IslandtrainedRN

First off - congratulations on choosing nursing as a career! You'll probably meet many negative attitudes about nursing on your way through school (I know I did), but ignore them. Nursing is great. I'm a new grad myself - I graduated 7 months ago and have been working ona medical unit since, but I'll be starting my first labour and delivery position in January. The first thing you have to do to become an OB nurse is get though nursing school. It's a lot of studying, and hard work, and coffee, and TEARS, but nursing school is an experience of a lifetime, so soak it up. If you get a chance, or have any free time, try to volunteer in a maternity unit. Maybe feeding babies in the nursery, or even stocking carts in labour and delivery. It will look good on your resume, you'll learn some new termilogy, and most importantly, staff around the unit will know your name and your face. Try to get to any maternity conferences/inservices/teaching programs that you can. Some nursing schools will sponsor students to get extra certifications. Make sure you put them on your resume. It'll show how keen and dedicated you are. And then when you graduate, apply for any maternal/child position that comes up. Even if you're not qualified for the position, applying will show your interest. And even if it's not the specific area of maternity you want, it's a foot in the door. Be patient too. Some hospitals have a lot of competition for maternal/child positions so it may take a while. Good luck!

The hospital where I did my labour and delivery preceptorship is a teaching hospital, so it always has at least one OB and at least one resident on call in the hospital, which is really nice (and not possible at many hospitals). During my 2.5 months there there were NO deliveries by nurses, but even with great physician staffing it happens occasionally, and there's nothing we nurses can do about it. One nurse told me that she caught a baby while the mom was sitting on the toilet. SCARY! And sometimes we would have 4 women fully dilated at the same time and a few others getting very close. It's just inevitable that nurses are going to be catching babies sometimes and nobody should be angry about it. They should be grateful that there are qualified nurses ready to step-up and save the day. Congratulations on your first catch! I sincerely hope that all of your future catches go as well. I'm terrified about my first, so hopefully it will be safe and smooth like yours. As for the MD, some people are just jerks. They can't just accept that things didn't go their way so they have a need to blame someone. The doctor isn't the important person though, the client is, and it sounds like your client/family is pretty happy with you. You can bet they'll remember you forever!

I work on a unit that uses team nursing. This means that on a team of 9 patients we have one team leader (always an RN) and a worker (usually an LPN but sometimes an RN). When I'm team leading, there is no one I appreciate more than the worker on my team, and there are many LPNs who I would rather work with than some of the other RNs. I always try to help out with vitals and baths and dressing changes, but since I'm a new grad and I'm still pretty slow doing meds and assessments, my worker usually takes the brunt of the workload, and I feel terrible about that. Anyway, the point that I first intended to make was that some RNs have inferiority complexes from being bullied by MDs and senior nurses (who were bullied themselves). I think sometimes people take their frustrations out on who they perceive to be working "under them", which is terrible.

Just apply anyway. Make sure you tell them where you are registered to practice now in your cover letter, and then if they show an interest, start the registration process. You don't need to be registered in that province to apply for a job, but you have to be registered before you can start working. I just went through that whole process for a job in Alberta. I've got the job, but I have to wait until I'm registered with CARNA before I can start.

I worked with a L&D nurse last year and she had a very sarcastic sense of humour. When women told her that they "lost" their mucous plug, she would reply with "did you look under the bed?" :roll

This isn't really an OB thing, but it DOES drive me nuts. When I have a patient on the medical unit who is a mouth-breather and is "comfort cares only", one or two doctors write irritating orders, like an order for "good mouth care" or "mouth care QID". It drives me crazy because that is NURSING CARE!!! Do they think we don't know when our patients need mouth care?? I was very tempted to write a note to the doc who ordered mouthcare QID and let him know that we're actually doing mouth care q1hr, but thanks for the suggestion. He may as well have written an order for nursing care PRN.

I was just reading some of the replies to "Where are you from", and I noticed that there are a lot of maritimers and Newfies here. I'm PEI born, raised and trained, but I'm planning a big move out to cowboy country (Calgary). Are there any Atlantic Canadian nurses here who are working out in Calgary?? I've heard it's a pretty fun city.

Hey there!! I'm in PEI (and got my BScN at UPEI, which is a great nursing school), and I'm on my way to nurse in Calgary. I've heard it's a FANTASTIC city. I can't wait!!!

