule.
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Feb 12, 2012 03:32
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Seven Five Nine posted:NoDak sucks. Do not come here. Do not take their bonus money and their crappy pay, and crappier supplies and equipment. Oh my god, I cannot quote this for truth enough. I went to NoDak for school because I was tired of big city life, and it was honestly the worst 4.5 years of my life. (The University of North Dakota in Grand Forks has a great nursing program, but in my free time, I wanted to claw my eyes out.) It is so boring and stuck at least a decade in the past. I couldn't get out of there fast enough. If you're going to travel, at least go somewhere that's not completely flat and devoid of trees with no major cities for hundreds and hundreds of miles. It's by far the most boring state in the union.
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Feb 22, 2012 01:13
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Hellacopter posted:Long shot, but does anybody have any knowledge of Sanford Health up in Fargo, ND? It looks like a nice hospital and they have a new grad residency program with their RN job positions say that job experience is preferred, but not required. If I can't get into a more conveniently located new grad program I'm totally willing to go up to Fargo to get a job, because hey, it's a reasonably sized city that's not in the desert. I went to nursing school in Grand Forks, ND, about an hour north of Fargo, was there for almost five years. Had lots of friends end up at Sanford. Just because you're a new grad doesn't mean you have to be in a new grad program. It might be beneficial if you feel like you still need some work on your nursing skills, but it's not necessary. You can get a regular job right out of college. Where do you live right now? If you're used to desert weather, Christ Almighty do not move to Fargo. In the winter there is a solid month of -20 to -50 degree weather, and the wind there is awful. Summer exists from June to August, the rest of the year is gray and cold. Fargo also floods every single year. Also, North Dakota is just about the most boring place on earth. Fargo likes to come across as a hip city, but the left wing, hipster, college kid crowd is pretty isolated. Everyone else is redneck, republican, and shops at Wal Mart. If you're not from ND it can be a little bit of a culture shock. Fargo is in the middle of nowhere. If you get bored of Fargo, you have to drive for several hours through beet fields to get anywhere else. Sanford is a fine hospital, but Fargo and North Dakota in general tends to be behind the times for facilities and technology. The people I know who work there like it just fine, people in ND tend to be pretty kind, it's a perfectly okay place to work. You'd just be living in Fargo, and that would suck. If you're looking for a change, why not try some place like Minnesota or Wisconsin? They are more diverse places, there's a lot more hospitals to choose from, and there's more to do for life outside of work. Minneapolis and Milwaukee, for example, are both great cities with several large hospitals. Have you looked at other places in the Midwest?
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Mar 10, 2012 19:24
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Baby_Hippo posted:They asked, "Describe how you would go about advocating for a patient and give an example of WHEN you advocated for a patient." This is a super common question. Definitely review what you would say before you go. If you've ever paged a doctor regarding a patient, you're being an advocate. If it's getting them a nicotine patch, or if it's calling a rapid response because they are crumping, that is advocacy. Whenever you've done something for a patient because they were unable, that's advocacy. Nurses are advocates all the time. Try to think of your best example and have that ready for your interview, because it's something that should be brought up regardless of whether or not they directly address it. Hellacopter posted:God I sound so lame. I can't stress enough how horrible the weather is there. It's either so cold that they have advisories not to stay outside for more than ten minutes or risk literally freezing your face off, or so humid and hot you can't breathe. Eastern North Dakota is flat and has no natural trees or bodies of water. There's nothing pretty about the weather. If you want to experience winter and snow, at least go somewhere that's pretty. I also can't stress enough how absolutely boring that place is. You'll be tired of it in two months, and then you're stuck, and there's no other cities to visit for hundreds of miles. You're stuck in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do. I mean, if you're really, truly desperate, by all means go to Fargo. Sanford isn't a bad hospital, the people are generally nice, it's just the last place on earth I would ever want to live, and I lived there for almost 5 years. I would strongly advise you to search in other states first before settling there. I've heard Texas and Florida are easy states to find jobs in.
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Mar 16, 2012 06:29
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Has anyone ever volunteered their nurse skills in a third world place? I have a friend who spent a couple months at an orphanage in Haiti and she loved it. The place she volunteered at is looking for a nurse to come for a month, they pay airfare and lodging. I think this would be an incredible opportunity to do some good outside of my part of the world. However, I would need more than a month off of work, and I'm not sure how easy that would be. I started at my current hospital in June of 2011, and while I feel my managers are reasonable people, I'm not sure how they would react to me asking to leave for a month and still have my job when I came back. I mean, the leave of absence would be to help orphans in Haiti, but it's still over a month where I wouldn't be at work. Also, I am a float nurse for adult patients, I have no pediatric experience. I have a huge variety of patients that I deal with every day, but it's been threeish years since I've been involved with peds in any way, and that was in college. However, when my friend went, she was still in school and had no real-life experience, so I'm not sure it would matter that much? Has anyone had experience doing this or know someone who has?
