[Gooserick]

Hi,
I am a male 2nd year nursing student in England and in the Spring of 2007 i am required to find a placement anywhere in the world in any field that i am interested in.

I presonally would love to come and study these few weeks in America, preferablly in Texas! I was wondering if anyone on here could let me know what nursing is like in the US. I had read on another forum that you have to gain the doctors consent to carry out the most basic nursing care; is this true? Also, is there much paperwork involved? What is the nurse's role?

Any help/guidance would be greatly appriciated.

Goose

[L.O.E.N.]

There's some tasks that are routine that you don't need approval for, but due to liability issues most things must have a doctors order. They usually will give standing orders for things that are expected to come up in a patients care. Emergency stuff is usually verbal orders. ...and as expected, there's always paperwork to go along with all the days' shinanigans. Most of it is point-and-click stuff on a facility computer, but not all of it. Transcribing orders and doing nurses notes always fills a good chunk of time.

Texas eh? Well I did all my clinical work in Lubbock and El Paso... if you'd like to try the border life, El Paso is an interesting place for sure. Pleanty of GSW and stabbings, car wrecks and general meyhem when I was there, with the occasional mental freak out/involuntary commitment. They've got a nice surgical center too. University hospital in Lubbock is also excellent, as is Covenant. Both of them are very close to Texas Tech, but University gets all the really cool gizmos and they have the more intense/technical trauma cases.

It depends on what you wanna see i suppose... Eastern Texas this time of year is miserable in my opinion. Extremely hot and humid... like being in a steamroom until the sun goes down. Everyone tries their hardest to stay inside with the AC on full blast. Although it may be hot, Corpus Christi is always nice...

[Gooserick]

Thanks for responding L.O.E.N.

Would you recommend nursing in America? I am more interested in a basic ward setting, medicine for the elderly or something along those lines. How is that over there?

[L.O.E.N.]

Since I have no frame of reference other than nursing in the US, I couldn't really say if it's better or worse than anywhere else. Although, I do have a friend who decided to move to Vancouver after getting his nursing degree and he says he likes the Canadian health care system more than the US's...

Basic ward setting probably = Med/Surg in a hospital I would guess. You're probably looking at 7-10 patients with various ailments and that are stable enough to not need hourly monitoring. That's where most new grads are most comfortable. The pace won't cause you to have an aneurism and you usually aren't dealing with crashing patients (not always, but usually). The pay is decent and some of the women I'm in school with really like it. You do get to see a very wide range of patients and problems. Just not my bag... I like the higher acuity patients and smaller patient loads.

Medicine for the elderly = Nursing home, i'd figure. Personally, I wouldn't ever work a nursing home, regardless of the pay (kinda depressing for me). Patient loads of 25-30 patients in various degrees of decline are common around here. You spend more time handing out drugs than anything else. I felt like a pharmacist, not a nurse, when I had/have clinicals there. The risk of making a med error is higher, IMO, just because of the sheer volume of drugs you're shoveling out every hour. Some people I've worked with love doing long term care/hospice work... and the pay is usually a bit higher, $1-$2 an hour more than the hospital here. It takes a different kind of nurse to really love long term care. They usually have more patience than I do.

If I had to recommend one over the other, I'd say try a Med/Surg job first and talk to the nurses who work there. You'll find a lot of them have worked in the nursing homes for short stents...

Now I actually have a question for you. How do you feel about European health care? I've been tossing around the idea of possibly trying to get a job in Holland, Spain, or the U.K. just to see if I like the EU more than here.... I know I agree with the EU politics generally more than the US's...

[Tweety]

Good luck. My hospital hosted to English nurses who did the same thing you are hoping to do. I got to spend the day with one. It was an awesome experience, unfortunately they weren't allowed to do anything other than shadow and observe.

Good luck.