anticoagulationurse

Our agency uses Cerner RoadNotes and it is terrible! The opposite of user friendly/intuitive. Crashes frequently, etc. Bad, bad juju.

I have learned to not ask Him for patience or He will give me a means and a reason to learn it.

Emergency Nurse - I don't think your sentiment matches what the OP is trying to suggest and lacks the very sensitivity that you are insisting the OP have. Not all nursing is bedside nursing, and maybe their gifts and interests are elsewhere. He/she is a new nurse and still getting the feel, give them a break! I bet you would not be doing your job for free. We all work for a paycheck, we just hope we are able to find more meaning to it than that alone... which is why we are nurses and I think what the OP may have been expressing.

Go2WorkSource.com - Search Jobs, Post Rs, Career Resources This covers all of WA (but of course not all jobs are listed here) but many are since it is a free site. Best wishes!

Scary! I have a patient who had a normal little paper cut. She worked in a medical records department. Two weeks later her arm was being eaten alive from the inside out by necrotizing fasciitis (flesh eating bacteria). Yikes! (She had a fasciotomy and is fine now).

Well, in the beginning I too, worked for my paycheck. I was not only bored with certain jobs but HATED them and cried most days, despite the fact I was still learning and had the challenges I craved at work. You just might have to do your time and shift from job to job until you settle in to your area of interest. I thought I would never feel satisfied as a nurse until I found my niche, which fits me perfectly and I love it so much. And it pays well, so now, I REALLY do not even know when my pay day is (direct deposit). :) Hang in there!

Home Health nurse for the last 2 years. Intermittent visits. I LOVE it, but it's not for everybody. This was after 5 years of nursing jobs I did not love. I went into Nursing because I took a college job compatibility quiz that listed nursing as one of the top few and it is a stable profession with many career opportunities and choices.

My agency does not allow this.

I would call the lab and find out. But our lab requires us to deliver them within 4 hours so they can be centrifuged if needed. Otherwise, the specimens themselves are always kept at our lab for 7 days before discarded in case the doc wants to add on any tests later.

Scrub-a-dub-dubs here. There's not really too much of a dress code (no jeans no shorts, no tanks), but I am lazy about fashion and scrubs are easy.

First let me assure you I was kind of (unnecessarily) terrified of phlebotomy. I had never attempted a phlebotomy until I was in HH. I knew the principles, had IV training (but no real experience), and I was terrified. I avoided it for a long time, watched a few during my training. But, finally I just bit the bullet and tried one, and succeeded on the second poke. Same for the next several phlebotomies, took a couple of attempts. If I couldn't get it by the third try I was surely flustered by then and it's no use torturing the patient with more pokes if I hadn't got it by then, so I would send another nurse. I do draws once maybe every 2-3 weeks so it made it hard to get a good feel and really learn the skill. I would say by the 10th poke I was starting to feel confident and since the 15 or 20th poke (maybe about 6 months into my HH job), I was golden. Haven't missed one since and nearly always on the first poke since then.

Yes, but being an RN automatically imbibes more responsibility as per the nature of the licensure. I could work at Starbucks as a barista and would still expect more than a starting wage because of the nature of my education and general working responsibility even though I would not be working as an RN in that position. I would expect it, but it does not mean I would be offered it, and does not mean I would accept any less.

Well, I know my company certainly hires travel positions for everything else... except nursing for some reason. Not to say the jobs aren't out there, just don't tend to need travel nurses in my agency. Not sure why.

Ok, this is something I have wondered about for a loooong time. Keep in mind I DO understand that cases of illness/surgery related hyperglycemia are transiently related to the physiological stresses of said conditions. But, I suspect that some of these hyperglycemic complications are directly linked to the diabetic being served a regular diet in these facilities. I have seen/heard so many diabetic patients complain about the carbs and HS snacks when they NEVER eat such an amount at home. Prior to admission they are possibly insulin dependent or not, but end up on sliding scale insulin while an inpatient, and then are able to go off it when they get back home. I realize the timing of such episodes are linked with admissions and henceforth illnesses/injuries which further complicates my theory. Some people are not even diabetic and suddenly they are managed with insulin during an inpatient stay. What gives? I realize diabetic diets cost more and this is one way a facility can reduce costs, by serving cheap food and white bread and fillers. However, I wonder if the sudden "need" for sliding scale insulin may somehow affect reimbursement since it may mean a higher acuity level and more nursing needs? So it is a win win for the facility to have a patient who "requires" insulin during their stay... Just a theory, an unethical one. Am I way off track?

Here ya go! http://www.doh.wa.gov/hsqa/Professions/Nursing/documents/RN_byEnd.pdf page 5 will give you the specifics for international licensure.

