cgw5364

cgw5364 has 33 years experience.

cgw5364's Latest Activity

1. 

   Are there any nurses that actually LIKE nursing?

   cgw5364 replied to CShel's topic in General Students

   I worked mother/baby for 10 years and loved it. I ended up leaving because of 12 hours shifts and being on call. Still loved taking care of new parents and babies when I left. Currently I work in Denials and have done so for 11 years. I started out as a nurse auditor and our department morphed into Denials Management with some audit work. As much as I loved Mother/Baby the type of work I do now is truly my niche. I love figuring out why an insurance company denied payment to our facility and figuring out how to get the claim paid so the patient is not held responsible. The audit work I do is making sure the charges billed are supported by documentation in the medical record and going head to head with a nurse auditor from the insurance company who is trying to have charges removed from the bill. It's like I am figuring out puzzles all day! I work 8 hours a day from home and don't work weekends, call or holiday work.
2. 

   Should I stay or should I go?

   cgw5364 replied to Wandering-night's topic in Critical

   Like others have said, you need to be more assertive. I worked night shift and one of the day nurses was know for bullying the night shift nurses during report especially about tasks that we had to pass on. One morning during report after a horrible night-I was the only RN with 2 LPN's with 12 brand new mother baby couplets and 6 of these were fresh C/S. Not only was I in charge I was also the PCA/IV nurse for all 6 of these patients. The day nurse started her thing-asking question after question before I had a chance to answer one question. I finally looked her in the eye and calmly said "stop it". Not loudly but the entire nursing station got dead silent. I then proceeded to tell this nurse that I would answer all of her questions one at a time. I explained the night we had had and that we could not complete all of our tasks but that is what the next shift was for. Well, after that I never had a problem from that person again.
3. 

   The golden first year?

   cgw5364 replied to pinkdoves's topic in Nursing

   Hi PinkDoves, I have been a nurse for 30 plus years. I went to nursing school (ADN) straight out of HS and had my nursing license at 20. In ADN school we did not have sim labs, we were working on the hospital med-surg floor the 2nd week in school (assessments, basic care). By the time we graduated we were taking a full load and practicing being in charge. I felt prepared but the real world of nursing was still a shock. I had never really "worked" in a hospital or any medical facility and had never volunteered. My first job was on a 40 bed oncology unit at night. I was put in charge with 2 LPN's and 2 NT's. I had to give all of the blood, IV injections, be in charge and care for my own patients. I lasted for 9 months before having a breakdown and developed and eating disorder. I did not work after that for 4 months. When I finally got the courage to take on another job I went to another facility (smaller non-teaching) and worked oncology again. Much better situation. Worked 8 hour nights with a tight team of co-workers. One of the LPN's on the unit had been there for 20 years. She took me under her wing and taught me how to be a nurse. After the disaster of my first job I thought I was done with nursing. I finally found my "niche" in nursing in women's and children. Worked in L&D (loved birthing babies but not the stress), NICU and finally mother baby which I did for 10 years before leaving floor nursing. I have to say I loved mother baby. I was able to do a lot of teaching to new parents and care for normal newborns. Currently I work in the finance area of nursing and have been for 10 years and love it. I am writing all of this to hopefully encourage you to keep trying. Think about what kind of patients you liked to care for most in school and try to get into that area. If you can hold out working at the bedside for a couple of years you could then move into case management or utilization review.
4. 

   Vaccine Hesitancy

   cgw5364 replied to Nurse Beth's topic in Nursing

   I have not said no yet and have my vaccine scheduled in 2 weeks. These are my reasons I might change my mind: 1) Multiple medication and environmental allergies and a seafood allergy. Nothing severe but enough to to make me very careful of medications. 2) The place I am scheduled to take the vaccine is in a converted store. Our organization is combining employees with community members at this vaccination site. The plan is to vaccinate 10,000 people per day from 7am-7pm. That is roughly 800 plus people per hour. How safe can it be to be exposed to that many people? I have been working remotely since March and have social distanced/stayed home for the majority of this time. The store is pretty big but looking at the setup online nothing is spread out. I think this is extremely unsafe.
5. 

   I Really Do Not Want the COVID Vaccine 😞

   cgw5364 replied to AspiringNurse94's topic in COVID

   I want to take the vaccine but I am afraid to do so. I have multiple environmental and medication allergies, shellfish allergy and history of autoimmune disease (Graves). My concern throughout this pandemic is that I will catch Covid and my immune system goes overboard.
6. 

