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Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

JAF07 posted:

Welp, just got back from taking the boards. Shut off after 75, and according to the pearson trick I passed. Holy hell I think I had like 10 SATA questions in a row.

Nicely done. And if you were getting legions of SATA questions it means you were probably so far ahead of the curve that the test was flailing to find questions to force a 50% success rate. Congratulations.

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Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

Skinny King Pimp posted:

Is it worth the student loans to get a BSN from Emory in Atlanta? Would take two years, I think, since it's an accelerated program for people who already have a degree. I did really well in A&P I when I took it ages ago (would obviously need to retake it) and I really need to find something that would work as a career.

I went to that program and paid off my student debt within one and a half years. Nursing pays quite well. That said if I'd gone to a cheaper program I would have an extra 20k or so...

Emory's program really irritated me at times. It had two awesome professors who are unfortunately gone now and a slew of very academic, very theory oriented and very anal retentive folks. It sounds silly to complain about a school being excessively academic, but Emory was very, very academic and not always in a good way. Leadership was very much A Thing too, which irritated me to no end because I'd like to be a decent nurse first before I sit in a classroom talking about styles of leadership and reading Who Moved My Cheese.

Truth be told, I'd go elsewhere. The only redeeming thing about Emory was the awesome pharma professor (gone) and the even more awesome med-surg instructor who failed so many students that she was politely asked to leave. People used to hold prayer circle before her exams. Man I miss her. Ultimately though, it's a school for people with more money than sense.

Ohthehugemanatee fucked around with this message at 09:57 on Nov 14, 2012

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

Skinny King Pimp posted:

Dang, I was hoping the nursing program would be on par with the medical program. Oh well. I've always been very interested in the medical field, but I don't know exactly what I want to do. I thought it would be a good degree that would open doors.

To be fair, it did open doors for me. Emory's name helped me get my first job and probably helped when I applied to graduate school. It's just that there are tons of good schools around and there's little reason to go for Emory specifically, especially given their staff changeover. If you want an awesome name to put on your resume, hit up UPenn or Hopkins or UIC or any of the awesome state schools that are better ranked and half the cost of Emory.

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

PopRocks posted:

EMT takes about a semester and gives you more flexibility, you can become an ER tech or drive for a private med transport company, or answer 911 calls depending on your municipality.

This is... not accurate.

Being an EMT basic gives you the flexibility to compete with the horde of desperate EMT basics who are all looking for jobs. There is perhaps no position in health care with a more horrific imbalance between potential applicants and available jobs.

Seriously, run a craigslist search in your area and see how many folks are looking to hire EMT Bs. Then check for CNAs. EMS is loving brutal for new applicants.

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

TheFarSide posted:

Fun PEA story. First night working in a trauma ICU during my critical care fellowship, but we get some medical patients as well, and we had a nursing home referral who was DNR-CCA, came in with severe sepsis syndrome, already in shock. By the time I had this patient for night shift, they were a 1:1 with as much care they required. Nothing out of the ordinary in terms of equipment, just tubed on a vent with a CVC and an art line - your typical ICU patient. However, she was on levo, neo, vasopressin, dobutamine, amio, and bicarb drips, with maintenance fluids when I had her, and this was barely maintaining systolic pressure in the 60-70 range. It was slowly dropping during the course of the evening, until it was holding steady in the 40s on her art line. I saw her art line waveform was slowly missing more and more beats compared to the cardiac monitor until it looked like she was only perfusing every other beat or so. I'm talking everything through with my preceptor and we decide to hold a few breaths on the ventilator. When we do, the art line waveform remains flat. She was in PEA at this point and the positive pressure of the vent filling her lungs was compressing her heart enough to perfuse enough for the arterial waveform we were seeing on the monitor and maintain the weak systolic pressure. Good times.

That's really cool. Terrible on an emotional level, but really loving cool from a critical care perspective.