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Mar 31, 2012 01:26
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Hellacopter posted:Cardiac patients are super interesting and have have enough variety in backgrounds that I dont get bored. If I was I was on a plain surgical floor I might just die, but tele has a nice mix of everything. I would say the exact opposite of what you're saying. I sometimes get floated to the cardiac floor, and I hate it. It's the same diagnoses over and over, the same medications, the same treatments. You do get a variety of patients and social backgrounds, but it's the same type of care, if that makes sense. To me, cardiac is super boring. I love med/surg because you get all kinds of things. If you're at a smaller hospital you could get anything from MVA to kidney stones to broken bones, if you're at a bigger hospital you can choose what kinds of diagnoses you like to work with (gen med, urology, neurology, orthopedics, etc). I did my practicum on a general med/surg unit because I didn't know what I wanted to do. Turns out my favorite thing to do is float all over the hospital on the acute care units, and having the general med/surg experience looked good on my resume. Basically, unless you want to work OB or public health or something specific, med/surg experience will look good because you get the basics under your belt. If you really have no idea what you want to do, would your instructors let you follow a float nurse at a hospital? That way you could see a lot of different things over the course of your practicum. Really, the internet isn't a good place to get ideas on what you should put on your list. Nursing preference is extremely personal, something that I love could easily be something you hate, and vice versa.
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Apr 4, 2012 01:35
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Adding another vote for juicy trachs. Giving someone a really good suctioning is satisfying, I just wish I didn't have to smell it. And the sticky stuff that occasionally bubbles out of the trach that leaves long stinky strings when you try to wipe it away... Uggghhh. Last week I had a patient who had severe thermal burns on both legs and back, and the shift before gave her two doses of lactulose and didn't do anything to prevent the explosion that happened soon after I came. The smell of burned flesh, pus, lactulose diarrhea (everywhere), and the floral scent of peri care soap was pretty nasty. The flexiseal is one of the world's greatest inventions.
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Apr 21, 2012 01:50
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Baby_Hippo posted:
I'm not sure what ended up happening to her since I haven't worked on that floor in a couple of weeks, I've been very curious though. If it weren't for her husband trying to keep her alive, she would have gone to hospice (alcoholic encephalopathy, she set herself on fire by passing out on the toilet while smoking a cigarette and was still largely unresponsive five weeks later). Bum the Sad posted:You really shouldn't put in a flexi seal though until you know what's gonna be coming out/after the crapping starts. Full all you know there is an impaction in there and a flexiseal is just gonna block it from being expelled post lactulose. She had been having regular formed BMs prior to the lactulose, good bowel sounds, yadda yadda. At that time I was more concerned about preventing infection and getting poo off those burns. The flexiseal was something that I could do right then and there and then clean and redress the patient as quickly as possible.
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Apr 22, 2012 15:12
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Seven Five Nine posted:North Dakota. Come to Minot, see why they're hemorrhaging nurses and have critical staffing problems! Also get paid poo poo! And have no recreational opportunities for 700 miles! Yup. I replied earlier about living in North Dakota. Long story short, only start applying in the Dakotas if you have been searching for two years are absolutely broke and desperate for any kind of job no matter how lovely it will make your life. The Dakotas are the worst.
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Apr 25, 2012 03:44
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I need some advice from fellow nurses about shift work. I am currently a float RN and I work 8 hour shifts day/eve at 0.8 FTE. It's mostly split 50/50 but in the summer I work more eves. I love being float, and 0.8 is perfect for me. I like day shifts because I can be productive with the rest of my day, and I hate eve shifts because I can't do anything. I would love to be able to sign up for some art classes or get back into dance, but I can't join anything with a set schedule because work would interfere at some point. Also eve shifts mess with my sleep so I end up being awake until 5am anyway doing absolutely nothing (internet and Netflix, basically). My hospital recently posted a new position for float pool day/night 0.9. I pick up a few night shifts each month so the 0.1 increase wouldn't be noticeable. I would love to get rid of my eve shifts and up until now I thought day/night would be ideal, but now that the opportunity is real I'm having second thoughts. I would love to be free from 4pm-11pm. However, I would also like to advance my career eventually. Is it true that day/eve is more desirable on a resume than day/night? Not to mention I have a hard time sleeping during the day, and I feel like I don't quite fit in with a lot of the night staff, where I get along great with day/eve staff. The worst part is that I can't stand being bored at work, and night shifts can get pretty boring depending on which unit I'm on (rehab is the worst). Finally, I am of the age where I have to be thinking about if I am going to have babies, and I really don't know if day/eve or day/night would be better. TL;DR Do I start day/night so I can take classes and develop my interests and hobbies outside work, but risk being bored and lonely at work? Or do I stay day/eve and sleep when I want and have a good resume but have a boring life half of the time outside of work? Which shifts do you prefer? If you have kids, what works best for you?
