dkemper

Thanks Everyone, I have considered other paths such as Rad-Tech and some of the other suggestions in prior posts in this thread. HIM looks interesting also. I'm pretty set on following my dream of business start-up right now. Not sure which business to get into, maybe health care related, maybe not. I will just add, I fell like a tremendous weight has been lifted from my shoulders choosing to leave the nursing program. Relief that I won't be risking someones health and relief from potentially irregular long hours in a high stress environment. We need people committed to nursing with a do or die attitude, I certainly don't want a 50% nurse if I need to use their health care but desire the 150% nurses that live and breath nursing. Some people would seriously be stressed out in a business startup, for me, I am seriously stressed out providing nursing care. For me business leaves many more options and opportunities with far less stress than nursing. Good luck to each of your futures in nursing. I will continue to monitor this thread indefinitely. Dave K.

Or rather, I hate clinics! The lecture and theory I don't mind and do fairly well at but, I suck at clinics. I carry a lot of anxiety and hate the high speed pace. I obtained my LPN 2 years ago, continued on to ADN1 and failed clinic by 0.5 points, retook ADN1 the following semester and was struggling with clinic again. Decided to drop the program and get some experience as a LPN and return. Now it is 1.5 years later and retaking the ADN1 for the third time. Same story, lecture I'm doing great and clinic I suck! I hate the pace, I am overwelmed putting everything together on the fly. The anxiety levels over my concern I might miss something that may cause harm to the patient is horrible. I have been encouraged by both my clinic instructor and the ADN1 instructor to stick with it but today I could not handle it and just walked before clinic even started. I realize this is my last chance in the program, 3 strikes and you are out rule. I hate it that I have put a substantial amount of financial debt in pursuit of RN licensing but that doesn't matter any more. I just want out! I've been told most students struggle with lecture and not with clinic. Not me. I will also mention I am an older student in my 40's making a career change I planned to do in 1996. The plan was to be a Nurse Anesthetist after learnig from a friend his experiences in the field. Never planned on anything but that purely for the excitement. It was obvious that was not likely to happen 1.5 years ago and I lowered my expectations to RN. I believe I will return to IT and/or business, perhaps hospital administration? Nothing looks very good in the job market now. Kind of back in the corner. Good luck to everyone in your nursing careers. I'm out of here. Dave K. "Chaos presents opportunity. Successful people make order out of other people's challenges."

great post! and sobering post. i earned my lpn 2 years ago. took almost 2 years off to get field experience as a nurse. this semester i have returned to school to finish my rn. there are still openings for rn's in my community of about 150,000. i periodically check the classifieds to get a feel of what the market is doing. lpn job only exist in nursing homes mostly. in my previous career in information technology the companies cold not hire people with my skills for any price, that drove the market wage up. then the dot.com boom hit hard in 2001 and many of those jobs disappeared overnight. this happened in a matter of an year. the local market was flooded with extremely high skilled it staff out of work and willing to take anything. these high end skill sets were higher than my own so you can guess where that left me. i returned to a goal i set a few years prior to become a nurse anesthetist. my interest in nurse anesthetist was not for the money, but rather for the adventure and my exposure to a friend working in that capacity. my 2 years off from school working as a nurse in a psych facility has got my interest. back to the reason for my reply. one thing i learned in it, even when it was flying high, if you didn't have the experience you didn't get the best jobs. i had to be willing to take and work anything to get in the door unless you walked on water or had minimum of a bachelors degree, which neither applied to myself. my goal was to get in the door and prove myself then progress up the ladder. the progression was very rapid once i could put on my resume i did this and this and that, which was more valuable then the certifications i carried. sometimes it was like, "you can't get the job unless you got the experience, and you can't get the experience unless you have the job." another thing i found out, no matter what level of schooling or certifications i had, without paid field experience all applicants were considered entry level! i taught some of the it courses and so many of the students had glassy eyes about the high salaries for such and such certifications and degrees. the were stunned to find out they needed experience before they would be considered for anything more than a tech position. i anticipate the same in the nursing field. my license, grades, and knowledge will get me the interview but they probably will not hire me for any position requiring experience. honestly, i don't want to jump into any position requiring experience until i have some experience, a certain setup for failure. think about it, just because some one is highly athletic, runs all the time, wins many competitions, will he or she be able to compete in the iron man triathlon? no, the iron man will not let him or her compete for any price unless he qualifies. they know that person certainly would fail despite all their glowing athletism. the person needs to prove themselve. i hope to enter into any full time entry level rn job when i graduate and move up from there, as i gain experience. i don't desire to set myself up for failure because i bit off more than my experience has allowed me to do. additionally, the failure would be a black mark on my resume. :redbeathe if i do the work in the trenches it won't take long to get where i want to be. i vote, take it one step at a time, and i will get there soon. the saying goes, "how do you eat an elephant? one bite at a time." iowa dave

I like the idea that one of the Nursing book publishers would sponsor a "Drug A Day" email list, since they already have accurate data, a bonus for the publisher is the free marketing to potential customers! Any Nursing Book Publishers listening?

I'm a nursing student, just past the NCLEX-PN and continuing on for the NCLEX-RN 1 year away. I am very challenged with the massive quanitity of information presented during class, especially learning drugs I find the hardest. Here's my though: I learn much better in bite size junks rather than shovels full of information. I hope I could learn drugs and retain them by picking up one new drug everyday, drug generic and trade names, use, and important drug info to know. Has anyone come across a "Drug A Day" email list server to sign up for? Any other ideas to learn the drugs would be appreciated. TIA :bowingpur