A Mixed Bag Of Goodies
Thanks for checking out my profile page. I am a registered nurse (RN) with approximately four years of experience as a licensed vocational nurse (LVN). I enjoy learning new facts on a daily basis. Be sure to read my blog posts and articles, and feel free to comment if something piques your interest.
Less Common Nursing Interview Questions (Part 1 of 4)
By TheCommuter - Last year I wrote a three-part essay on how to answer the most common nursing interview questions. My three different articles list some of the more conventional, commonly-asked questions along with suggestions on how to answer. Please feel free to click on the website links below if you wish to read my previous pieces on answering common nursing interview questions. How To Answer The Most Common Interview Questions A Few More Common Interview Questions (Part II) More Common Nursing... Read More →
Human Misery, Human Victory
By TheCommuter - For starters, I work as a staff nurse at a specialty rehab hospital. Rehabilitation nursing involves assisting patients and their families to manage short-term, progressive, and long-term impediments and disabilities in ways that constructively facilitate the highest level of function possible. My place of employment receives a substantial share of patients who are disabled as the result of cerebrovascular accident (CVA), better known as stroke. CVAs are all too common in American society.... Read More →
Can I Work as a Certified Nursing Assistant or Medical Assistant While in School?
By TheCommuter - Imagine you are a nursing student who wants to start accruing healthcare experience now. However, volunteering at a hospital or nursing home might be totally out of the question because you need to be paid for the services that you render. Volunteer experience is valuable in many ways, but let's face it: the unpaid experience will not keep the bill collectors away. If you are a nursing student, you have several employment options at your disposal that will lead to direct or indirect... Read More →
The Patient Who Receives No Visits
By TheCommuter - I’m certain that every nurse who has ever worked at the bedside has provided care for the patient who never seems to receive any visitors. In fact, the roles were reversed nearly five years ago when I was the patient laying in a bed on a women’s medical/surgical unit at a community hospital in a large city. Even though my inpatient hospital stay was a swift overnight affair, I received no visitors. The facility was located almost forty miles from my home, so a friend dropped me off on the... Read More →
Tying Patient Satisfaction to Medicare Reimbursement is Problematic
By TheCommuter - Patient satisfaction surveys have been receiving an amplified amount of attention at hospitals and other types of healthcare facilities, especially since the results of these reviews now have a significant effect on Medicare reimbursement. Valuable information can be gleaned from the comments and feedback that patients provide when they fill out and return the surveys to the facilities where they previously received care. In addition, patient feedback is a remarkably important tool that... Read More →
The Wicked Politics of Clinical Practicum in Nursing School
By TheCommuter - Nursing school is not always fair. And, in my honest opinion, the most unfair aspect of the nursing school experience is the clinical practicum portion, also known as ‘clinical rotations.’ Here is why. The grades that students earn in the classroom-based theoretical nursing courses are, in most cases, usually objective. Even though the professor who teaches the advanced medical/surgical nursing course might hold personal grudges against a couple of students, the multiple choice exams and... Read More →
Legal Food For Thought During the First Year of Nursing (and Beyond)
By TheCommuter - The first year of nursing is, in countless cases, also one of the most challenging years of a nurse's career because many different events are taking place. First of all, a significant number of newer nurses are acquiring the procedural skills that they did not fully cover in their nursing school clinical rotations, especially if one is immediately transitioning into a highly specialized area as a first healthcare job. Secondly, aspects of the 'real world' of nursing may clash with the... Read More →
Young, Thin, and Cute New Hires
By TheCommuter - My workplace, a freestanding specialty hospital owned by a for-profit corporation that operates multiple facilities across the United States, has been having recent troubles with low Press Ganey patient satisfaction scores. This does not bode well in an era where patient satisfaction scores are tied to Medicare reimbursement rates. Patients typically complain on the survey forms about random issues such as the food, the semiprivate rooms, their loud roommates, and the aloof manner of some... Read More →
Focus on the Positive
By TheCommuter - People in society generally focus on the negative gloom and doom, even in the presence of positivity, good news or favorable statistics. In fact, professionals in the field of psychology have coined the term ‘negative bias’ to describe the trend by which people concentrate more on negative experiences while paying less attention to positive or neutral experiences. For instance, a highly skilled clinical instructor may generate a small handful of positive references from students when she... Read More →
Why Do People Bully Me?
By TheCommuter - Unfortunately, bullying is an unpleasant fact of working life for far too many employees in our society. And surveys have discovered that the two workplaces that suffer the most from bullying bosses are healthcare and education (Parsons, 2005). With more than 3.5 million members and counting, nurses comprise the largest category of healthcare workers in the United States. Since nursing makes up the single largest group of healthcare professionals in this country, the profession has been... Read More →
Random Musings on my Birthday
By TheCommuter - Today is my 32nd birthday. . . Time seems to fly when you are busy doing other things. I registered as a member on Allnurses.com on February 20th, 2005. Wow! I have been a member of these forums for eight years! At that time, I was a 24-year-old who had reached one of life's crossroads. I was asking myself, "What in the heck am I going to do with the rest of my life? Are things going to work out for me?" About six months prior to joining Allnurses.com, I took a risky plunge by resigning... Read More →
Non-CNA Jobs You Can Work While You're a Student
By TheCommuter - You are studying to become a nurse and would like to be working for a variety of reasons. Perhaps you would prefer to graduate from nursing school completely free of debt, or at the very least, you wish to minimize any student loan debt you might accrue during your years as a nursing student. Maybe your household really depends on your income, and therefore, you've got to work. Perhaps you are looking for a job because you're attempting to get a foot in the door of a hospital, nursing home,... Read More →
The Present-Oriented Patient
By TheCommuter - Even though the telephone conversation took place more than four years ago, I remember the details with striking clarity. My best friend, who was working as a nurse at a county-owned clinic in a low income area at the time, called me to talk about a patient she had seen that day. The patient, a pleasant African-American female in her late forties, visited the clinic for treatment of poorly controlled hypertension and type 2 diabetes. “I wake up some days and I just don’t feel like taking... Read More →
Bending and Breaking the Rules in Nursing
By TheCommuter - I believe rules can be bent at times. Heck, I feel that some rules can even be outright broken as long as doing so has brightened someone’s day. Billie is a pseudonym for the septuagenarian nursing home resident whom I first met seven years ago when I was a brand new nurse in long term care. She was a strikingly pretty model during her youth, and even as an elderly woman with a terminal prognosis, she still maintained a whimsical cuteness and a stylish flair through tasteful choices in... Read More →
Class, Race, and Social Issues
By TheCommuter - Issues such as race and social class can rub peoples’ nerves the wrong way, especially if one uses poor wording or an inappropriate tone during discussion. For this reason, I will try to generate discourse regarding the aforementioned topics with the utmost tact and sensitivity. When considering a career in nursing, some people ask interesting questions where race and gender ultimately intersect. “Can I make it in nursing as an African-American male?” “Since I’m a young female nurse who... Read More →
