CKAYTHOMAS

Stay for 3 more months to have a year of acute care experience and maybe apply to an urgent care or an observation unit if your hospital has one. Nursing is for you, you sound like a great nurse. Not everyone was built for high stress situations and adrenaline rushes back to back. There is nothing wrong with that.

Did you have a specific pharmacology course or was it spread out throughout the program? Regardless of accuracy focus on pharmacology prep. Don't stress, I have confidence that you will pass on your first attempt.

Hey Stephanie!! I'm so glad to hear you're interested in nursing. 1. It depends on where you work. The easiest place to get hired (in most cases) is a nursing home. You will give medications as ordered and treatments as ordered to the residents. You could have 19-30 patients depending which shift you work. Somewhere like an urgent care or doctors office is more task oriented such as flu swabs, vital signs, medical/surgical history. The main difference between the nursing home job and other jobs are you are the charge nurse most of the time in the nursing home situation. You have more responsibility. 2. You have got to care about other people and be empathetic. Feel how that resident and/or patient feels at that time, and treat appropriately. You will very rarely EVER get reprimanded for doing the right thing for the patient. 3. I was an EMT, so I enjoy the urgent care setting. It is fast paced and I learn something new more often than not. 4. I work 12 hour shifts. It is more like 12.5 or 13 hours because of setting up, closing up and/or reporting off. Most nursing homes are 8 hour shifts, sometimes they consider 32 hours a week full time. Some places are 10 hour shifts, 4 days a week. 5. You will always have benefits and you will always have a job (maybe it's not the one you want, but you'll have it). Hope this helped!

We have a slightly awkward and always serious young doctor that is known to wear burgundy scrubs which is what the ED techs wear in the ER. She came into an older man's room for his initial exam and he said "you're the CNA you're wearing burgundy" and the doctor gives him a serious almost offended look and stated "I went to so and so medical school, I am the emergency physician today." He said "whatever you say lady" and the rest of the time he was in the ER he would say refer to her as the "doctor" using his hands as quotation marks LOL.

How about when the paramedic intern brings an EKG to the ER doc for his opinion on the interpretation and he looks at the intern with a serious face and says "it means she has very large breasts. Wouldn't you agree?" the paramedic intern's face was white as a ghost! LOL

This has me laughing!!

I just had my first interview at an urgent care in WV. They assured met that they would like me to start training asap. They have not given me a pay rate yet and I thought it would be rude to ask because I have a mandatory orientation with the nursing manager where I will officially accept the job. The person that interviewed me was not a nurse but when reviewing how the urgent care staffing is she stated the radiology techs and MAs "function as nurses". Is that normal? I have 2 years EMT experience so all that I know is ER. I did not function as a paramedic or nurse working as an EMT. Also, how much should I be expecting per hour with 2 years EMT experience? Will the EMT experience be relevant?