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HiddencatBSN

HiddencatBSN BSN

Peds ED
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HiddencatBSN has 9 years experience as a BSN and specializes in Peds ED.

HiddencatBSN's Latest Activity

  1. HiddencatBSN

    Probation for one year

    HiddencatBSN replied to heartnursing's topic in General Nursing

    At my current hospital the probation period is a year- you can’t transfer (although you CAN determine with the manager if another unit is a better fit, it’s not uncommon for new grad nurses hired in to high acuity areas to decide with management to move to a lower acuity floor) and you get some union benefits but not representation for any grievances. I thought it was a long time too but it’s part of the union contract. Everywhere else I’ve worked the probation period has been much shorter but those jobs didn’t come with union benefits. I haven’t heard of anyone having probation extended here, it’s a pass/fail kind of thing where you either successfully complete your probation or you don’t. I think it’s odd- when people change shifts on your unit do they go back on probation so the new supervisor can personally evaluate your skills? Do the supervisors not share information about positives or concerns about staff? I’d have a hard time not seeing it as a criticism of my skills and expertise too tbh.
  2. HiddencatBSN
    And in Pennsylvania isn’t the first time pass rate for the NCLEX still in the 80s? I don’t know of any state that doesn’t have various levels of RN entry and we all sit for the same exam. Most of my RN experience was in Pennsylvania and I had managers who were all diploma or ASN prepared, maybe half of them had completed a bridge BSN program after licensure. BSN was never a requirement to be a charge RN at any facility I worked at. I went to school with a few medics and they had to learn the same nursing process the rest of us did from scratch. I think it’s a background that really benefits a nurse especially in emergency nursing, and a lot of the skills are transferable, but it really is a different field. I agree with previous sentiments that it sounds like you’ve identified your area of weakness on the NCLEX and if you want to test again you should focus on that area.
  3. HiddencatBSN

    Night shift has changed my life for the worst

    HiddencatBSN replied to pmaries1816's topic in General Nursing

    Do you knownwhere you’re moving to? Some places will have day shift openings. What sort of schedule do you work, are you flipping to day schedule on your off days? How are you organizing your sleep schedule right now?
  4. HiddencatBSN

    Egocentric Managers

    HiddencatBSN replied to BBpeds18's topic in General Nursing

    So, if it seems that BIPOC are always aggrieved perhaps that should indicate how pervasive and constant racism is for them. I don’t know about you but my problems have never gone away by pretending they don’t exist. And with racism, individual and institutionalized, it’s going to take active work to change things. It’s no different than how we need to address COVID: we take it seriously, we wear masks and social distance and use the best PPE practices we have access to at work, we study the virus and illness course, we work on treatments, and we educate the public as best as we can.
  5. HiddencatBSN

    Egocentric Managers

    HiddencatBSN replied to BBpeds18's topic in General Nursing

    I missed the data posted. Unless you mean one person saying their current company has POC in leadership positions counts as evidence that HH is overall representative? Why is one poster’s experience assumption and the other is data? How did you decide which one carried more weight/is valid? I couldn’t find racial demographic data specific to home health but overall Black, Hispanic/Latino, American Indian and Alaskan Native, and multiracial people are underrepresented in nursing compared to their population rates. In hospital leadership that under representation is even greater. If you know of data that’s specific to home health leadership I’d be interested to see it because my brief search came up short. You bring up confirmation bias, but fyi argument by exception is also a logical fallacy.
  6. HiddencatBSN
    So here’s the thing- my risk of catching and further dying of covid (you didn’t touch on risk or permanent damage that folks who are recovered are experiencing) but there are people who are at higher risk due to age or co-morbid condition. My wearing a mask overall reduces spread and reduces the risk to those who are more vulnerable. Think of it like wearing a seatbelt- yes, a seatbelt protects me. But it also protects the other occupants of the car FROM me because in an accident my body could become an object that hits others if I am not restrained. “Just do you” doesn’t really work when our actions or lack of action have an impact on others: we should concern ourselves with protecting the vulnerable especially when the actions we take to protect them are not risky or harmful to ourselves. Those experiencing anxiety or distress from wearing masks can try different types of masks or practice relaxation techniques while increasing their wear time. With there appearing to be no lasting immunity from infection and vaccines still in trial, and the need for people to work in the absence of a strong social-economic safety net to keep more people home, wearing masks in public is likely going to be our new normal for the foreseeable future and desensitization rather than complete exemption should be the priority. I think it’s interesting that people have more concern for a manageable response to mask wearing than the people who are at risk for death or long term sequelae from covid. Yes, anxiety and psychological distress is a very real thing (and widespread mask use allows us to have some of the social interaction that keeps us mentally healthy) but **** everyone who’s over 65, has asthma, is immunocompromised, draws the statistical short straw and is young and healthy, etc etc? As far as your risk assessment goes....part of how we get it lower and keep it lower ARE mask and social distancing measures. Also....3% mortality to something we have no immunity to is really high. That’s vastly higher than the flu.
  7. HiddencatBSN

    Transgender nurses?

