Broombug

I just graduated from Excelsior in December. I used Chancellor but bought the study guides on ebay. Much cheaper.

I couldnt imagine working in any other dept. Who needs TV when you work in the ER? I definately like the people I work with.:monkeydance:

I have never used it but the ED that I work at didnt care for it so much that they went back to paper charting. We are currently switching to T Systems.:innerconf

A couple of weeks ago we had an ambulance bring someone into the ER with conjunctivitis.

I've worked at St. David's North Austin and had a bad experience there then I transferred to Georgetown where I am happy. They are all owned by HCA but each hospital is different. I say check it out and make up your own mind.

I graduated December 15th and had my permit shortly after Christmas.

Currently, Scott & White is about to open a new 300+ bed hospital in Round Rock, Texas. They're hiring big time right now. I worked for S&W Temple about 12 years ago and its like many large county teaching hospitals. It has so many interns and students working for free or for low wages in most departments that it didnt pay its full timers well. Lots of agency or travel employees. I dont know how it is now.

I am considering applying to UT Tyler's RN-MSN program. Just wondering if anyone is currently enrolled or had any experience with them. Just wondering about the pace of the classes, if there are a lot of group projects, how do they arrange clinical sights and if the instructors are actually helpful? Thanks.

Graduated December 2006. Was previously a Respiratory Therapist for 15 years. I now work ER/ICU.

Hello CRNI. I currently work in the ER at St. David's/Georgetown and love it. I grew up in this area and like ER dude said the Round Rock and Georgetown area is nice. Hot summers and mild climate the rest of the year. Georgetown has a large Sun City community (55+ retirement community) and Round Rock has an abundance of very nice family communities. There are only 3 true hospital employers in the area HCA (St. David's), Seton and Scott & White but between them there will be about 6 hospitals within easy driving distance to Round Rock by the end of 2008 if you include driving into North Austin. Be careful, though, all the highways leading in and out of Austin experience ridiculous grid lock traffic at certain times of the day.

i agree with cardiacrn2006. i didnt read every post but this is a sad discussion. i am a rn/rrt and i dont understand how anyone would even think that denying a severly hypoxic patient, copd or not, oxygen would be the right thing to do. hypoxic patients are confused and are not the best decision makers. sometimes i know some nurses, patients and family caregivers, view hyperventilating as s.o.b. not hypoventilating as this patient was doing. if this patient's saturations were really in the 70s when the paramedic arrived then the patient was already hypoventilating meaning his/hers co2 was most likely sky high at that moment. 2 or 6 l/m o2, i'm willing to bet, didnt make any difference on whether this patient "bought the tube" or not. only a dnr in writing would have. as a matter of fact it sounds to me the er doc felt that the patient needed more than 6l/m if he tubed him/her and placed them on a vent. if you dont want the ems or any other medical proffesional to treat you when you are dying, please look into in and out-of-hospital advanced directives and living wills before an emergency occurs.

None for me either. I work at an Austin, Texas Hospital.

Acute Care Nurse Practitioner. There are a lot of FNPs (Family Nurse Practitioners) but the BON only lists 3 ACNPs in Travis County. I have no idea how accurate that information is. That's okay. I've decided to apply for the FNP program through TAMU-CC and if I'm still interested in ACNP later on in life, I will look for a post-masters certification somewhere.Here's the link to the statistical information on the Texas BON site.ftp://www.bne.state.tx.us/06-apnnp.pdf

I thought TCN was the "middle man". You can get all your materials straight from Excelsior without going anywhere else. If you want extra materials you need a publishing company like TCN which costs extra money.

I didnt read all the chapters. I'd by a second hand study guide. I prefer the Chancellors. I would print the content guide off of Excelsior's sight and then print the notes (Lisa's notes)and the SETH test from the yahoo group file. The only textbook I had was the Fundamentals of Nursing one. 1. I would compare the Notes and the Chancellor's guide with the Excelsior's content guide. If information was missing or incomplete then I would look for it in the textbook and update the notes. 2. Then I would read the Chancellor's guide one time and do the quizzes at the end of the chapters. Plus read and update the notes. 3.Then I'd take the SETH Test. Whether I got the answer right or wrong I would use the notes and the study guide to find the rationals. If I couldnt find a rational in my notes or the study guide I would look it up in the textbook and update the notes. I would then repeat the SETH test once or twice more until I had the answers and rationals practically memorized. 4. After that I would take the practice test in the back of the Chancellor's study guide. And just like the SETH test I would look up the rationals in my notes and my study guide. If information was missing, I'd find it in the text and update my notes. I would repeat the test until I had a good grip on the information. 5. By now you should have very good notes to review. I'd then read my notes and the study guide again. If you need more practice tests, Excelsior sells them. 6. In the end you should know the information pretty well. I would continue to read my notes periodically until I took the actual test. Depending on the amount of information for the test, it would take me about 2 weeks to study. I made all As and Bs. I'm sure someone has an easier way. But this system worked for me. Good luck.:monkeydance:

