Wildnurse, the only motive I have is to relate the horrible experience I had at HNU. There were 110 students in my section, without even enough chairs for everyone. I had to sit on the floor, and take notes on my lap (and there were two other satellite sites which we had to accommodate by moving into/out of the tele-classroom). The assessment class had one instructor and a group of third/fourth semester FNP student volunteers teaching each section of the review of systems.
I wanted nothing more than to find a nurturing environment where I could learn and grow from an RN into an NP. But instead I found a program in complete disarray, and scant resources devoted to the program.
If you had a different experience, then good on you. But for me, when it comes to HNU...buyer beware.
The Magnet designation is pure fiction. I work at a Magnet hospital in the East SF Bay, and the only way we got Magnet was by buying it. No sooner had the Magnet surveyors left, then Management went back to understaffing the floors, starving us for supplies, ignoring patient needs, while being paid HUGE bonuses. My hospital has gone from Magnet into the mud in three years, and nursing staff are being run into the ground. And those plum committee slots go to junior RNs who are related to senior management so they can be groomed for advancement. Payroll fraud is rampant (i.e. forcing RNs to work off of the clock), training fraud is rampant (forcing RNs to sign off on training they have not received), anyone who doesn't "go with the program" is threatened with counseling for time management/negative attitude. Hospitals are business, and cr@p rolls downhill, where it drowns bedside nurses.
At my hospital, certain nurses enjoy privileges like enhanced promotability and better access to training by virtue of membership in a vertically integrated ethnic group. It sucks, but it's reality. I try to be friends with everyone and help out whenever. But at the end of the day, I'm on the outside looking in, and the positions always seem to go to favored few.
Broken...the CEO just posted an Executive Memorandum stating that we are going to have to "do a lot more with a lot less."
So broken, can't sleep anymore. The years go by and I watch young women get promoted up the ladder while I do four jobs and get passed over. But when the 400lb Meth Head goes postal who do they call? Or when the computers go down and IT is unavailable, who do they call, or when it's time to do incontinence care on the 768lb (yes...for real) COPD patient who do they call, or when they can't get a line into the long-term dialysis patient whose veins are sclerosed into non-functionality, who do they call. They don't call this week's poster child from whatever person is the accelerated promotion flavor of the month. I don't have an Auntie mentoring me up the ladder. I'm just Plain Jane white as a ghost and twice as invisible. I know twice as much about being an RN as these well connected Baby Nurses, but I can't get any recognition for the work that I do. And they call me to clean up their messes. This is just reality. My broken reality.
Let me give an actual example, PCEA (Patient Controlled Epidural Analgesia). A patient comes from PACU with a PCEA after a hip/knee replacement. Specialty RNs assigned to the hip/knee unit are given 10-14 days training on the care of there patients. Failure of something is simple as improper positioning in bed can cause the analgesia (fentanyl/bupivacaine?) to migrate up the spine and adversely affect the respiratory center. Our med-surg unit started taking these patients, and instead of two weeks training, we received ONE DAY WITH FIVE PATIENTS!. In the span of two weeks, I saw TWO patients go into respiratory arrest, have to be dosed with narcan and transferred to ICU for mechanical ventilation. The primary RN was suspended for 90 days without pay, the patients survived, and it was quietly covered up. But it all comes down to budget. Every dollar saved on training, is one more dollar available for administrator compensation (like our CEOs new Lexus every three years, $1.1M in 2013 compensation, six weeks paid vacation a year, and free lifetime auto/life/health insurance for administrators and their families). I can't get the medical supplies and training I need to be a safe, competent professional RN. But my CEO can donate $200,000 of hospital funds to a charity that her husband has a paid board position with. That's my MAGNET EXPERIENCE. The senior executives distract the public with this "GREAT MAGNET ACCOMPLISHMENT" while stealing everything which isn't nailed down.
I have been overrun, under-supported, and run into the ground. The patient's on my unit are so heavy, and we are so understaffed that my objective each day is to just keep them alive and unharmed. I can't get supplies, administrative support, training, time off, anything. Everywhere I look, the system at my hospital is failing and falling apart.