   Is it normal to hate my job this much?

   cgw5364 replied to pinkdoves's topic in Nursing

   If you "hate nursing" I don't think you will be happy with any position with direct patient care in a hospital setting-not trying to be harsh. You will always have stressors with any area in nursing. It is the nature of the job. I have 30 years experience with 20 years of bedside nursing. The last 10 years of my bedside nursing career I worked mother-baby. I thought this will be a low-stress area. After all, these patient's are not sick, they just had a baby. WRONG! Even though these patient's were not "sick" there were a lot of days and nights I did not get a break the entire 12 hours shift. For an entire 2 years I was the only RN at night with two LPN's who were in ADN school. I had my own assignment, being in charge, giving all the IV meds to fresh C/S, getting sleepy babies to breastfeed, putting orders in the EMR and half the time we did not have a tech. Now I work in medical review and have for 10 years. I love this area of work but even here there are stressors. You mentioned VAS work. I remember seeing those nurses being run ragged in the hospital. The lease stressful job I have had in nursing was being a maternity case manager for an insurance company. I was there for a year and was pregnant. At 8 months pregnant my supervisor was keeping count of every time I had to go to the restroom. It's always something. You might enjoy an educator's role, telehealth, telephone triage, clinic's and doctor's office. Hang in there if you can and get a little more experience to make yourself more marketable. But don't do this at the expense of your mental and physical health.
7. 

   CDC Has Changed the "Close Contact" Definition

   cgw5364 replied to k1p1ssk's topic in School

   I think the wording "cumulative" is the focus. I read an article this weekend about a prison guard who testing positive after having brief contacts with 9 new inmates who were all asymptomatic. The guard wore a microfiber mask. The inmates were masked and unmasked. Here is the article: https://www.CDC.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6943e1.htm
8. 

   Nursing Uniforms: From Skirts to Scrubs and Beyond

   cgw5364 replied to Melissa Mills's topic in Nursing

   I graduated nursing school in 1985 and worked on oncology. We wore white and I hated every minute of it! Never could keep the whites clean and the white stockings made my legs itch. I remember having to wear my cap for a couple of months after graduating and the darn thing would always get tangled in IV lines. It also would not stay straight on my head no matter how many bobby pins I used. I wore whites until I started working in L&D in the early 90's. What a relief scrubs were. Now our hospital requires all floor nurses to wear ceil blue. I am very thankful I no longer work in patient care because ceil blue is as bad as having to wear white.
9. 

   An allnurses Fix On Healthcare

   cgw5364 replied to RobbiRN's topic in Nursing

   I think it should be a single payer system. I fight with insurance companies every day to get services approved and denials overturned. I watched a documentary called Fix It Healthcare At The Tipping Point and the money spent on administrative cost is 30-35% of health care cost. Going to a single payer system would bring that down to 3-5%. I live in a state that did not expand Medicaid under ACA and if you make less than $12,000 a year you can't get insurance on the health care exchange. When filling out the application income under $12,000 is supposed to qualify you for Medicaid but in the states that did not expand you can't get it. The health care exchange plans offered in our state by one company have monthly premiums of over $500.00 if you don't qualify for a subsidy. And these plans are high deductible in addition to high monthly premiums. I encourage everyone to watch the documentary Fix It Healthcare At The Tipping Point.
10. 

    Nurses' Week - Upended.

    cgw5364 replied to evilolive07's topic in Nursing

    I have worked at my hospital for 24 years. The hospital used to give the nurses gifts for nurses week (I still use a lunch tote given in 2012-it is two compartments and is very nice) and nurses week was just for nurses. Now it is "hospital week" and the entire organization caters a meal for 3 shifts. The meal that is given is not healthy in any way and the only choice for vegetarians is coleslaw, white rice and a cold roll. Nursing organization in the hospital offers several "classes" and we are encouraged to do "volunteer" work. Someone from the hospital media department goes around the hospital/organization and takes pictures of nurses on their units and these are posted on the hospital internal media page. Call me silly but I liked the gifts. At least you felt appreciated.
11. 

    Do you trust the organ donation process (after recovery of 'brain dead' boy)?

    cgw5364 replied to Emergent's topic in Nursing

    As a medical review nurse one of my functions is to separate hospital charges for organ donations. Charges that occur prior to declaration of death belong to the hospital and charges that occur after declaration of death belong to the OPO. I have noticed in the last year more cases of DCD-donor after circulatory death. In these cases the patient is not brain dead, however they have sustained non-survivable injuries. The patient's brain retains some minor brain stem functioning. When the patient's family has decided on organ donation these patient's are taken to the pre-operative holding area and are removed from life support. These patient's are expected to die within 60 minutes. I have not read of a case in which the patient lived longer than 10 minutes.
12. 

    Getting hired with an associates degree?

    cgw5364 replied to futurenurse1248's topic in Pre-Nursing

    The hospitals in my area still hire ADN's but the preferred is BSN. I plan to move to western NC in the future (family lives there) and the largest hospital system there now only hires BSN and ADN's who sign an agreement that they will start a BSN program within 6 months and obtain a BSN with 4 years. This is for all direct nursing care including their rehab facilities. The preferred degree for this hospital system is a masters in nursing. I am an ADN with 33 years of experience and I am in a state of disbelief I won't be able get a nursing job within a hospital system.