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

Shnooks posted:

I'm currently a veterinary technician at a small clinic with 7 doctors. They're all incredibly uptight, anal retentive, and neurotic to such a fault they should all be in some major therapy. Sometimes they like me, sometimes they don't, and when they don't they yell, stamp their feet, and bombast us in front of everyone. Worst of all, they have the power to "push" you out of your technician position, and if you're not particularly liked they put you back into a receptionist position whether you like it or not.

How the hell do you deal with neurotic doctors? Everyone I work with seems over it and they just seem to let it slide. I like my coworkers but they're completely chill and unruffled by anything, which I try to be but it's hard to feel motivated to work in an environment when you're getting yelled at for such minute things.

Bail. Adults don't yell at each other and what you describe is not normal. There are no tricks to dealing with that sort of behavior save learning to push back appropriately, and even that can do you more harm than good if the environment is toxic enough that no one will support you.

If you really want to fix the problem, do what nurses did years ago. Unionize, ensure you have ridiculous job security and shut that poo poo down with open confrontation and solidarity. Not really a short term solution though.

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

Koivunen posted:

This is... not right. I live in Minnesota, and there is absolutely no way that something over $100,000 would be an "average." I work in the ICU and I bring home about $3200 a month after taxes and health insurance are deducted. Before taxes I make about $50k a year, and after taxes and insurance, I bring home about $38k a year. I mean, if there's a nurse that is still doing bedside nursing and has been at the same hospital for 40 years and is working full-time night shift and weekends, there's a possibility that they could approach the $100k mark before taxes, but there's no way that's an average.

Are you in the metro area and working full time? When I started in the twin cities I made 65k before taxes and that was as a new grad on ICU nights working a .9. As a 1.0 nurse I would have made roughly 72k. My wife is a full time nurse with a few years of experience and makes something on the order of 80k. Those rates are fairly standard given the success of the Minnesota nursing union.

I think that map is actually pretty accurate. That few RNs work full time makes it seem like we make less but most people in other fields are working more hours for proportionately less money.

What I'm saying is everybody should move to Minnesota.

EDIT: Forgot that non-hospital nurses bring down the average. Looks like 70k is about average as was posted above.

Ohthehugemanatee fucked around with this message at 11:11 on May 28, 2013

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

Fatty Patty posted:

any suggestions on scrubs that aren't lint magnets?

Greys anatomy scrubs are the only scrubs worth buying. They're more expensive than most other scrubs but they're comfortable, last longer and look good. No issues with lint in my experience.

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

SimianNinja posted:

Are there any goons around here who are currently working as PAs? (or perhaps studying to be one)
I'm interested in possibly pursuing a career in the field and was hoping to find somebody to chat with about experiences, etc. Figured this would be the best place to ask...

I bet you might have more luck starting a thread in the TGD forum and seeing if we can get some folk to come out of the woodwork. You'll probably find more PAs lurking there than in the nursing thread. It's odd. We've got a ton of MDs, a bunch of nurses and yet I can't think of any medical posters that I know are PAs. They ought to have their own thread.

I'm an NP, not a PA, and while I couldn't answer many questions about the education and hurdles of going that path, I work in the exact same role as my PA colleagues and if you start a new thread I might be able to answer questions about what our jobs are like.

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

squirreltactic posted:

Does anyone here have any psych nursing experience? My wife if graduating in May and she has an offer for a psych nurse position, which is what she really wanted so she's pretty excited. She is a little concerned that it may make her less marketable if she decides in a few years that psych really isn't for her. Any tips/advice/experience?

If it's what she wants to do, it's what she should do. There's no reason to put yourself through med surg or something just to develop skills you'll lose three months into working psych.

Also, she will be less marketable for anything other than psych, but people move out of psych all the time. It's rough and you won't jump straight into say, ICU, but it can be done.

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

Finagle posted:

:negative:

First rejection letter. :( Now to somehow summon the motivation to keep filling out applications.

Don't let it get you down. It's a crazy random process. When I went to nursing grad school there were only eight programs offering what I wanted to do. The lowest ranking school put me through a grueling application process including a very costly group interview before ultimately rejecting me. The highest ranked school? Got in without an interview. I can only guess that the "safe" school probably had a shitload more applicants but ultimately who knows.

