Germanicus

I finished at Kennesaw in 99. I can say that it was a good experience. I had good teachers although a lot of the content was presented by guest lecturers and by us, the students. You will get hit pretty hard the first semester by having to take the physical assesment course, pathophysiology and pharmacology all at once. The hardest semester for me was the summer when we took research. 16 weeks of work is crammed into 10 but the worst thing was that the teacher was kind of unreasonable at times. I can't remember her name but she was the assistant dean at the time. I wasn't sure I had passed the class until I got my grades. The good part is that they have a lot of resources to help with the statistics portion. Finding a good clinical assignment is sometimes a problem. For Peds, I had to drive up to Calhoun from Roswell 3 days a week. It was a good setting but far away. There are some classes that have little to do with being a NP such as nursing theory and community health issues but if you show up and give a good presentation you should do fine. If you get in feel free to email me and I'll give you more info. Its been awhile since I was there but I know some of my old teachers are still around so I can give you some info on them too.

I've always had a pretty strong stomach and over 27 years of nursing and NP I have my hands in areas and in fluids that would gag an outhouse maggot. But the thing that sometimes gets to me is false teeth. I hate handling them and especially hate removing them from a patient. Don't know why but false teeth sometimes bother me.

I've been in lots of codes over the last 27 years. I do not like them. I can only think of a handful, less than five perhaps, where the patient survived. Also I have rarely seen a code go smoothly. All the practice and procedure seem to go right out the door. I especially don't like doing chest compressions. I'm a big guy and I have broken sternums on elderly patients. When I hold back on downward force someone starts telling me to compress harder and I try to get someone else to handle compressions which usually gets me a royal case of Stinkeye from others present. At my last code the patient's sternum came apart on the third compression. I was the first one there so I had to keep pushing. No, I don't llike codes at all.

Thanks again for all the support. I've decided to work NP temp assignments in corrections for now. I found an agency that staffs locum tenens slots at prisons around the state. The pay is good, the benefits non-existent and if an inmate gives me any grief I'll throw his ass in the hole for a month or two. Not really of course. The guard will throw him in the hole while I laugh loudly. There should really be an equivalent punishment for difficult patients in hospitals and MD offices. Someone is rude or beligerent--pop 'em with a tazer! turn the firehose on them! unleash the dogs! (I see that my burnout and anger hasn't totally faded.) Whether this situation will improve my outlook on my chosen career I really don't know. Again thanks for all the replies.

I appreciate all the responses to my rant and all of the suggestions for alternative employment. I got into nursing when I was 30 so I already did my time in the ashes, so to speak. I worked in construction, taught school threw drunks out of nightclubs; you get the picture. I worked as an NP this week through an agency and actually enjoyed it. There were and always will be trying or difficult patients but most of the folks I treated this week were appreciative of my efforts to get them well. I still feel the same way about nursing though. I will never work as an RN again. Maybe it was just the last situation I was in that helped finish burning me out, I don't know. I do know that I'm ready for a change. A big change. Thanks for the support I've seen here on the forum.

:madface: I've been an RN and NP for almost 22 years now. Most recently I was working as an RN due to the rather soft job opportunities for NPs around my area. This past Friday I walked away from my job. My manager told me she was receiving complaints about my nursing style. Most of the gripes seemed to focus on my not being empathetic or not seeming to care about my patients. Not true but at the same time I've always come across as more serious in demeanor. That conference with my manager was the last straw. I talked things over with my wife and quit the next day. I'm now looking at changing careers and getting out of healthcare. This is not a new feeling for me. Working in hospitals for so long and dealing with difficult patients, families with unrealistic expectations, arrogant MDs, assignment overload and managers that want to turn me into a woman has finally pushed me off the cliff. I've been in nursing a long time and really don't know how to do anything else so I'm in limbo right now. I'm leaning toward getting some job that has the least resonsibility possible. Kind of like Kevin Spacey in "American Beauty". Maybe the local Wal-Mart or Burger joint has some openings. But this I know, I'm never going to work as an RN again.That part of my life is over.

I used to do a fair amout of psych related treatment early on in my career. I refer them to psychiatrists now. I won't prescribe anything stronger than anti-depressants. I stopped prescribing benzos years ago and I don't try to manage psych drugs that need blood levels checked. It turns into a big headache. People with true mental illness need to be managed by a psychiatrist and manage is the key word here.