A few things: 1) you have a lot of education and maybe they think you will expect too much pay and don't want to bother offering you a job you may be "overeducated" for. 2) It's good to use verbs, but mix it up and use different ones to describe the nursing abilities you have. Ie: assisted, assessed, provided, educated, performed, implemented, interviewed, examined, recorded, etc. I see a lot of, "observed, assisted, participated" in your resume. 3) Your Orthopedic clinical you wrote, "Assessed patients by administering medications..." the statement seems weird to me. How do you assess patients BY administering meds? Also, vitals are a presumed part of assessments to it is not necessary to list this. Might condense all your clinical experiences to 3 different areas or types of patient care experiences, as it is not necessary to list the hours spent where. You may be trying to make your resume appear more beefed up, but it is a bit cumbersome to read through. Try bullet points. Sometimes using a functional resume format helps when you have non-nursing related job experience that you feel is valuable, and/or you have little nursing experience and want to highlight your personal attributes rather than actual work experience. Not sure it is necessary to list simulation experience. You are a nursing school grad, they don't really care where you went to school and assume since you are licensed you have been educated in all the typical areas of care. Not trying to be critical, just trying to help! Best wishes!

You want me to take more responsibility (which having an RN license automatically adds) then you pay me more money or I go work somewhere else.

Dittos! I also do not like being oriented to each nurse's special and specific way of doing this or that thing and expecting me to keep track and do it their way when working with them rather than acknowledging that every one has a method and as long as the end result is positive and equivocal what difference does it make how it is accomplished? Right after school I worked as a float nurse in a busy doctor's office. I was in my 3-4th month and one of the long time nurses STILL talked to me like I was orienting (which I wasn't), and showed me that she liked this and that paper copied and placed in this specific section of the chart (a different place than other nurses), and her other titfortat kind of silliness. I threw up my arms and told her she was talking to me like it was my first day of work, and I found it unreasonable for her to expect me to memorize her preferences like they were actually important and that she could file her own stuff and I would do something more productive like triage patients and return urgent phone calls.

I am guessing... NO.

Interesting discussion here. I would like to add that even mild harassment is that which is unwanted. That is NOT to say I wanted to see his Mediaos or the woman in the next room, but I was indifferent and personally unaffected by it, so therefore it was not unwanted and that is why I do not consider it harassment. Kind of like pain, harassment is subjective and and individual response.

Um, NO!

I did not acknowledge my suspicions about the "hooker" ("daughter") to the patient, nor did I acknowledge the Mediaos. I did not feel threatened, or harassed so therefore I don't feel it's necessary to do any reporting. He was cordial, the hiding woman was discreet. It's not like I was subjected to anything unsavory like some of you have been, and the Media was not playing on the TV's. For that I'm thankful. Perhaps he forgot I was coming and I caught him unprepared? Who knows. I do feel there is a fine line and the situation could have gone both ways. My moral opinion about Media or unconfirmed illicit sexual behavior bears no significance for this man. He is 70 something and going to do what he is going to do. It certainly would not have been appropriate for me to say anything at the time, since the woman could have actually been his daughter (I guess), or if she was a hooker then the situation could have gotten offensive and possibly confrontational and dangerous. Thanks for your input though, I've never heard this topic come up before in my HH experiences.

I was hired during a transition of supervisors so I was unsupervised for a while. I was tossed from preceptor to preceptor and even tagged along with each discipline to see their work. This went on for about a month before I was so BORED I begged to see patients. So they let me, and turned me loose. I prefer to learn by doing and fixing my mistakes as I go. So I just started plugging away at all the OASIS visits, etc. The utilzation review dept gave me prompt input and feedback on my OASIS. The only thing I ever really heard when I got a supervisor was that I needed to increase my productivity. I was up to full speed and acceptable productivity in about 3 months, but working LOTS OF OVERTIME by then just to keep up! I had that under control by 6 months as my efficiency improved and made fewer documentation errors to fix. Now, it's all a breeze.

Thanks, Kate RN1, while I did not address the sexuality questions on our admission forms (I never do), I certainly understand what you are saying and appreciate your story about the elderly couple. I do not care one iota what this man choses to do to himself or the woman hiding in the other room. None of my business. Just sharing what I thought was a funny and potentially awkward situation in which a man has his "daughter" in his bed in the next room, and makes no attempt at hiding his Mediaos from her or from ME for that matter or inviting her into the conversation about his medical care. He knew what time I would be arriving! Also, the difference between my man and a dirty old man is, my man wouldn't grab at a young nurse's a$$ and shamelessly try to flirt and sexually harrass her like some of my "dirty old men" patients have (but not this one, as I pointed out originally).

I DEFINITELY recommend the practice tests on the EC website. They were $75 per course when I was in the program, and you get 2 tests; form A and form B. Same sort of questions, different formats. I took one at the beginning of studying for each course to see where I needed to focus my studying (and skip the parts I was strong in), and one when I thought I was ready for the Pearson final exam. I would invariably score higher on the real exam than the practice test. Many of the practice questions were exactly as on the Pearson exams. Worth WAY more than the fee!!! The practice tests also give you a format which says what score you got on each question and rationale for each answer selection to help you learn why/why not to chose a certain answer.