Just keep applying. You'll be fine.

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

Donald Kimball posted:

Any suggestions on getting into nursing school?

The girlfriend is thinking of becoming a nurse. She has a bs in biology with a year of experience at labcorp doing immunoassay.

We were looking at the Jefferson college of health sciences accelerated pre-licensure track. Are these programs intensely competitive? She will need to take some additional prerequisites, but would she also need to consider being a cna for a time to show some clinical experience?

Generally they're all pretty competitive, but that shouldn't hold anyone back. Being a CNA might be a good way to get direct health care experience and work with some nurses so that she can be sure she wants to do it, but it certainly isn't a prerequisite. It's a tough job though, and kind of nice to have had so that when you make it to RN you realize how good you have it.

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

Etrips posted:

So, last week I had interviewed for a med surg position at a hospital. Did not hear back from them until today, saying that they had filled all their positions but wanted to know if I could interview with a few other departments. Had my telephone/webcam interview a few hours ago and they said that they wanted me to shadow the ED and Neuro ICU for a few hours tomorrow.

I have read a lot already about the ED and know what to expect. But what about the Neuro ICU? What can I expect to see there? What can I do to impress the nurses / manager there?

Be interested and try to seem bright and halfway competent. No one will expect a non-ICU nurse to know what the hell is going on. Ask about training, ask about orientation periods... All about the patient population and what they deal with the most. Make it clear that you want to do it but that you want to do it well and want to know how they train people for such a specialized field.

Then go home and think about if you really want to do neuro ICU because yikes that would probably be even more depressing than MICU.

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

CardiacEnzymes posted:

At best unions are an ineffectual drain on your paycheck. At worst they absolutely will resort to lying, threats and harassment to get what they want, not necessarily to your benefit.
I worked in a unionized hospital as a tech in nursing school and luckily my per diem status allowed me to decline membership. They randomly emailed me after a year or so threatening to get me fired if I didn't join up and start paying ASAP. I happily informed them that I had recently accepted a fantastic RN position at a non-union hospital so they could take their threats and shove it. I was on their junk mail/ cold call list for YEARS until I chewed out enough of the right people to remove my name. I've worked in a non union magnet hospital for years and I have yet to work with anyone who regrets working non-union. My money serves me much better in my retirement fund than in some reps pocket.

Eh, the MNA gave us a pension and when we struck after the hospitals decided they wanted to get rid of it, we broke the hospitals in days. Twice. The cost of membership was miniscule and I started at $35/hr (years ago too, so that has likely only gone up). Nurses had solid job protection and we were spared the constant petty administrative dickishness that I see now working as a provider in a non-union hospital. If anything, I actually felt guilty because the nursing union was so strong and effective that the hospitals never had a chance against us.

All in all, it was pretty rocking and far, far from a net drain on my paycheck.

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

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 know NPs
NPs have varying levels of autonomy depending on the state you live in, but can anyone give me some info on day to day work?

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?

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

Annath posted:

B. I think PEG tubes are bigger than IV tubes, so pushing through the IV should have been more difficult. But if the student has never done a PEG feeding, she has no basis for comparison, so....

Whole thing is hosed, but throwing the poor girl under the bus isn't gonna accomplish anything at all.

Yeah, this used to happen all the time in the States until someone had the painfully obvious in retrospect epiphany of making it so that peg tubes and IV lines had different connectors and you can't physically plug feeds into an IV or use a feeding syringe with an IV port.

It went from a "well this just happens sometimes" cause of death to nearly nonexistent, although every now and then someone jury rigs a fix and McGuyvers their way into killing a patient.

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005
Don't take ACLS. Your first job will pay for it and you will not learn anything useful for where you are right now. It's mostly garbage medicine anyway barring defibrillation, and the routines you learn will be rapidly lost if you aren't using them on a weekly basis.

My ICU didn't even have new grads take ACLS until we were through orientation. Our job in codes was to do the BLS stuff and by the time we were sent to ACLS training we realized we'd already picked most of it up.

Your time could be far better spent.