Management doesn't care about anything. All they do is sing the same old song about the hospital losing money. While the local newspapers document the outrageous pay and benefit packages of Senior Management, the practice of "donating hospital funds to local charities on which their spouses just happen to have paid board positions", the bottomless budget for hiring of Assistant/Associate Administrators (six in the last two years).
Every time there is a failure somewhere further up in the supply chain, which results in less than adequate care being given to a patient, it falls to the bedside nurse to fix it. I have all of the responsibility, with no authority, no power, and no support.
I have fought this battle for more than seven years, and it has left me bereft of hope, and broken in spirit. I'm done.
For preceptor placement, you are completely on your own. They stress this from the first day of orientation. They strongly advise you to begin your preceptor search upon enrolling, as failure to obtain a satisfactory preceptor placement by the deadline is grounds for dismissal from the program. They had a placement coordinator, but she had at least three other titles (secretary, admin asst to Vice President X, Associate Administrator of Dept Y, just empty titles, she was never on campus and didn't return calls). Then she left and a replacement was not hired (perhaps due to budget constraints?). I was two months in when the department chair announced that she was leaving to pursue other opportunities. It was already looking like the program was close to folding (under-staffed, under-funded). Then, it was in the news that HNU's graduate nursing program was being reviewed by an outside accreditation agency.
I know two people who have completed the HNU FNP program, and both have told me that the program has changed into something they can't recommend. Last I heard, they only had two full-time instructors devoted to the FNP program, with the holes being filled by unpaid second year FNP student volunteers. How can a program charge $800-1000 per unit, and not be able to hire staff, provide adequate classroom space, or administrative support? Where is the money going?
HNU is running the FNP program like they are trying to wring the last dollar out of students, before they are shutdown.
I applied and was accepted to HNU's FNP program but was floored by what I saw there during orientation. Inadequate staffing and facilities, the books weren't even available in the bookstore even though the term had started. MBA2RN's comments are right on target. It's only a matter of time before the CA BON closes this diploma mill down.
The training never takes place. We are notified of a change to policy/proceddure, then given a link to an internal website, which discusses the policy/procedure in step by step in detail. Sure, if its just a change like you say "to the official butt-wiping policy which now requires six squares be used instead of four.." then that's just policy. But there are thousands of these documents on this site.
We are so overloaded at work that no one has time to access the site and learn the procedures in question. From the start of shift until end, we run to answer call-lights and bed alarms, while passing meds and doing incontinence care on five patients. I run from one fire drill to the next for my entire shift. Sit-down and read something? Yeah, maybe I'll ride to work on unicorn too.
I work at a government run Magnet hospital in the East SF Bay area, with a group of wonderful RNs. The problem is, Management is pressuring RNs to sign off on training which they haven't received.
This is how it works. Our Nursing Education department, sends out an email to the floor RNs, saying that there is a new policy (or protocol, or procedure, etc.) and that it is the "Nurses Responsibility" to conform to policy.
Then Management sends senior RNs (aka Staff Nurse 3s and 4s), to each unit to with blank training forms which they ask you to sign to "update your training records." Regardless of which senior RN is assigned to you, they all use the same key words saying "<insert unit manager first name here> expects you to sign this form." That's the implied threat. If you don't sign, you will be reported to your unit manager as a malcontent.
Last year, a Staff Nurse 3 harassed me for nine months, to sign-off on training and I finally caved in and signed. A while later, one of my coworkers had a patient go bad, and she was suspended without pay, and then had to go through a probationary period where she was closely monitored. When she filed a union grievance, Management produced her training record, with all this training signed off as completed by her. I'm a single parent, and I need my job. I'm just so afraid that a patient will go bad, and I'll be the next one to be thrown under a bus.
I work at Washington Hospital in Fremont CA, and even though we are Magnet, our hospital is run by management thieves and con artists who use the "Magnet Designation" as cover for looting our public hospital. I give 150% to my patients everyday. But my heart has been broken by Magnet Managers who manage to the bottom line and don't give a damn about anything except their bonuses. Our CEO is paid three times much as other hospital administrator in the area, and that money has to come from somewhere. It is taken from staff training, and we are forced to sign off on training which we have never received. Failure to sign off, results in formal counseling sessions where you are reminded that you aren't being a team player. Last year I was harassed by Management for four months to sign off on training which I hadn't been given. Two to three times a week, I was reminded that failure to sign could result in escalating discipline (for insubordination) up to and including termination. I was reminded to be "flexible" and a "team player." Washington Hospital is a swamp and its Management is a group off maggots feeding off the sick and injured.