The passing grade varies every year. I found the exam very difficult to write. It was long (about 2.5 hours for the first half, and 3 hours for the second) and I found that the more I wrote, the more confidence I lost. I left that exam feeling like there was a good possibility that I failed... BUT I passed, and so did everyone else in my nursing class. I think the most important thing to do when preparing for the CRNE, is to increase your confidence by any means possible. I personally found studying a lot to be helpful. I asked the nurses who wrote last year what they remembered about it, and I studied that. (by the way, study the major illnesses that you find on a medical unit - liver disease, kidney failure, hypertention, diabetes, and know the cardiac markers). A lot of people don't like the CNA prep-guide, but I personally found it helpful because it made me feel like I knew what to expect, and that made me feel more confident. You'll probably be fine, but good luck anyway!

The role of the RN varies some from province to province, but I think it's generally the same as in the USA. A really good place you could look for information is the CNA. Have you been to their website? http://www.cna-nurses.ca/cna/default_e.aspx Also, if you're looking for a position in a specific province, you could check with their provincial nursing association. Most have websites as well. Good luck! Welcome to Canada!

Doulas are trained to be able to work in partnership with labouring women and hospital staff. I think if a doula is a part of the birth experience you want, go for it! I would LOVE to have a chace to work with a doula.

I got this great book to help me make care plans in nursing school. It's called Nursing Diagnosis Handbook: A Guide to Planning Care (6th Ed.). It's not really a handbook, it's pretty big. You look up the "Problem" that you have - in this case, Jaundice - and it gives you a list of potential nursing diagnoses that may apply. Then you can look up those nursing diagnoses in the planning care section, and it makes a general care plan that you can individualize for your patient. That book has helped me to make many a care-plan. It's by Mosby. Maybe your unit manager might be interested in buying one for nurses to have access to? Oh, and for jaundice, it suggests: 1) Disturbed thought processes related to toxic blood metabolites. 2) Impaired comfort: pruritis related to toxix metabolites excreted in the skin. 3) Risk for impaired skin integrity related to pruritis, itching. Hope that helps! Good luck!

A lot of hospitals try to do one-to-one nursing once a woman is in active labour. I just had an interview for a labour and delivery position, and I'm very hopeful that I got the job... I'm also very hopeful that they have a one-to-one policy because, like you, I can't wrap my head around managing two labouring women at once. What if one woman is ready to start pushing and the other runs into trouble? Also, it just simply doesn't seem safe to leave a woman receiving pitocin without a nurse... what if she goes hypertonic? I'll be interested to see the responses to your post. Good luck!

It makes me so sad and angry for you that your error was handled like that. If your director is a nurse as well, I'm sure she has made med errors herself (even big ones). The truth is, that any nurse who tells you that she/he has never had an error is flat-out lieing. This may have been your first med error, but it certainly won't be your last, and the way this was handled by your unit will only make you think twice about reporting your next error. Also - yelling at a nurse who has just made a mistake is a cruel thing to do. I'm sure you already felt sick about what had happened. That would have been a great opportunity for your management to show that they support their nursing staff. I'm a new nurse myself (graduated May 2006), and I made my first med error over the summer. I accidentally gave a medication that someone else had already given (and signed in). It was a pretty dumb mistake and could have been very harmful to my patient. I felt very fortunate that the staff was so supportive of me. The other nurses sat at the desk with me and told me some of their worst med errors, they helped me to fill out an incident report and even offered to call the doctor for me if I wasn't up to it. My med error turned out to be a very positive learning experience, and that's exactly what they should be. I hope that you are able to keep your confidence. Remember that every other nurse has made errors as well and that it DOES NOT make you a bad nurse. Is there anyone who you can report this situation to? Or anyone you can confide in to restore your confidence? Best of luck!

Hey there! I graduated 6 months ago and I have my first labour and delivery interview TODAY! (although I don't want to get my hopes up, it's a step in the right direction). Where I live, you have to have 2 years of med-surg experience before you can apply for any specialty. I desperately want to be in a maternal/child area, so I've been applying outside of my own province. If my interview goes well today, I'll be moving 4000 miles away, but I get to work in labour and delivery at an EXCELLENT hospital. If you're dedicated to doing whatever it takes to get your dream job, you can definitely do it. Good luck!