Do try to do all the BLS stuff you can. Do CPR, have an RT show you for to properly bag a patient, get in the habit of checking a pulse instead of watching a monitor...

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

MurderBot posted:

To be fair, the chances of you needing an emergency fund past say...8K is kind of pointless. I don't want to be this anarachist/the world is hosed guy, but you should probably enjoy your life/expenditures at least until you're early 30's. You're probably going to be working into your 60's, you might as well have fun into your 30's. Once you hit that age, you'll find yourself in a position where you're making more money, and squandering cash away for a 401k/retirement is more manageable. Enjoy life, drink and buy poo poo you like. When you hit your 30's you're essentially washed up and either your vagina is gaping/dick don't work. Start saving for your depends and denture cleaning solution then.

This is... bad advice.

Compound interest rocks, and a small amount of savings when you're young is worth far more than a similar amount later. People are also really bad at adjusting their financial habits as they age. "Oh I'll save in my thirties" is what a lot of my paycheck-to-paycheck coworkers were saying twenty years ago and many of them make around 100k. Life also gets more expensive, not less. You end up with a house that needs expensive repairs, kids and ever growing medical bills as you get older.

You don't need to be a lunatic who lives in a cardboard box, eats Ramen and maxes out their 401k every year at the price of having any joy in your life, but if you're entering a profession like nursing where you're going to be making significantly more than most working Americans, you can easily save and have a blast.

You really, really don't want to be that sixty year old nurse still working med-surg.

Ohthehugemanatee fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Jun 4, 2015

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

JibbaJabberwocky posted:

I'm applying to CNM school this spring and I have the option of going through and getting my DNP afterward. At Frontier they'll basically give you your DNP half off if you go straight through after your CNM and get it. It's still like 9 months more school and an extra $10k so I'm trying to figure out what the positives and negatives are so I can compare them. I can't really figure out what a DNP actually does for you in practice. I know they prefer you have it if you want to go into nursing administration (would rather die) or maybe into teaching but all I want to do is be on staff at a birth center. I feel like I've been told it allows you to open your own practice but I'm not super all about that either. I was told recently by a CNM that she wished she'd had her FNP as well because she struggled to charge appropriately for care she provided. She said she felt like she would have had a lot more money if she had been an FNP as well. Would a DNP degree serve the same purpose when it comes to billing or is that completely wrong?

You're getting some seriously terrible information.

DNP does not have anything to do with opening your own practice. From the standpoint of the law in every state that I am familiar with, an NP is an NP regardless of whether they're grandfathered in from the olden days, an MSN or a DNP. The only ones who currently care about MSN vs DNP are NPs themselves, and we don't even care that much. It's currently a degree without a meaningful distinction. Will it always be? That's the question that no one really knows the answer to.

As for billing, the DNP isn't going to help you there either. Billing has nothing to do with the care you provide or the complexities or your degree and has everything to do with following inane documentation requirements. I can spend two hours admitting someone dying of liver failure and then auto bill for the lowest possible level if a "family history negative" sneaks into my note. I can also knock out a maximum billing admission in less than half an hour provided I have a good template set up with our EMAR that will drag the necessary information in. It's all about keeping abreast of medicare's lunacies (E.g. no "urosepsis" and lots of "Sepsis secondary to gram negative organism suspected urinary source") and embracing ridiculous note bloat (why yes, let me tell you more about my hospice patient's smoking history and family history of coronary artery disease...). Billing is entirely divorced from patient care.

So yeah, the DNP isn't going to generate any more revenue for you at all. Nor does it allow for independent practice in a way that an MSN would not.

I would also in general be hesitant about stacking NP degrees on top of each other. You might look like you can take care of a ton of folks on paper but it takes time and effort to actually be any good in any given area. If I were to stack and FNP degree on top of my ACNP one, I suspect I'd just be kinda lovely at both.

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

White Chocolate posted:

Who is an NP here? Are NP board questions as stupid as nclex questions?

NP boards (ANCC) were a laughable joke. Easier than the NCLEX by an order of magnitude and just embarrassingly simple. The NCLEX felt brutal. The only thing I felt after NP boards was embarrassment for the test.