I've worked at two other hospitals which were magnet, and I've seen real Magnet. It can be a beautiful thing.
The Magnet designation has become a convenient marketing tool to cover liars and thieves. I pray none of my patients are harmed by management greed today. I pray that Me and my coworkers can keep our patients alive. And I pray that today won't be the day that Washington Hospital Management throws another nurse under a bus to cover their Magnet Manager backsides.
I gotta say I'm with RNsRWe on this one. The manager fired you for a reason. If you think four years and a new degree change anything, it doesn't. Having a new shiny new BSN isn't going to change that reason. Move on and find something better. Good Luck, and don't stop believing that your new RN job is just one more day away. You'll get there. And when you do...it'll be grand
B52 = Benadryl 50mg + Haldol 2mg
Depth Charge = Prune Juice + Milk of Mag
@ss-Cannon = Go-Lytely or Mag Citrate
Twist & Shout = Q2Hours Turn Orders (at Night)
Code Brown/Chili Bed = BM
Vitamin H = Haldol
Vitamin A = Ativan
Walkie - Talkie = A Self-Care Pt
Zombie = Any RN pulling a double shift
Golden Moment = Inserting a foley on a pt with urinary retention
Gas Passer = Anesthesiologist/CRNA
Drive By Docs = AM/PM 30 Second MD Rounders
Oscar = Pt Thank You Card
Night Crawler = Pt trying to go AMA at night
Day Walker = Dayshift RN
Night Fighter = Nightshift RN
I've seen pts discharged to that facility, and it is called "acute rehab" in the discharge documentation. Because it is rehab, it doesn't fall under the CA pt-ratios. I've heard they work their RNs to the bone.
Wildnurse, the only motive I have is to relate the horrible experience I had at HNU. There were 110 students in my section, without even enough chairs for everyone. I had to sit on the floor, and take notes on my lap (and there were two other satellite sites which we had to accommodate by moving into/out of the tele-classroom). The assessment class had one instructor and a group of third/fourth semester FNP student volunteers teaching each section of the review of systems.
I wanted nothing more than to find a nurturing environment where I could learn and grow from an RN into an NP. But instead I found a program in complete disarray, and scant resources devoted to the program.
If you had a different experience, then good on you. But for me, when it comes to HNU...buyer beware.
The Magnet designation is pure fiction. I work at a Magnet hospital in the East SF Bay, and the only way we got Magnet was by buying it. No sooner had the Magnet surveyors left, then Management went back to understaffing the floors, starving us for supplies, ignoring patient needs, while being paid HUGE bonuses. My hospital has gone from Magnet into the mud in three years, and nursing staff are being run into the ground. And those plum committee slots go to junior RNs who are related to senior management so they can be groomed for advancement. Payroll fraud is rampant (i.e. forcing RNs to work off of the clock), training fraud is rampant (forcing RNs to sign off on training they have not received), anyone who doesn't "go with the program" is threatened with counseling for time management/negative attitude. Hospitals are business, and cr@p rolls downhill, where it drowns bedside nurses.
At my hospital, certain nurses enjoy privileges like enhanced promotability and better access to training by virtue of membership in a vertically integrated ethnic group. It sucks, but it's reality. I try to be friends with everyone and help out whenever. But at the end of the day, I'm on the outside looking in, and the positions always seem to go to favored few.
Broken...the CEO just posted an Executive Memorandum stating that we are going to have to "do a lot more with a lot less."
So broken, can't sleep anymore. The years go by and I watch young women get promoted up the ladder while I do four jobs and get passed over. But when the 400lb Meth Head goes postal who do they call? Or when the computers go down and IT is unavailable, who do they call, or when it's time to do incontinence care on the 768lb (yes...for real) COPD patient who do they call, or when they can't get a line into the long-term dialysis patient whose veins are sclerosed into non-functionality, who do they call. They don't call this week's poster child from whatever person is the accelerated promotion flavor of the month. I don't have an Auntie mentoring me up the ladder. I'm just Plain Jane white as a ghost and twice as invisible. I know twice as much about being an RN as these well connected Baby Nurses, but I can't get any recognition for the work that I do. And they call me to clean up their messes. This is just reality. My broken reality.