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May 17, 2012 10:55
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Fromage D Enfer posted:What do you guys think about Kaplan or similar NCLEX prep programs? Did you find them helpful or a waste of money/ time? Should I even bother? The salesperson came by our class the other day and scared us all into signing up for the course, but I'm not sure I will get much out of it. I took the Kaplan course because our school covered a majority of the cost and I figured it wouldn't hurt. I am very glad I took it, the instruction helped me recognize how questions were broken down, how to select which answer is best (because all the answers are correct in some way), and strategies to choose a good answer even if you're not sure what the question is about. I also thought the online quiz bank was extremely helpful. For me, I had been cramming information for the last five years, I wasn't going to learn anything new. Make sure you know your labs and your procedures and review stuff about nutrition (which of the following foods has the most potassium) and supplements (like what meds garlic supplements interact with). Studying more information at that point wasn't going to make a difference for me, but knowing how to approach NCLEX style questions and being able to practice answering questions for long periods of time really, really helped. Don't focus on learning new information, focus on learning how to answer NCLEX style questions. I also think that with Kaplan if you don't pass your first time you get your money back. I felt totally confident going into the NCLEX and I'm not sure I would have felt that way without Kaplan. I passed on my first try with 75 questions.
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May 30, 2012 08:36
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US Foreign Policy posted:How stringent is the background check and such? I uh, enjoyed myself the first time around in college, and have 2 misdemeanor charges for drug paraphernalia (no actual drug possession charges) on my record. Is this something that would kill my chances, and I should try to get expunged before applying? Anywhere you apply will ask if you've been convicted of a felony. I'm not sure if the misdemeanor charges will hinder you but if it were me, I'd be worried. If you don't mind me asking, did you get the two charges at the same time or were they separate accounts? quote:Is there any good ways I can bump up my chances before I apply? Some of my RN-college friends are working at nursing homes or home-healthcare places as an attempt to shore up their resume's, so to speak, and I wonder if I should be doing the same quote:What are the actual pre-req stuff like? Looking over the classes listed for the actual nursing program, I feel theres a decent number of the 100-level gen-ed style things I can likely skip due to my present degree, but they always allude to a unspecified 'plus some pre-reqs' that I would need to ensure before I got into the actual program. quote:And this last one is a bit more vague..how quickly are nurses generally hired, out of school? For me, I took my boards a month after graduation as there weren't any sooner available, passed the first time, and it took me five months to find a job. I put in about 75 applications at every major hospital in my state and in two other states. I got called for an interview from only two of them and got hired at one before I heard back from the other. That's with a BSN and four years of nursing assistant work. There are certain states that are always hiring (like TX, ND, FL) and some states where it's hard to find a job. It really depends on where you apply and how open minded you are about what unit you work on. ---- Hey everyone, I just submitted an application for an ICU Float position at my hospital. Wish me luck 
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Jun 15, 2012 20:17
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I have an interview for the ICU next week! I'm already nervous! (Super long Dear Diary-like post ahead:) I keep having doubts and need some reassurance. The ICU was something that I never, ever thought I would want to do until recently (like three months recently). I'm hoping it's not a phase because I genuinely want to work there, at least right now. I wanted to wait another year or so before applying, but there is a position open right now that is my FTE an preferred shift, and who knows when that would come around again. I spoke with some ICU nurses and they recently hired a lot of staff and they think I will probably get this position as nobody is really applying any more. I am currently working in the float pool so I work everywhere from med/surg to psych to hospice and I really love my job. The only reason I'm considering leaving is because sometimes I have days that are horribly stressful. It's hit or miss really, but I'd say that at least 60% of my shifts I would call "having a really bad day." Our hospital has LPNs and with our staffing grids, sometimes I have to be in charge of a team of ten patients, which can be horrible if there are a few higher acuity ones. Typically I will have seven or eight patients with an LPN. Also, as a float pool RN, a lot of the times I get dumped on with the patients that the core staff doesn't want to take care of and I end up wanting to pull my hair out. I honestly like what I do and I get along well my coworkers, which is why I'm nervous to possibly move to a different unit and have to learn a new job with new people. However, I've heard that ICU nurses are treated much better than floor nurses and in general, shifts are less stressful. ICU nurses, why do you like your job? If you were initially a floor nurse, why did you want to switch? Tell me your favorite and your least favorite things about working in the ICU. I was floated to the ICU once (should never, ever have happened, but they were desperate), and it was awesome. That is why I got the idea that I should apply for this position. After talking with some people at work that are ICU nurses, they convinced me to apply, "Oh you'll love it" being their reasoning. I'm excited for this prospect and I do think it would be a good career change, I'm just feeling nervous about leaving my comfortable position to go somewhere else. The thing that's actually holding me back the most is that I would never get to work on psych again, and that is one of my more favorite places to float. I couldn't do it every day, but I would miss working there a lot. I just need to hear that working in ICU is awesome and I'm going to love it.
