First Day of Nursing School

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I wanted to start this thread again. I've seen so many posts about first days and have lived vicariously through those posts. Now, with that first day steadily approaching, I'd like to start my own thread. I start school on the 21st of August, and I thought that I'd go ahead and start a thread so that it will be good and ready for that first day post. As of now, I have pretty much everything done except I have to have my second PPD read on Monday. I welcome comments from everyone. After all, we are all in this together!

Specializes in CVICU.

Good luck! My orientation is from 9am-4pm on August 12th, then the semester starts on August 19th. What are your clinical hours? As first semester students, our clinicals are done at a LTC facility, 4-7 (3 hours) twice a week. What's strange is, I've heard of students having 12-hour shift clinicals like an actual nurse would, but my cousin who graduated the same program I'm going to told me that clinical shifts never are longer than 5-6hours, even as 4th semester students.

Yay! I start on August 20th, and the time has seemingly stopped since orientation lol. At this rate August 20th will never get here! Our clinicals start about three weeks into the semester and are two days a week, eight hour days I believe. We rotate between LTC, er's, and other hospital floors, no idea what we will be doing or exactly where yet though. I am so excited though!

I'm in Michigan and I've had 12 hour clinicals in my second semester and I'm going to have one this third semester coming up.

Good luck guys!

I too begin my first semester on August 19th :) My clinicals will begin three weeks into the program and although I still don't know the "where" part, I do know it is a single nine hour shift.

I still need to complete my background check with drug screen and my physical with beginning the Hep B series. I managed to find my vaccination records (I'm 38), and I already have my shoes and stethoscope ready to go! My physical is scheduled for the 23rd, then all I have left is the background check/drug screen! Trying to budget these extra expenses in has been very difficult on an already very thin budget, all while getting one of sons ready for freshman football. With all his needed gear, his physical, and the fee to play - trying to fit all these extra expenses into a short time frame has been a nightmare!

Oh well - I know it will all be more than worth it!!!

Good luck to everyone! :)

Specializes in CVICU.

How much did y'all pay for y'all's books? I had at least 10 books to buy, but after tax and shipping costs from Amazon, it was all only like $600 which was great, in my opinion. Some people ahead of me in the program were telling me it'd be at least $1,000.

Specializes in Hospice.
I too begin my first semester on August 19th :) My clinicals will begin three weeks into the program and although I still don't know the "where" part, I do know it is a single nine hour shift.

I still need to complete my background check with drug screen and my physical with beginning the Hep B series. I managed to find my vaccination records (I'm 38), and I already have my shoes and stethoscope ready to go! My physical is scheduled for the 23rd, then all I have left is the background check/drug screen! Trying to budget these extra expenses in has been very difficult on an already very thin budget, all while getting one of sons ready for freshman football. With all his needed gear, his physical, and the fee to play - trying to fit all these extra expenses into a short time frame has been a nightmare!

Oh well - I know it will all be more than worth it!!!

Good luck to everyone! :)

Is your school using certified background and is there a deadline for getting this stuff in? Our orientation isn't until the 12th, classes start on the 26th, but our deadline for all our documentation to be uploaded to certified background is on August 2. Certified Background can be frustrating and time consuming and I can honestly say that the whole process is very stressful! I am still waiting for them to approve all my vaccinations/titers. I submitted them Wednesday. Their website appears to be down and has been down a couple days. You are younger than me (I'm 49) and believe it or not I actually had my vaccination records from when I was little, but I still did the titers on MMR.

Trying to budget these extra expenses in has been very difficult on an already very thin budget

I hear you loud and clear on that one!! The reality of going down to a single income in less than 2 months is starting to set in and it's more than scary. I start an accelerated bsn on 9/3 and don't have any clinical info yet!!

My schedule says that I have clinicals from 7-5 on Tuesdays, but I've heard that realistically we should be done by 12. We have a state-of-the-art facility now at my school, complete with the mannequins that give birth and have seizures! I don't think that clinicals will last too terribly long. I've heard so many crazy things, such as we won't even be drawing blood (which I've heard is mostly on the job training). I guess we shall see!

Oh my goodness, those are some long clinicals!

How much did y'all pay for y'all's books? I had at least 10 books to buy, but after tax and shipping costs from Amazon, it was all only like $600 which was great, in my opinion. Some people ahead of me in the program were telling me it'd be at least $1,000.

I think that ours are pretty close to the $1,000 range, even on Amazon.

Is your school using certified background and is there a deadline for getting this stuff in? Our orientation isn't until the 12th, classes start on the 26th, but our deadline for all our documentation to be uploaded to certified background is on August 2. Certified Background can be frustrating and time consuming and I can honestly say that the whole process is very stressful! I am still waiting for them to approve all my vaccinations/titers. I submitted them Wednesday. Their website appears to be down and has been down a couple days. You are younger than me (I'm 49) and believe it or not I actually had my vaccination records from when I was little, but I still did the titers on MMR.

Ours is using something called Certified Profile, but it's probably very similar. Our deadline was the 15th, but they are very flexible since we won't be with patients right away. I just had to get a titer for the varicella, since thankfully I had all of my other records.

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