Liz48

I’ve begun to start looking at where I might want to work and at new grad job applications. I’ve noticed that many prefer healthcare experience. I don’t have healthcare experience (CNA isn’t required at my school and our first semester including clinical was over things like ADLs along with our head to toes). My work experience is in retail. I enjoy what I do, and I’ve stuck with it. I’ve had plenty of supervisory experience in my work, so it’s not like I’ve just been a cashier for years (Nothing wrong with that obviously! I just feel like the fact that I have experience in things like delegating and resolving issues that get passed onto me is relevant to nursing). Anyone here get hired on as a new nurse without healthcare experience? I’m getting kind of worried about it. I love my jobs and honestly prefer them to tech work - I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that - I do really enjoy clinical! I’m 24, so I have 7 years of work experience. It’s just not in healthcare. Advice is appreciated!!!!

Math is my worst subject. For context, I dropped out of calc in high school as my other option was failing, and I had to retake college algebra twice, passing with a B. The only math I’m good at is DA, and like you, I did it well in chem. I’ve passed all my med calc quizzes so far on the first try(we need 100 to pass). If you can memorize conversions and do DA, you’re golden.

That didn't occur to me to go a couple of editions back to save some money. I might have to consider that one! Thank you.

So, apologies if this has been posted a lot previously, but when I was scrolling through forums, I was mostly finding topics from at least a few years back, and opinions and technology change. Anyway, my school requires purchase of eBooks for every class we take. We can't opt out. I've never particularly been a fan of eBooks, but, oh well. My question is, does anyone else supplement their eBooks with hard copies? I'm considering it, but we all know how expensive nursing school gets to be. My main concern is we seem to have access to the book for only the semester. Did you find yourselves referencing texts later in the program or while studying for the NCLEX? Our books this semester are assessments, med-surg, fundamentals, mental health, and gerontology. To me, it seems like maybe eBooks would be fine for ones like psych and gerontology, but a physical copy would be better for ones that lay a foundation for future classes like assessments. That's just my very uneducated guess though. What did y'all do for eBooks versus physic textbooks?

I'll be going into nursing school this January. Currently, since my pre-reqs this semester are online, I work retail full-time. I worked part time briefly (about a month) as a patient care tech in a hospital, but I had to leave due to scheduling conflicts. My plan is to stay at my retail job part time during semester 1. In my state, you can take the CNA test after a semester of nursing school, which I plan to do. Semester 2 onward, I would like to work as a PCT in a hospital again, and getting my CNA opens up more possibilities as our hospitals only hire non-CNA techs on a handful of floors. My question is, does anyone with experience working as a tech during nursing school have advise for me? I'm worried about being able to maintain my grades with a hospital schedule. My current job I can work a 4 hour night or two, and no more than 7/8 hour weekends, which leaves plenty of time for studying. I've also been there for over a year, so I'm able to essentially write my own schedule more or less. I know at a hospital, that won't be an option. Is working 12 hour weekend days going to be too much? I won't be able to work weekdays at all in a hospital, as we can't work the night before class or clinicals (which makes sense), and I'm in class until 4pm most days. So basically, would you guys recommend I just continue retail with better hours and scheduling, albiet less pay, or go into a hospital with potentially difficult hours?

I don't know if you're looking for ADN or BSN (or if anything would compel you to move to South Dakota of all places), but the BSN program I'll be starting January is less than two years. January to August of the next year. It's through South Dakota State University, but it's located in Sioux Falls (the physical main campus for SDSU is in a town less than an hour north called Brookings). The downside though is that it only starts in January each year. So applications won't open up again until next August.