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Jul 11, 2012 08:00
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Roki B posted:Straight out of college into ICU. I like the challenge every day, the severity and complexity of the diseases and comorbidities, and the nonstop pace. I like expanding my knowledge, and learning to stay calm when it all starts to go sideways. I hate wiping butts and patients who are well enough to open their stupid faces and complain. Thanks for your reply. That is one of the reasons that I want to move to ICU, because I love challenges and am fascinated by disease process and would really like to be more involved in patient care. I would also like to be more autonomous and not have to page the doctor over every little thing. Tonight was a night where I felt I really wanted to leave floor nursing. I had a team of ten patients. Five of them were on remote telemetry, seven of them were diabetics with glucose checks and insulin, one had TPN, lipids, fluids, a PCA, and a critical potassium of 2.4 with K+ riders every hour, there was a wound vac, a hallucinating guy in restraints, a demented old man trying to crawl out of bed, two diarrhea explosions, one pee all over the floor, one vomiter, one total assist, one who went unresponsive, and a schizophrenic. It was too much.
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Jul 13, 2012 07:18
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Hellacopter posted:Does anybody think a 10 day critical care class would be of good value to a new grad? The description sounds like it covers a lot specialized areas (vents, hemodynamic monitoring) but the $925 price tag makes me hesitate a lot. If you get a job in the ICU, your hospital will train you and orient you to the unit. Do you have ICU experience with your capstone/practicum? That would help if you wish to apply. However, most hospitals look for at least one year of previous work experience, often times two years, before considering your application to ICU. It never hurts to apply, but don't have your heart set on being an ICU nurse straight out of school. Don't take the class, save your thousand bucks. If/when you get a job in the ICU, your hospital will cover the cost of training you in and you will get hands-on experience with that hospital's equipment. Most hospitals will have you orient for at the very least, six weeks (my hospital's ICU orientation is ten to twelve weeks). Ten days is way too fast to absorb all that information, I'm willing to bet in a month you would have forgotten most of it. Waste of money. There's a chance that a hospital would look upon that class favorably, but experience is really what matters the most on an application. I wouldn't risk a thousand dollars over it.
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Aug 30, 2012 02:23
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dissin department posted:Next semester I start my first practicums- One focused on mental health and one more general, 5 hours a day 3 days a week. Any tips for someone going into this? For mental health, I think the biggest thing is that students who have never been exposed to mental illness tend to really play it up and get very nervous. You don't have to be afraid of the psych unit, they are people too. Also, no matter where you end up for your job, you're going to deal with mentally ill people, so use this time as a really good experience for learning how to interact with someone who is very mentally sick, how to set appropriate boundaries, how to communicate, etc, because mentally ill people get physically sick too. When you're actually on the psych unit, it's very important to always be aware of your surroundings, but that doesn't mean you constantly need to be ON GUARD, if that makes sense. If you act nervous, if you're always looking over your shoulder, if you're acting weird, patients will pick up on it. How they react to that depends entirely on their diagnosis (you could really trigger a paranoid schizophrenic, or if there's a troublemaker they could try to play you, for example). Be relaxed, treat these patients like you would treat a patient on a med/surg floor, and you'll be fine. Just know that keeping boundaries is important, and make sure you know and follow all the rules on the unit (like if they only do requests at the top of the hour, or if they only allow snacks at a certain time, etc). When I started nursing school I really wanted to do OB. After I graduated, I found that I actually hated OB and really loved psych. Keep an open mind, and who knows, you could really and up loving it too. As for the more general one, I guess, get used to 5 hours a day, 3 days a week. When you graduate, you could be working 8.5 hours a day, 5 days a week.
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Sep 26, 2012 04:56
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Hellacopter posted:This is reassuring and I suppose I should just approach it as just a normal interview and let my winning personality shine. If they are willing to fly you out there for an interview, they would most likely provide you with some kind of relocation assistance. I mean, never assume, but personally this isn't something that I would ask during the interview. It's not about what the hospital can provide you with, it's what you can bring to the hospital.
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Sep 30, 2012 08:42
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I suppose it's innapropriate to start asking if I'd be eligible for relocation assistance since I don't have a job offer yet? I'm from California and the hospital is in western Virginia so it'd be a big move, but it'd be one that I'd be happy to make if I had some help from them. This'd be my first real job.
