Do you think the Boards really mean your competent?

RoaminHankRN · Feb 27, 2002

Originally posted by Susy K

I can't recognize and treat a lethal arrythmia, as I am a Labor and Delivery nurse. Based on your logic, where does that leave me?

What about decels?

nilepoc · Feb 27, 2002

Fourty five minutes and 75 questions, I was disapointed to take a test that I felt I could have passd with common sense and a good patho class. Its a good thing nursing is mostly OJT.

Q. · Feb 27, 2002

Originally posted by RoaminHankRN

What about decels?

Good comeback, but arguably, decels are not really considered a lethal arrythmia. SOME decels are even expected.

Agnus · Feb 28, 2002

No nure is going to know it all. When we come out of school we have usually had enough basics in all areas to start as a beginner nurse training in any area.

When you've been out of school a while you forget some basics because you are working in an area where you don't use all the knowledge you leave schoo with.

Remember Brenner said something to the effect that when ever you change areas of practice you are starting all over aver again as a beginner.

Someone here memtioned that we limit ourselves by working just hospital or just community. Yes, but I for one am only one person and have not figured out how to work in every speciality at once and be expert at everything. Many skills are transferable but every area has things that are unique to it. I know a psyc nurse who will tell you she can't start an IV. A med a cardiac nurse does not need to understand fetal monitoring but she better know cariac monitoring. Don't ask me what an 8 year old child's HR should be. But I bet any Peids nurse will know. Nursing is too complicated today. Long gone are the days when a nuse could work any area without retraining. Remember those days nursing practice was more limited and so was our body of knowledge.

Flynnstone · Feb 28, 2002

Originally posted by Agnus
No nure is going to know it all. When we come out of school we have usually had enough basics in all areas to start as a beginner nurse training in any area.
.......Long gone are the days when a nuse could work any area without retraining. Remember those days nursing practice was more limited and so was our body of knowledge.

_________________________________________

So, true. I am a peds nurse with home care, ER, acute and long term care experience. I feel competent as a pediatric nurse but if you asked me to work a shift on an adult med-surg floor I would have a heart attack!!! I don't know the first thing.....

Nurses specialize, just like other professionals do. It is time that this be recognized. I worked in a hospital where they would float the peds nurses into the hospital attached nursing home if our census was low and they were short staffed!!! They refused to understand that we were not familiar with the drugs, dosages or even the assessment of the elderly!

Even some of our own nursing colleagues refuse to acknowledge that we are independent practitioners!!! We have our own license that can and will be revoked for poor professional performance. Some nurses are still of the mindset that they are just doing what the doctor ordered! This blows my mind!!!! I believe that constitutes incompetence! We must be accountable for our own actions. If we expect to be protected by doctors and hospital administration then we are giving up our own authority, our own autonomy our own adulthood! Little children are not judged by their own actions because they don't know any better. (Society looks at a bratty 4 year old and blames the parents, not the child) So too for nurses who believe that "the doctor said so" is a justified reason for doing anything.

Anyway, I'm ranting and raving and getting off topic....but I feel much better

:cool:

Q. · Feb 28, 2002

Originally posted by Agnus
Someone here memtioned that we limit ourselves by working just hospital or just community. Yes, but I for one am only one person and have not figured out how to work in every speciality at once and be expert at everything.

That was me that said that, and in all fairness, you took it out of context. I stated by limiting yourself to any one venue - such as strictly hospital (experience) or strictly classroom (theory) you are limiting yourself. I was saying that in retort to the common argument of experience counts for everything.

Agnus · Feb 28, 2002

oops, sorry. Please, forgive me. I answered that without checking back to exactly what or who said it. I had just gotten off and 18 hr. shift. (that in itself was a dumb thing for me to pull).

There are times I should be kept away from e mail and bulletin boards and this was certainly one of them. I need to install a program that will zap me at such times. Someday someone will invent one.

dachsygirl3 · Mar 3, 2002

I to took the boards when it took 2 days of pure anxiety. But was in the first group nationaly to take the new nclex on paper. I was so disappointed in my RN boards. I thought they didn't even come close to measuring knowledge,(there were more ?? on O.B. pts as related to psyc. situations than anything.) I took my Rn boards in the dark ages, 1982, in a room full of people in IL. I graduated with a nurse who was so incompetent it wasn't funny & in no way would I ever want her taking care of one of my family mambers, but she was able to take the test. She was only minmally able to pass, but does this make her competent. I think not. And I was an LPN for 6 yrs. prior to that, & a CNA for 3 yrs. prior to that, As a matter of fact I started as a candy stripper in HS back before the days of electric beds & AC. What I am tryong to say is it takes alot of exp. to make a good nurse & when I stop caring about my pts. I will get out of nsg.