|
Shoot for a BSN -- anything lower is really not a career position and with a BSN it's easy to move up, with anything lower moving up sucks. Your first nursing job can actually be quite hard to get. Nursing school is difficult and you need to ace the prereqs (which are not easy) or else they will not make space for you in their program. Nursing jobs in places you want to live require experience which is acquired in places you do not want to live, although all of Arkansas is not a place anyone wants to live so maybe you're okay there. Nursing is still a female dominated position. It won't really matter that you're a guy, no one is going to cut you down or lift you up because of that appreciably (you will have people tell you that the ER and psych prefer male nurses but they don't give a poo poo). However once you find a job the environment is going to be a little catty and backstabby especially compared to a bar. Be nice to coworkers until you figure out who really hates you and who just lacks people skills, do your work by the book so if you get a genuine harpy she can't get her claws in all the way. This kind of stuff won't matter at all at some places and in others will be the worst thing about your job, so it just depends. Nursing is learned 90% on the job and should still be an associates degree IMO, however the decent pay and respectability lead to educational inflation. Most of the schooling is almost irrelevant. But you must clear the hurdles to win the race. Sometimes ladies have vagina issues and may want a female nurse instead of you. This is the reason you help the lady nurses lift fatties without complaining about it. This is not a fair trade, you're getting the bad end of that deal by a mile, but still.
|
#
¿
Sep 19, 2015 10:08
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 22, 2024 16:30 |
|
|
Doing CNA work in your summers is a good idea anyway and will give you an edge when it comes to applying for real nursing jobs, especially if you're not a sadgoon and make connections while doing CNA stuff. On the flipside being a CNA is probably the number one most underpaid job in the country as it's physically demanding, mentally unrewarding, dangerous (both to your back and in your general exposure to c diff ridden lovely asses) and disgusting. This is also part of the reason you want to be at the BSN level or higher to make nursing a career -- LPNs still have to clean rear end once in a while, RNs almost never (except in certain circumstances). You can get a job at a LTC as a CNA, have them pay for your LPN, move to a lovely country hospital that still employs LPNs after a couple of years, get your RN while working there and commuting 45 minutes back and forth to the nearest city with an RN program, then upgrade that to a BSN a couple of years later. But honestly it's probably smarter both in stress, chances to fail, and even financial aspects to go to a traditional 4 year BSN program and be done with it. Oh and also obviously a factory job where it's you vs. some machine in an eight hour block is the worst job in the world, but CNA could be number two or three by almost any aggregated metric. raton fucked around with this message at 06:30 on Sep 21, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Sep 21, 2015 06:26
|
|
|
therobit posted:This is exactly what I am trying to do right now. I find Chem to be easy if time consuming but I took a bio class that was mostly cellular biology with some genetics and human systems mixed in and it kicked my butt hard enough that I am planning on switching schools to take a Saturday rather than a night session when I take A&P. Biochem is the traditional dream killer. Enjoy. Or if your school doesn't require it, lucky you.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 22, 2015 06:29
|
|
|
January posted:If you don't mind being unable to put down roots for a while, you could become a traveling nurse, putting in a few months at a time as needed. I know a guy who did that, and it pays more than a regular nursing position, plus they paid for his housing. He would usually get a few weeks off between assignments, too. Sometimes (Oftentimes?) traveling nurses are on 1099s and don't get any benefits, so the higher salary can be a bit bunk.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2015 05:07
|
|
|
Bum the Sad posted:Eh. You don't really have to care about the person you just have to take pride in your work. correctpost Also the money you can make in nursing is enough to just be in it for the money. Just barely, but still. Lassitude posted:I actually found that I got treated quite well as a male nurse. Other female nurses seemed more accommodating, and of course everyone likes the 6'4" guy who can help them lift that patient who took a spill. Sometimes female patients will not want you to provide their care (e.g. bathing, catheters, etc) but that's okay. For real though, I got the impression that female nurses treated me better because I was a guy. Like, some kind of reverse sexism. It was a bit disheartening. They were definitely catty with each other but I pretty much never got that from them myself. I also went out of my way to help people with whatever I could, though, so that might have been a factor. As an aside, always help other nurses and never cut corners that make work for people after your shift ends. This varies. The lady nurses catting out on the guy nurse is an issue at some facilities per stories I've heard from other murses. raton fucked around with this message at 07:25 on Sep 29, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Sep 29, 2015 07:20
|
|
|
JibbaJabberwocky posted:I wipe up a lovely rear end at least once per shift I work. I'm not sure what magical world you live in but I'd like to go there. Other than a select few units, patients in most hospital units are elderly and are likely to poo poo themselves on the reg. If you're in there when they do, RN or LPN or CNA doesn't matter, you gotta clean that rear end. Perhaps I overexaggerated but CNA is basically professional rear end washer whereas with a BSN there's hope you're not going to be doing just that all day long. I mean, if you have to answer "What does an RN do?" with one sentence it's probably "Hand out meds." Obviously there's a lot of variables and different kinds of RNs so that's a really stupid generalization but I think that's about as good as it gets as a generalization. If you answer "What does a CNA do?" it's probably "Clean rear end." raton fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Sep 30, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2015 05:25
|
|
|
Dogfish posted:Actually, I've found that my colleagues who don't care about their patients burn out quicker and also enjoy their work much less than those of us (including myself) who do really care. It doesn't have to be your passion, it doesn't have to be the thing that you look forward to most when you wake up in the morning, it doesn't have to be your whole life but if you're not invested, you're not getting anything back. Some days you phone it in because nobody is Super(wo)man but ultimately if you don't find your work personally rewarding then you're not really getting anything back for all the work you're putting in. On the flip side the kind of guys who don't care much about their patients would burn out of any other type of career more quickly than their coworkers too. All you have to do is do a solid job with patient care, a good job with documentation, and find some aspect of the job that you can take pride in -- it can be teaching or patient interaction or really knowing disease processes and protocols or whatever. It's only when don't care crosses with don't know that you really get an instant burnout. raton fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Sep 30, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2015 05:28
|
|
|
a) Don't do something you will quit doing b) Don't do something you will hate if that is not covered by a c) Don't do something that's going to pay you less than fifty or so bucks an hour after you've done it for a few years
|
|
#
¿
Oct 13, 2015 00:04
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 22, 2024 16:30 |
|
|
Iron Lung posted:This thread has been super helpful for affirming all the feelings I've had about going in to nursing without experience. Now I'm even more excited to hear about admissions later this month! Gl gune, work hard in school, be nice to the sick people but not too nice.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 13, 2015 23:27
|
|