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Dirp posted:Had a class today where we talked about chi, energy healing, and how we should keep an open mind to alternative medicines even if there isn't an scientific evidence to support them. Her evidence for chi was that when two people rub their hands together, then place their hands close to each other without touching, it feels warm. While I think energy healing is BS, it doesn't hurt to keep your mind open to alternative things. Deep muscle relaxation, slow and deep breathing, meditation, etc, can be an effective way to manage pain for patients. Not all patients want to take pain pills, and not all patients get total relief from pain meds. If your patient is willing, teaching them how to deep breathe properly and do the toes-to-head muscle relaxation can really help sometimes. Also, some people really like alternative medicine. They can come in to the hospital taking lots of different natural supplements, and sometimes those can interfere with medications (like garlic supplements, for example). It's good to at least be aware of different things out there that some people may do. But yeah, we had to learn about energy healing and waving your hands over the patient while having them say 'oohhmmm.' Or something, I didn't really pay attention. It never hurts to know about it, just in case you have a cook patient who wants you to do it for them. If they really think that your chi energy will help them, maybe they'll experience a placebo effect? In other news, I applied for a 0.9 day/night position in my same department. I've been working day/eve for a year and a half and I really, really hate eve shifts. It would also be a 0.1 increase in my FTE which would be nice. I'm keeping my fingers crossed really hard because since the day I was hired I've been waiting for a day/night float position to be open, and now there is.
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Oct 7, 2012 08:00
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Space Harrier posted:I have been working as an RN for over a year now on a med/surg floor and lately, I'm really feeling like there is just no way I can continue with the way things are. The stress is really starting to get to me, and the past few weeks have just been awful. Crying in the med-room awful. I mean, I feel like I had some idea of what I was getting into when I signed up to be a nurse. I knew there would be bad days, but it seems like the bad days are MOST days. How do you people who have been doing this for a while deal with things? I'm really feeling like I'd like to try doing something else in nursing, but I feel kind of stuck where I am right now and am unsure where I should be looking. What about your job is stressing you out? Do you have bad staffing ratios? Is it your coworkers? Is it just med/surg in general? Are you full time? Med/surg isn't the only kind of nursing there is, and it's definitely not for everyone. It's a good place to start because you get a wide variety of experience, but if you've been doing this for over a year and hate it, there's nothing wrong with looking for something new. Don't feel bad about not liking med/surg either, there are a lot of people who don't. It can be a very stressful environment, some people love that and some people hate it. Does your hospital have any open positions somewhere else? If you could have any job in the world, what would it be? If most of your days are bad days, apply to something else. Applying never hurts. If you are working full time and need to cut your FTE down to 0.8 or something, talk to your manager. I am in float pool and frequently (like 75% of the time) work on a med/surg unit (our hospital has three). I definitely couldn't go to the same med/surg floor day after day, I would feel like you do. However, really practicing time management skills, delegation, organization, and staying level headed really, really helps. If you struggle with organization or time management, that can make your stress levels soar since med/surg is so busy. Also, putting on a smile, telling yourself you're doing the best job you can do, and asking for coworkers for help when you need it can make your day easier. How do you organize your day? Do you have time worksheets that you could fill out (like a big grid where you can write down med times, dressing change times, lab checks, etc), or are you winging it? Do you feel comfortable with all the procedures/medications/lab values/etc or do you need to do some work at home? What specifically do you hate about med/surg? If you need a change, you need a change, it doesn't make you any less of a nurse if you don't like med/surg. Baby_Hippo posted:Hey gang, I FINALLY have an interview for a honest to god RN job.....in community psych! Do you have any psych experience? Have a really good reason why you want to go into community psych. Only talk about what you can bring to the job (that you are an awesome nurse and would be great for the job) and not what they can bring to you (that this would be your first job and a good way to get your foot in the door). Do you have any psych experience? If so, elaborate on the skills that you are really good at or have a good example of how you've helped someone. If not, think of a time when you may have had a patient that wasn't there for psych reasons but had a psych history, and how you took that into consideration with their patient care and what you did differently. If you have absolutely zero experience, really think about why you want this job. Do you want to stay in psych nursing forever? If yes, that's great and good luck! If not, don't interview for this job. Koivunen fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Oct 8, 2012 |
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Oct 8, 2012 23:40
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Space Harrier posted:I'd been giving some thought to what my "ideal" job would be, and I feel like I may be well suited for a position in the cath lab, OR, or recovery. A job where I would closely monitor patients during or after a procedure. Things can, and will, go horribly pear shaped from time to time, but I would be working closely with a team. Please feel free to tell me that I've got the whole idea wrong on this, those of you working in these areas, but based on what experience I have in these departments, it just seems like it might be an okay fit. Wow, I think if I worked where you do I would hate it too. Sounds like it sucks. Definitely apply to a different position if you're feeling burnt out. There's absolutely nothing wrong about not liking where you work and wanting a change. Cath lab is a really great, more relaxed place to work, and PACU, at least at my hospital, is where a lot of older nurses go to "enjoy their last years." There are younger people that work there as well, but it's so competitive to get in that usually the ones with the most seniority are the ones who get the jobs. I'm not saying that to discourage