    HiddencatBSN replied to munkyfusic's topic in General Nursing

    Not all trans people are “passing” or intend/want to be passing. And there are also people who are nonbinary who feel most themselves when they exist in a gender ambiguous presenting appearance. So it’s possible that no one will know, but also possible they will. I haven’t worked with any nurses who I have known to be trans. And I have seen coworkers exhibit varying degrees of competence in dealing with trans patients. My hospital explicitly teaches cultural competency on caring for trans patients and discrimination and harassment based on gender is explicitly addressed in our training. At this hospital I do see nurses being a little better with pronouns for patients and addressing them properly but it’s still a work in progress. I have a facebook friend who is trans and living in the midwest. I know she has dealt with bigotry from coworkers and patients. She’s an amazing advocate especially for harm reduction work.
  8. HiddencatBSN

    We Say Boom, But History Says Bust: Will COVID cause a decline in births?

    HiddencatBSN replied to Brenda F. Johnson's topic in Disasters

    The surging population in Africa and South Asia are responsible for minimal carbon emissions compared to population stable or declining industrialized countries. It’s not about the number if people but the resources they use and take up, and that’s all potentially modifiable and mitigatable.
  9. HiddencatBSN
    I got emailed from the state board of nursing and from my teaching job, multiple times. Plus the call went out publicly too: my husband used to be a paramedic and let his cert lapse (stopped working due to PTSD) and since they were asking for people with former certs too he responded but ended up not being asked to go. My hospital sent a ton of staff downstate to work as well since our census had dropped and there was a need. But this is coordination that happens at the state level so when you have states that don’t want to do that work and take on that task and authority....it doesn’t just magically happen.
  10. HiddencatBSN
    I’m impressed by the dedication of the crisis actors who are scripted to die. That’s some next level method acting.
  11. HiddencatBSN

    Dr. Pimple Popper Thinks Nurses Have No Place Educating Patients

    HiddencatBSN replied to CaffeinePOQ4HPRN's topic in General Nursing

    I once moved our breakroom coffee maker to an empty patient room so it could use the red plugs during an unexpected and LONG power outage so we could all have coffee on our night shift, and the attending in particular was super grateful. I was new to the unit and I’m pretty sure that’s what sold me to him as a critical-thinking-problem-solver 😂
  12. HiddencatBSN
    They did in New York State. Everyone with an RN license got multiple surveys asking if we were available to be deployed in hard hit areas, and the governor also put calls out to health care professionals with lapsed licenses and certs too.
  13. HiddencatBSN
    The nurses that complain about floating to other duties or units still end up going anyway- they just develop reputations for being whiners and poor team players. There’s nothing dignified or elevated about that. I’ve never folded laundry but I’ve cleaned many a room in my nursing career when we have needed one turned over asap, and every unit in my hospital has contributed staff at all levels to temperature screen during this pandemic. Other area hospitals are furloughing staff on unit-wide levels. I would save complaints for assignments that are dangerous: where you don’t have training to be safe or where the nurse patient ratio is too high for the acuity.
  14. HiddencatBSN

    Help! Potential job opportunity and not sure what to do!

    HiddencatBSN replied to slove2718's topic in General Nursing

    Most places I’ve worked at hire people for CNA roles who don’t have any CNA training and provide it on the job. Being a CNA is hard work but it’s hard work you can learn as you go. And it’s experience that will benefit you as an RN, it’s an opportunity to network, will help your job hunt for new grad RN jobs....I don’t really see a downside other than balancing work schedule with school schedule.
  15. HiddencatBSN

    Radonda Vaught Fatal Error Case Timeline

    HiddencatBSN replied to Emergent's topic in General Nursing

    From what I’ve read, Vaught missed so many warnings that she was giving the wrong med (I mean really, vecuronium instead of versed? That right there, where the names are very different, should be the first clue) but the way Vanderbilt covered this up is....scary. What else have they covered up that we just haven’t heard about because there was no anonymous tipster (I have money on it being a gag-ordered family member). What a dangerous culture that speaks to.
  16. HiddencatBSN

    New protocol - No report from ER to floor...

    HiddencatBSN replied to justjRN's topic in General Nursing

    Was just going to say, I don’t remember the last time I haven’t eaten at the nurses station. We drop staffing at 3am regardless of whether our volume has dropped and there isn’t always float pool staff to cover the difference especially when the volume is higher than expected. The ICU can’t create beds, but we can and do and we also have responsibility for a waiting room of patients who are varying levels of acuity from could-have-gone-to-pcp-in-2-weeks to as-soon-as-that-admit-goes-up-wipe-down-the-bed-and-toss-a-clean-sheet-down to we’re-starting-this-one-in-the-trauma-bay. As far as communication and respect go, in my experience at multiple facilities, my personal politeness has nothing to do with how readily report is received. I have noticed that hospitals I’ve been at that have done away with report to med surg tend to be ones where there were issues with patient transfer being delayed from the time a room is assigned and the ones that continue on with phoned report seem to move patients more smoothly. Currently my facility calls report. When the receiving RN sounds harried and asks for some time before I send up the patient I try to accommodate that. When the delay is because there’s no crib in the room and the waiting room is 6 hours deep during flu season and the patient has been held by mom sitting on the stretcher in the ER for the last however many hours, they can just as easily continue that arrangement for the time it takes for a crib to be delivered to the inpatient room in that room rather than in the ER. I’ve done inpatient and know that things get hectic but delayed movement has ripple effects that can impact multiple patients.
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