Let me give an actual example, PCEA (Patient Controlled Epidural Analgesia). A patient comes from PACU with a PCEA after a hip/knee replacement. Specialty RNs assigned to the hip/knee unit are given 10-14 days training on the care of there patients. Failure of something is simple as improper positioning in bed can cause the analgesia (fentanyl/bupivacaine?) to migrate up the spine and adversely affect the respiratory center. Our med-surg unit started taking these patients, and instead of two weeks training, we received ONE DAY WITH FIVE PATIENTS!. In the span of two weeks, I saw TWO patients go into respiratory arrest, have to be dosed with narcan and transferred to ICU for mechanical ventilation. The primary RN was suspended for 90 days without pay, the patients survived, and it was quietly covered up. But it all comes down to budget. Every dollar saved on training, is one more dollar available for administrator compensation (like our CEOs new Lexus every three years, $1.1M in 2013 compensation, six weeks paid vacation a year, and free lifetime auto/life/health insurance for administrators and their families). I can't get the medical supplies and training I need to be a safe, competent professional RN. But my CEO can donate $200,000 of hospital funds to a charity that her husband has a paid board position with. That's my MAGNET EXPERIENCE. The senior executives distract the public with this "GREAT MAGNET ACCOMPLISHMENT" while stealing everything which isn't nailed down.
Magnet = Mud-Net
Driving nurses into the ground, before the altar of Corporate Greed.
I am broken
I have been overrun, under-supported, and run into the ground. The patient's on my unit are so heavy, and we are so understaffed that my objective each day is to just keep them alive and unharmed. I can't get supplies, administrative support, training, time off, anything. Everywhere I look, the system at my hospital is failing and falling apart.
Management doesn't care about anything. All they do is sing the same old song about the hospital losing money. While the local newspapers document the outrageous pay and benefit packages of Senior Management, the practice of "donating hospital funds to local charities on which their spouses just happen to have paid board positions", the bottomless budget for hiring of Assistant/Associate Administrators (six in the last two years).
Every time there is a failure somewhere further up in the supply chain, which results in less than adequate care being given to a patient, it falls to the bedside nurse to fix it. I have all of the responsibility, with no authority, no power, and no support.
I have fought this battle for more than seven years, and it has left me bereft of hope, and broken in spirit. I'm done.
For preceptor placement, you are completely on your own. They stress this from the first day of orientation. They strongly advise you to begin your preceptor search upon enrolling, as failure to obtain a satisfactory preceptor placement by the deadline is grounds for dismissal from the program. They had a placement coordinator, but she had at least three other titles (secretary, admin asst to Vice President X, Associate Administrator of Dept Y, just empty titles, she was never on campus and didn't return calls). Then she left and a replacement was not hired (perhaps due to budget constraints?). I was two months in when the department chair announced that she was leaving to pursue other opportunities. It was already looking like the program was close to folding (under-staffed, under-funded). Then, it was in the news that HNU's graduate nursing program was being reviewed by an outside accreditation agency.
I know two people who have completed the HNU FNP program, and both have told me that the program has changed into something they can't recommend. Last I heard, they only had two full-time instructors devoted to the FNP program, with the holes being filled by unpaid second year FNP student volunteers. How can a program charge $800-1000 per unit, and not be able to hire staff, provide adequate classroom space, or administrative support? Where is the money going?
HNU is running the FNP program like they are trying to wring the last dollar out of students, before they are shutdown.
Enroll at your own peril.
I applied and was accepted to HNU's FNP program but was floored by what I saw there during orientation. Inadequate staffing and facilities, the books weren't even available in the bookstore even though the term had started. MBA2RN's comments are right on target. It's only a matter of time before the CA BON closes this diploma mill down.