you from applying if there's an opening, just saying it's a pretty nice place to work. Baby_Hippo posted:Thanks for the tips and things to think about! I only had a three week rotation in psych (mostly on the detox floor) so I don't think I want to stay in psych nursing forever. On the other hand this is only the SECOND interview I've had in almost a year and a half searching for a job in California so it might be either this or getting the hell out of California (which is looking better and better every day). Think loooong and hard about how badly you want to stay in California. From a lot of replies in this thread it sounds like CA is flat out not hiring new RNs. I don't have firsthand experience in community psych, but I do work inpatient psych, and community psych nursing is only something you should pursue if you want to do psych forever. You have to be extremely committed to your patients, and it can be really frustrating because a lot of times, you do everything you can to try to help them but they go off their meds and get in trouble or end up in the hospital, and it goes in cycles. Also, not to make you feel discouraged, but the couple of community psych nurses I know were acute inpatient psych nurses for many years before they became community psych. If you have absolutely zero psych experience I'm not sure this place would look favorably upon sending you out into the community to manage mentally ill people. Also, if you did get this job, but want to move into hospital nursing or something, employers would notice how many years it has been since you've had hospital experience. If you don't use your skills (like starting IVs, remembering procedures correctly, bedside etiquette, etc), you lose them. If you start in community nursing, be prepared to be in public health forever. If you read back in the past several pages, people have posted about certain places in the U.S. that are hiring. If you're willing to move, you could have much better luck finding a position that you want in a different state. (Northern Minnesota is hiring, and just in time for winter...)
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Oct 9, 2012 23:27
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Baby_Hippo posted:One of the few reasons why I am still entertaining the idea is because my "dream" nursing job is corrections, which looks favorably on psych experience. Good luck, I hope the interview goes well. Go in with a smile, it's okay to be nervous but don't forget to be confident. I don't know a ton about corrections, but I would think that emergency department care or med/surg care would be more applicable. Psych experience would be good, but ER or med/surg experience would be so much better. ED would be great because as a corrections nurse you would respond to people who have been beaten up, punched, cut, impacted, self-injurious, whatever, and deciding if you could treat them there or move them to a hospital would be very important. As a med/surg nurse you would get a lot of experience with both acute and chronic issues. For example, you would get a better feel for what to do with abdominal pain, cellulitis, hypo or hyperglycemia, chest pain, etc times a million. Also, in med/surg you get a good feel for who is being honest with how sick they feel and who is exaggerating to get more attention. Community psych is a good experience if you want to stay in psych forever, but if your goal is corrections, this will not be the best job for you simply because community psych doesn't deal with broken bones, blood, puke, lacerations, pain, chronic illnesses, etc.
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Oct 19, 2012 07:21
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Baby_Hippo posted:Thanks, it went really well! It helped that I stressed my experience in corrections and that one of the interviewing RNs had worked there as well. I'm glad the interview went well! You'll have to update us when you hear if you've got it! I really hope you do get the job, it sounds like you've been on a long road and you've definitely got the right attitude for it. Let us know when you find out.
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Oct 20, 2012 04:43
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Shnooks posted:I'm a vet tech with shoe problems. I know you guys have had this discussion before, but I had another stupid question. Basically I wanted to know if anyone experiences the same thing as me and what they did. I wear K Swiss Tubes for work. Dansko clogs were awful for me, they caused a lot of hip and arch pain. I tried a few other pairs of sneakers but wasn't happy until I got these shoes. I got the K Swiss shoes at DSW for about $40 on sale, but I think the original price is pretty reasonable. They are light, they let your feet breathe, good arch support, and they absorb the impact of walking around and being in lots of different positions well. I've had them for about a year and a half and they're still in great condition. I would get another pair again. http://www.footlocker.com/_-_/keyword-k-swiss+tubes
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Oct 26, 2012 00:55
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Nurse Fanny posted:I love being surrounded by people who are simultaneously smart and dumb. Oh god, this. I was never very political until I became a nurse. Now I'm ultra-liberal and can't fathom why a nurse would be anything but. I'm really involved with our nurse's union, and for the election I made a lot of phone calls. I was amazed at how many nurses flat-out didn't want to talk about it or didn't know anything about the current state of politics. It also blows my mind how many nurses don't like the union. It's true that we have to pay $750/year in union fees, but those fees help ensure that you are never doubled back, you get every other or every third weekend off, you only work a certain number of holidays, you get your overtime pay, you get decent money for your work, etc etc etc. Recently our staffing has been absolutely awful (shift after shift of having 10 or 11 patients with an LPN), so the union sent around a petition for safe staffing and asked RNs to sign. There were a handful of us that really pushed it, and something like 80% of RNs at the hospital signed, but a few people refused to sign because "that's too political." Made me lose a bit of respect for them, honestly. Anyway, Obamacare is a wonderful thing and I hope it goes into full effect before he leaves office, and it stays in effect forever. Healthcare is a universal right, a person shouldn't have to worry about whether or not they can afford to be taken care of when they are sick. I really feel like nurses that are opposed to Obamacare just haven't taken the time to adequately research it. They just hear one quip like "FREE ABORTIONS" and they automatically dismiss the entire thing and don't bother to look into it any more. I cold go on but I've already written a wall of text. Until next time...