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

Ravenfood posted:

It's pissing me off because I'm eyeing ACNP as a career and I really don't need more competition to drive my salary even lower than it will be.

We're the rarest of the rare. I wouldn't worry about it. It used to be FNPs got hired everywhere and in the last few years I've started to see them essentially blocked from inpatient work because it's just too much of a crapshoot as to if they can hack it. There's a huge demand for inpatient trained providers and it's basically just us vs the PAs.

Iron Lung posted:

What about acute care DNPs? My current plan is to work on the floor (ED/ICU, i dunno what yet) for many years and then likely try to specialize. Not interested at all in FNP.

Roki are you in Portland or Seattle? I think its Portland. I want to move to Portland. Right now we're considering Long Beach/LA, Chicago (top choice), Atlanta, and then the PNW is a dream of mine that likely won't occur because we don't know anyone there and also the Big One is coming. It's also really expensive to own a home up there which is an eventual goal. I graduate in December and will likely work out in AZ for a year or so since I have connections, assuming I can get a job. Plus it'll give us time to get used to the night shift thing, figured that would be a good idea before moving away from our entire support network!

Careful there - ACNP does not prepare you to work in the ED. I could do ICU easily but there's so much god drat family medicine in the ED that we really aren't good providers for that. The ED also doesn't screen out kids and pregnant women so you straight up have next to zero training for a not-insignificant chunk of your population. If I wanted to go to the ED I'd have to go pick up an FNP degree before I felt remotely comfortable.

EDIT: Oops, misread that you want to work there as a nurse. Carry on...

Ohthehugemanatee fucked around with this message at 15:14 on Aug 24, 2016

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

Risky posted:

Hiring any new grad into an ICU position is loving retarded. You should have to start on a med surg floor to learn how everything works and get some drat experience before you go into higher acuity patients.

Nah. It's a completely different world and skills for one role don't really transfer to the other. Med surg is just a great way to convince new grads to quit the field.

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

Ravenfood posted:

Any CCM NPs in the thread have comments on their program or practice afterwards? Currently trying for Pitt (since I live here) and Vanderbilt (since I hear their intensivist program owns and the fellowship after seems good), but I wouldn't mind other thoughts. I still feel guilty trying to leave since I think experienced nurses are so drat important for unit health and I actually do love my job, but I just think that I'll eventually get sick of it and realize it too late to be able to make a change in my life. I know that I tend towards inertia and staying in one place really strongly, so I can't tell if my desire to stay is just a fear of change or actual desire to stay, and I do like the idea of working in a unit to push for more NP independence.

The University of Pennsylvania's program was great. The AACGNP or whatever they're calling it now isn't strictly an intensivist focused program but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I went thinking I wanted to do ICU afterwards and after a few rotations and exposure to non-critical care medicine, ended up deciding I'd much rather be a hospitalist and keep people the gently caress out of ICUs.

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

Annath posted:

Oh I haven't decided yet. I'm leaning towards shooting for Hopkins, just because at a certain point $150k vs $250k becomes semantics. Plus maybe I can get a job in an underserved community and get my loans paid off.

You'd think that watching our generation drown in debt would sink in, but apparently people still think like this.

That difference is literal years of your working life. An extra 100k will prevent you from saving, limit your job options and hang over your head for years. The extra debt will be a roughly 10k paycut for years. It will delay meaningful savings for 5-10 years. You will retire years later than otherwise.

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

B-Mac posted:

Eh I think annath is in the Midwest and the Midwest has poo poo pay for floor nurses. I was making $23 a hour before I left the hospital. It also capped out around $33 a hour and lol at reaching that at $1 raise every other year. A NP will definitely make more in the Midwest.

They do, but the opportunity cost is high as it has always been for NPs. I went from making 70k/yr as an RN to 95k/yr as a new NP, but all that was at the cost of 80k in lost wages and 80k for school. I've now been an NP for 5 years with a series of solid raises as I've become less horrifying in my practice, but I'm probably just starting to come out ahead from alternate-universe-manatee who stuck with bedside nursing and invested instead of going to school.