The training never takes place. We are notified of a change to policy/proceddure, then given a link to an internal website, which discusses the policy/procedure in step by step in detail. Sure, if its just a change like you say "to the official butt-wiping policy which now requires six squares be used instead of four.." then that's just policy. But there are thousands of these documents on this site.
We are so overloaded at work that no one has time to access the site and learn the procedures in question. From the start of shift until end, we run to answer call-lights and bed alarms, while passing meds and doing incontinence care on five patients. I run from one fire drill to the next for my entire shift. Sit-down and read something? Yeah, maybe I'll ride to work on unicorn too.
I work at a government run Magnet hospital in the East SF Bay area, with a group of wonderful RNs. The problem is, Management is pressuring RNs to sign off on training which they haven't received.
This is how it works. Our Nursing Education department, sends out an email to the floor RNs, saying that there is a new policy (or protocol, or procedure, etc.) and that it is the "Nurses Responsibility" to conform to policy.
Then Management sends senior RNs (aka Staff Nurse 3s and 4s), to each unit to with blank training forms which they ask you to sign to "update your training records." Regardless of which senior RN is assigned to you, they all use the same key words saying "<insert unit manager first name here> expects you to sign this form." That's the implied threat. If you don't sign, you will be reported to your unit manager as a malcontent.
Last year, a Staff Nurse 3 harassed me for nine months, to sign-off on training and I finally caved in and signed. A while later, one of my coworkers had a patient go bad, and she was suspended without pay, and then had to go through a probationary period where she was closely monitored. When she filed a union grievance, Management produced her training record, with all this training signed off as completed by her. I'm a single parent, and I need my job. I'm just so afraid that a patient will go bad, and I'll be the next one to be thrown under a bus.
I work at Washington Hospital in Fremont CA, and even though we are Magnet, our hospital is run by management thieves and con artists who use the "Magnet Designation" as cover for looting our public hospital. I give 150% to my patients everyday. But my heart has been broken by Magnet Managers who manage to the bottom line and don't give a damn about anything except their bonuses. Our CEO is paid three times much as other hospital administrator in the area, and that money has to come from somewhere. It is taken from staff training, and we are forced to sign off on training which we have never received. Failure to sign off, results in formal counseling sessions where you are reminded that you aren't being a team player. Last year I was harassed by Management for four months to sign off on training which I hadn't been given. Two to three times a week, I was reminded that failure to sign could result in escalating discipline (for insubordination) up to and including termination. I was reminded to be "flexible" and a "team player." Washington Hospital is a swamp and its Management is a group off maggots feeding off the sick and injured.
I've worked at two other hospitals which were magnet, and I've seen real Magnet. It can be a beautiful thing.
The Magnet designation has become a convenient marketing tool to cover liars and thieves. I pray none of my patients are harmed by management greed today. I pray that Me and my coworkers can keep our patients alive. And I pray that today won't be the day that Washington Hospital Management throws another nurse under a bus to cover their Magnet Manager backsides.
I gotta say I'm with RNsRWe on this one. The manager fired you for a reason. If you think four years and a new degree change anything, it doesn't. Having a new shiny new BSN isn't going to change that reason. Move on and find something better. Good Luck, and don't stop believing that your new RN job is just one more day away. You'll get there. And when you do...it'll be grand
B52 = Benadryl 50mg + Haldol 2mg
Depth Charge = Prune Juice + Milk of Mag
@ss-Cannon = Go-Lytely or Mag Citrate
Twist & Shout = Q2Hours Turn Orders (at Night)
Code Brown/Chili Bed = BM
Vitamin H = Haldol
Vitamin A = Ativan
Walkie - Talkie = A Self-Care Pt
Zombie = Any RN pulling a double shift
Golden Moment = Inserting a foley on a pt with urinary retention
Gas Passer = Anesthesiologist/CRNA
Drive By Docs = AM/PM 30 Second MD Rounders
Oscar = Pt Thank You Card
Night Crawler = Pt trying to go AMA at night
Day Walker = Dayshift RN
Night Fighter = Nightshift RN
I've seen pts discharged to that facility, and it is called "acute rehab" in the discharge documentation. Because it is rehab, it doesn't fall under the CA pt-ratios. I've heard they work their RNs to the bone.