YUKONrn

My favorite part of this article is the comment all the way at the bottom. We killed ourselves on the front lines trying to contain the pandemic and made more money than we ever could imagine as travelers, but bearing witness to this was what actually made it all worth it. "Using it as a weedout is going to be its own reward when someone scratches their head and wonders "Gee, now that we got rid of all those ADNs, how come stuff isn't getting done anymore, and everything is falling apart, and we're so criminally short-staffed 24/7/365?" But until manglement (great word, I'm sooooo stealing it) breaks suction and pulls their collective heads out, that light will never dawn." http://head-nurse.blogspot.com/2015/01/yeah-no-im-having-some-thoughts-about.html?m=1

Just kidding. This was a debate being had only 3 years ago. It was right before a combination of covid and karma gorilla pimp slapped the greed out of the corporation crooks who sought to profit from this practice and justified it with a "magnet certification". Hospitals are generally 75% travelers (no BSN required) and 20% new grad staff nurses, and 5% experienced staff nurses. Hospitals used to require a BSN to work in their prestigious facilities, but not anymore. Now they are letting LPN's work in the hospital again, but it doesn't mean LPNs are taking those jobs, I'm sure they most certainly are not because the job postings never go away. They sit there on the job board for 30+ days and collect the dust that is a byproduct of cryptocurrency mining. Recruiters are importing foreign nurses as fast as they can get them over here. "Do you have a pulse and a nursing license?" "I no speak very much english..." "Perfect! Come to America, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. You'll get better at English eventually. Everybody else does." The nurses who actually enabled this crap should be ashamed of themselves. We shouldn't have let it get as bad as it did. Too late now.

Call it whatever you want but first year in nursing school, we had 125 nursing students. Only 30 of us graduated. The ones who weren't cut out for nursing didn't graduate. Not everybody got a trophy.

It's a disaster trust me. And now covid is surging again the number of cases is up 10% from last week. Let's pray for them.

I took out 1 loan for $10,000 when I was in nursing school and it took me 10 years to pay it off, and my payments were $250 a month. If you have $100,000 in loans, multiply 250 by 10. That's what you would have to pay every month to get that debt paid off in 10 years. That's why hospitals are "requiring" nurses to get their bachelors degrees. It's a money making scheme and the government is profiting from your loan debt.

Well the percentage of new grad nurses who left the bedside within the first year was last measured to be about 57%. And that was back in 2014. A part of me feels bad because you will probably die from old age before you ever pay off your loans for a BSN from a private university. The other part of me says that's the price you pay when you enter a profession solely thinking you are going to make all this money and that nurses don't do anything but sit at a desk for 12 hours 3 days a week. You didn't do your research. Now they are leaving their staff jobs to travel with same mindset and canceling the travel contract within the first week. SMH. Travelers get paid more for a reason! Oftentimes you are treated worse than dog ***. That's why you get paid more. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results each time. Here's a piece of advice, from somebody who's being doing this for a few years. The only way you are ever going to have the knowledge base that an "old grumpy nurse" has, is to work at the bedside for 20 years like the old grumpy nurses have done. There is no degree, no certification, no class you can take to fast track experience. That's why hospitals hate hiring us and like hiring new nurses, because for the price of 1 old nurse who is probably more knowledgeable than the nurse practitioner, you can hire 2 brand new nurses who know less than the CNA.

https://nurse.org/articles/unsafe-travel-nurse-housing/

Mcdonald's pays better than nursing does and if you screw something up, nobody usually dies. Make them another burger, and give them a free medium fry and a gift card.

One can't help but wonder why so many hospitals are ridiculous enough to even mention that a BSN is "preferred" or "required" when you are so desperate you have resorted to hiring LPN's in the hospital again, and even LPN's don't want to work there. I hope this is either an oversight or an outdated job listing that needs to be revised but nobody has done it because everybody in HR quit? All nurses are fantastic in my opinion no matter what your title is, but job listings like this are almost insulting. "We can't get traveling nurses to work at our hospital for more than 2 weeks for $125/hr, but we want to pay staff nurses $1.75/hr and require a BSN, BLS, ACLS, NIHSS, PALS, PEARS, NRP, TNCC, CCRN, and 20 years of bedside experience." Mmmkay. Let us know how it works out. Nobody will apply. Boohoo.

Common sense is the building blocks for critical thinking. You didn't hear it from me!

The death toll from COVID speaks for itself. #1 in the world! We have a higher death toll than everybody but supposedly the "most advanced medical system". Wonder why that is. Because we are giving setting the vent to give a tidal volume of 18 when a patient is in ARDS, the MAP is "the number in the parentheses on the bedside monitor", and the EKG says normal sinus rhythm so we don't even acknowledge the patient is having a widowmaker. And...the 5 rights of medication administration are whatever somebody with a personality disorder says they are. ?

Hahahahaha! ? I asked a nurse what the tidal volume was for the vent settings and she said "uhhhh....18?" 18? 18? For patient with COVID and ARDS? Are you talking about the PEEP? The PEEP might be 18! The TV should be around 400. It wasn't the PEEP, it was the rate. PRVC 18, TV 400, PEEP 14, FIO2 100%. You can look at the damn ventilator and get this info. She obviously didn't even know what tidal volume was, the normal ranges for an adult, or the significance. Google it! You have the internet! I know you've been on your phone on the social media sites. No desire to even learn.

10 years is not new. You're seasoned. Where I live the got nurses with less than 1 year of experience charging the ER. Sorry. No. Back in the day you wouldn't even be working in the ER without 2 years of med/surg under your belt. If you can't see ST elevation on a 12 lead and immediately decipher whether or not a patient is having a STEMI and which coronary artery is most likely affected you should not be charge nurse of the ER at a level 1 trauma center. Sorry. 50% of the time the EKG machine doesn't pick up on it, so you can't rely on what the EKG machine tells you. But that's exactly what they do. They pick it up and it says "normal sinus rhythm" at the top they say "It's normal sinus! See?" When there is clearly ST elevation in the anterior leads or lateral leads. God forbid the doctor orders integrillin or argatroban. It's not a teaching environment for a new grad. Especially with Covid. You don't have time to slow down and begin to explain stuff.

I see new grads orienting new grads. How does a person who hasn't been a nurse long enough to develop critical thinking skills themselves teach critical thinking skills to anybody else? Most nurses who work in critical care as we speak have graduated less than 2 years ago and don't know what MAP stands for, how to calculate it, or what the signifigance of it even is. They just know that the levophed order says "titrate for a MAP greater than 65, and MAP is the number in the parentheses." Thank god for smart pumps, we'd be screwed if we had to teach these nurses how to figure out how many ml/hr to run the levophed drip at utilizing the "K-constant". I don't have that kind of patience. Not even going there. New grads orienting new grads.

Yes her family is suing, but no amount of money is going to give her her quality of life back. She will never make it home and she knows it.