There are plenty of good reasons to go the NP route and I'm glad I did, but it's not an amazing financial move for most, particularly now that school is lengthening and costs continue to inflate.

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005
I'm an ACNP and it rocks. Pick a good field to work in (ICU or anything on the medical side) and you'll never get bored. Avoid surgery services unless you really want to do all the poo poo the docs don't want to do.

It sucks that online is your only option though. I wouldn't recommend that route to anyone unless you're disciplined as hell. There's just too much to learn.

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005
That's a very specific field you're looking into and I suspect you may not find anyone here who can give you much helpful info. I'm pretty sure this forum has 2 CRNAs and one NP total, and I'm adult acute care so about as far from helpful as can be.

The psych NPs I've worked with are generally very happy with their jobs and there's lots of demand, so it's something I'd absolutely encourage anyone with a passion for to look into.

Maybe try the allnurses forum? There's some weird poo poo over there but last I remember they had an advanced practice subforum that wasn't too loony.

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005
If you want to wear a cool white coat, be an NP (or PA), not a physician. Most of the pay, most of the respect, basically none of the debt (well except for the PAs, sorry folks) and you don't have to spend years of your life climbing a hierarchy that everyone acknowledges sucks but can never be changed for reasons.

Also the nurses are cooler to you because you know how poo poo works and no one has to lie about 1h neuro checks, I&Os or how much ativan they just gave the detoxing alcoholic.

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

Ravenfood posted:


E: math may be different for other specialities, to be fair.

Yeah, specialties get all hosed up. I'm a hospitalist and probably make 60-70% of my physician coworker salaries while working fewer hours. If I were part of a surgical or procedure team I'm sure my salary would be kept in the pretty cash drawer.

Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

Koivunen posted:

Ever considered Minneapolis/St. Paul, or MN in general?

Minneapolis and Saint Paul rule for a lot of reasons and the nursing climate is pretty awesome. There's a strong union so even non union places don't get up to too much bullshit.

Do: Work at Methodist. Maybe work in the East Bank U of M. Maybe work at the VA. Can't tell you much about the Alina system or most of the rest of Fairview.

Do not: Work at U of M Riverside in any capacity (psych or peds are actually okay). Do not work in the ED at the U of M East Bank in any capacity.

Edit: I saw you're ICU or at least were. U of M East Bank and Methodist ICU I can both vouch for.
Double edit: Riverside has an "ICU". Do not work there.

Ohthehugemanatee fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Oct 22, 2022

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Ohthehugemanatee
Oct 18, 2005

Kung Fu Candy posted:

Can you explain more about why not to work at Riverside or its ICU, or not East Bank ED?

Riverside is a cool community hospital that does a great job with L&D, ortho and psych. Unfortunately, it's next to the East Bank U of M which is an academic medical center that does transplants and neurosurg and all of that. For years they were allowed to sort of be their own thing and everyone understood that you never let a sick patient get within a mile of Riverside and that was fine and good. It's the kind of place where the ICU is equivalent to IMC or even med surg at most academic medical centers. But it's also a problem, because "chill place where nothing happens" attracts a certain type of medical provider and a certain kind of nurse, and it drives away people who don't want that. When things really go bad on Riverside, it's terrifying because there just aren't many people around who regularly deal with horrible things. The other wrinkle is that admin is trying to get Riverside to up their game and offload some of East Bank's population, so they're sending sicker and sicker patients over the protests of basically everyone who works there.

I'd specifically avoid their ICU because anything remotely interesting is getting transferred out and you'd be missing out on what makes ICU fun.

East Bank ED is just a really rough place for nurses for reasons I do not know, but it has been a problem for years. The department absolutely burns through nursing staff. I don't even try to learn anyone's names because they'll be gone before I can get it right. When RNs I know transfer down there I can rest assured I'll never see them again after a month. Oddly enough the docs are perfectly happy. But even before the pandemic and everything going to hell they couldn't keep nurses around for anything.

Ohthehugemanatee fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Nov 19, 2022

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