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Nov 11, 2012 08:44
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SuzieMcAwesome posted:Whelp. Assisted with my first real code. Came upon a nurse doing compressions and a code cart being wheeled down . Jumped In to do whatever was needed. Hooked up leads (I was so frazzled at the time I forgot the word and called them sticky things as in " I need um...um... Sticky things *while patting my chest*) took over compressions for the nurse who looked tired (and wasn't doing very good anyway). I broke at least 5 ribs. I praise jebus that we did code simulations on Tuesday. Good job jumping in feet first, it's the best way to learn. It sucks being the one to break the ribs, but you can't save their life without doing so. Patients can recover from broken ribs, but they can't recover from a stopped heart. First codes are always the hardest. Once you do more you'll find that they are relatively similar and it's much easier to keep your cool. Maybe one day you will be the rapid responder calling the shots.
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Nov 21, 2012 04:56
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I need to vent about something. I basically got someone fired yesterday and I feel awful about it. Let's call this guy Al, he's a man in his 50s who has been an aide for like three years, has a wife and two teenage girls at home. He went to school to get his RN while he was an aide, and somehow graduated and passed his boards. I precepted him on his last extended week of orientation, and it was exhausting (normally I love orienting and teaching). I had him for three days. By the time I oriented him, he had already had eight weeks of training, and normally new float pool RNs get six weeks (our hospital usually runs about 180 beds, at max we can run 250). In the three days that I had him, long story short, he almost killed two people. In one instance, he tried to administer ten times the normal dose of a blood pressure medication, and in the other, he wanted to give a large dose of morphine to someone with a dangerously low blood pressure. Good thing I was watching over his shoulder and intervened, otherwise who knows what would have happened. Not to mention his time management skills were poo poo and he felt totally overwhelmed on an extremely easy shift, even after several weeks of orientation. My manager wanted to talk about how it went with Al, and I broke down crying in his office. Al is really the nicest person you will ever meet, but he is nice to the point of having no backbone and coming across as super weird. He also has no ability to look at things in the big picture, and will only look at one thing at a time. For instance, I had a relatively simple patient who had low urinary output and +3 edema in her lower extremities, and I asked Al, "why do you think this is?" He looked at her critically high Vanco level and said "Obviously someone has been giving her too much Vanco." My manager then told me that this was his probation period, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to fire him at the end of the week, or wait until the Christmas season was over. I thought it would be the kindest gesture to wait until Christmas was over, as I'm pretty sure Al has no idea that this was a long time coming. My manager then told me he would wait until December 27th to fire him, and then he made a point to tell me that although people had reflected that Al was not the best RN, nobody had been this honest with him about his performance. I feel like the nail in the coffin at this point. While I was crying, my manager told me that while this is hard, it's easier to fire an incompetent RN rather than deal with him accidentally killing someone due to knowledge deficit. It's easier to let someone go from a job instead of knowing that your silence resulted in a death... While I agree, it's still lovely.
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Dec 21, 2012 11:38
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Donald Kimball posted:I'm a recent college graduate looking for some healthcare related employment between now and my admission (hopefully) to med school. I'm looking at either becoming a pharmacy technician or CNA, but both sound pretty interesting and would offer me some valuable clinical and practical experience. This is awesome. I hope you go for a CNA. Being an aide is tough work, it's extremely hands-on and dirty and you get to know your patients very intimately as all you do is deal with the stuff that comes out of them. You would also get to work closely with nurses, assuming you landed a job in a hospital. When you move up the ranks in med school, you will have an appreciation for your aide and nurse coworkers that few other med school students will get to experience. Getting your aide certification isn't difficult, you basically have to know how to measure stuff, how to take blood pressure, how to give a bed bath, etc. It definitely take practice to be efficient at aide work and there are a lot of tricks that you pick up on the job, but actually becoming an aide isn't hard and doesn't take long. I worked as an aide before I became an RN, and you can tell which RNs were aides before they went to nursing school. Basically, it's a lot of butt wiping, lots of heavy lifting and bending, lots of accidentally getting pee/poo/puke/mucus/spit/pus/blood on you and not freaking out, lots of smelling things you could never imagine... It's definitely a great way to know if you want to go into the medical field or not. Like I said, being an aide is tough work, and it makes you really appreciate your coworkers.