I'm also curious to know. I'm considering enrolling in a RN-MSN program to become an ACNP. I've looked at the BON website in the statistical information and saw that there are only 3 ACNPs in Travis county(Austin), none in the surrounding counties, and 9 in Bexar County (I think that's San Antonio). Is that an indication of the job market for ACNPs? Or is the specialty too new to tell? In the statistical info I've also noticed a decent amount of FNPs in these areas with WHNPs in a distant second.

If you're going to buy notes off of ebay I'd only buy hers. But like SandGram said, most of the notes that are selling on ebay are found free in yahoo groups in the files section. A popular group is rnstudygroup. A few others are RNstudentsforum, allexcelsiornurses, and Excelsior_College_CPNE. They all tend to have similar information. Lisa Arends also has a study group on yahoo that she invites you to if you buy one of her products.

I feel it depends on the individual and what they can handle. I am a new grad nurse going straight into ICU but I've been working in ICUs for the last 12 years as a Respiratory Therapist.

I've had the same experience although I've pm'd her with my email 3 times. She didnt seem to want to share with me because she didnt know who I was. So I politely introduced myself. Hopefully that helps. Plus, it is the holidays so she is probably busy with family and friends. I have no doubt Suzanne will let us know if she's not sharing her plan anymore.

I'm taking the NCLEX February 27th. So I've recently finished the Saunders review and I'm ready to begin Suzanne's plan. I sent her a pm and hope to hear from her soon.

AMEN to that.:yeahthat:

I've worked in Austin for 12 years as an RT and now I'm a new grad. nurse soon to be RN. All of what RMT2RN is true. The major hospitals are Seton and HCA/Columbia. Floor nurses can have anywhere from 6-9 patients at a time depending on the time of year. ICU nurses have 2-3 patients. Scott and White will have a hospital open sometime in 2007 in this area. There is also the Heart Hospital and an LTAC hospital called Cornerstone hospital. I have been told that Cornerstone tends to pay a few dollars more an hour than the acute care hospitals, but its limited to chronically ill adults. New grads are being offered roughly $19-$22/hour before differential depending on what shift and what department you're willing to work. PRN employees get paid more due to the fact they usually dont have benefits. Agencies pay more but most want at least 1 year experience.

Mudwoman you've hit the nail on the head. I just wanted to add the one thing that almost got me in the lab portion. I was so nervous my hands shook horribly. I could barely drive to the hospital let alone do anything else. I was so embarrassed. I almost knocked the pole and everything over trying to set the drip rate. It was by the grace of God I passed that one. After passing it though, I calmed down and my hands didnt shake as much.

Hello, MDSlady. I managed to complete the Excelsior program with 2 sons in college. I worked a full-time job (3 12-hour shifts) and a prn job(1 12-hour shift every other week) as a Respiratory Therapist in order to accomplish this. I used Chancellor study guides but I could only afford to buy them used off of ebay along with my textbooks. I also used help files from a few yahoo study groups. I didnt have access to clinical experience outside of being an RT. So, in preparation for the CPNE I studied the clinical elements until I could recite them forwards and backwards. I also set up a practice lab in my dinning room with the skills bag I bought from Excelsior. I used a large stuffed animal as my patient. During down time at work, I would practice care plans on random patients in the hospital. Workshops are available but I couldnt afford to go. Even so, I passed the CPNE on the first try in Amarillo, Texas. It was stressful, but I found it straight forward to how Excelsior described it in the study guide and video you get from them. From start to finish it took me about 22 monthes. Not very fast, but I wasnt trying to break any records. I would advise you to go for it and stay motivated.