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Dec 22, 2012 16:45
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Kontradaz posted:Is the whole nursing job security thing dead nowadays? I've seen plenty of remarks saying that the status quo has changed and that most recent grads are having issues finding nursing jobs. True? Not True? Will this get better in a few years if true? I graduated with a BSN, very qualified history, and a good resume, and it took me five months and 70ish applications before I got an interview. With that one interview, I landed a job. Like /\ said, there are jobs out there, but you need to be extremely flexible if you hope to land one immediately after graduating. It's hard to say what the job market will be like in a few years, it depends on several factors. If you want to be a nurse, go to nursing school, don't let the economy scare you off. If you want to be a nurse for job security and not so much for nursing, look into a different field. Donald Kimball posted:Thanks all for the advice. I think I'm going to try and challenge my state (NC) Nurse Aide I exam by teaching myself. It looks like the written portion is common sense, so I'll just slam practice tests out. I am worried about the skills portion; on the other hand, I'm not so worried as to want to spend 250 - 450 dollars for a couple of review sessions. I would be very hesitant about trying to get your certification without ever attending a class. Although aide work does seem pretty basic, there are lots of things that you need to be taught in person to get a hang of before you apply for a job. In the hospital I work at, new nursing assistants get one week of orientation. If you show up never having practiced these skills, your coworkers will not be happy with you. It's not up to them to teach you skills, you need to enter the workforce prepared. While the written portion does seem like common sense, nursing assistant work does not involve much writing besides vital signs and I&Os. It's all hands-on. If you don't gain experience with the hands-on stuff, you very well could lose your first job as a NA. For example, if you walked into a room right now and had to assist with doing a full bed change and a complete bed bath on a quad with a massive code brown, how would you do it? If you had to feed and dress a recent stroke patient, how would you do it? If your patient is being rolled into the room on a stretcher and needs to be transferred into the bed, how would you do it? It's one thing to read this stuff out of a book and entirely different to do it in real life, even if it means practicing with mannequins or other NA students. On the first day of your job, you are expected to know all this stuff. If the cost might seem like a lot right now, once you get a job, that's a portion of one paycheck. It will be well worth the money so that you are actually prepared. Also, whoever ends up interviewing you will not be impressed if you say you earned your certification by yourself, and it will come up. While I think it's really great that you are actively pursuing it, and it would be awesome if it all worked out for you, please just pay the money and take the course. You won't regret it. Edit: Roki B posted:North Dakota still has ICU out of new-grad positions. That's the thing about being flexible. I went to Uni in North Dakota (with the mindset "It will be nice to go to school in a small town") and it is pure hell. While I received excellent education, living in North Dakota was the absolute worst 4.5 years of my entire life. I specifically remember a moment when I trudged through two feet of fresh snow, and after de-icing my car, discovered that the engine wouldn't start since it was -40. I was sitting in my car, the last one in the lot since I was there so late studying, and the orange glow from the street lamp was shining through my window. It was completely silent, and as I watched my breath rise in the air, I thought to myself, "What the gently caress have I done with my life?" But if you don't mind living in hell if it means getting a job, more power to you. Koivunen fucked around with this message at 07:17 on Dec 29, 2012 |
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Dec 29, 2012 05:31
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Nrapture posted:How long did everyone study for the NCLEX? I'm thinking about an hour per day for just over a month should be fine, but then I reconsider and worry it won't be enough. I took the one-week Kaplan course, and I wanted to take the exam within a few weeks of graduating, but I couldn't get a test date for six weeks. You're not going to be learning anything new after you graduate, it's just a matter of practicing the questions. In the six week period I was actually really bad at studying, and I put in MAYBE 50 hours total, and only taking practice tests with Kaplan's online question bank. I passed on my first try with 75 questions. Don't study yourself sick for the NCLEX. Practice taking questions, but don't exhaust yourself or over-study. The most important thing is, whatever you do, don't do anything NCLEX-related the day before or the day of your NCLEX. Take a day to fully relax, give your brain some time to de-stress, and when you go in to take the exam, you'll feel a lot more fresh than you would if you wore out your mind the day before. The further you put off taking the NCLEX, the further you put off getting hired for a job. Places of employment don't want to wait for you to pass your boards, they want to hire someone who is ready to work.
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Jan 6, 2013 16:22
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