sunciray

When I did the Weekend Option plan, nights was paid 40 hours for working 24 and days were paid 36 for working 24 hours. The benefits were full-time and as someone already stated, less BS on the weekends. If you are going to travel 100 miles, you may want to contact hotels to see if you can get a discount rate to stay in them every night or day that you are not working and take the costs of this out when you file your taxes if you itemize. Working weekends was something that I loved doing and we also accumulated leave, 2 hours each weekend so that we did have some weekends off after a time. You may also want to consider if you are married with a family that it is cheaper to make reservations for vacations during the week than on the weekends. I loved working weekend option, but had to give it up because I returned to school. It all depends on what your ultimate goals are...but I would go back to weekend option in a heartbeat if it wasn't for school.

Birkenstock..expensive but comfortable and long-lasting...consider them a tax write off.

You may want to choose another school besides Excelsior. Some boards of nursing are no longer recognizing their degrees after a certain time. I would suggest looking for online schools that are accredited by the NLN (National League of Nursing) or for traditional schools that are accredited by the NLN. Additionally, you may want to consider enrolling in an accelerated program that is offered by many schools in many states. It will enable you to get your BSN much faster than pursuing it the "old" way. Many schools offer RN to MSN programs...you just need to do your homework. You may contact me if you like via a personal message if I can be of more assistance. Good luck.

It is a known fact that nurses have been abused by other nurses, by their managers, by the doctors and patients. I believe that the quest for and abuse of power by many nurse managers has been the root of all evil and the main reason that nurses leave their jobs. My issue has always been that my managers are threatened by my intellectual and professional competence, so they resort to undermining tactics and unethical behaviors. I have experienced many situations in which my nursing leaders have discredited my contributions, put cameras in my office to spy on me, have spread malicious and untrue rumours about me to other managers, have denied my vacation, have given me unreasonable deadlines and tried to prevent me from obtaining other jobs that I was qualified for. I am now looking to leave the profession of nursing altogether because of practices like these. I do not understand what nursing has become. Too much jealousy, envy, favoritism and not enough investments into promoting a harmonius and professional workplace.

As an emergency nurse for 18 years, I can say that the problem is a combination of many factors: indecisive emergency physicians that write orders in a piecemeal fashion because they are concerned about lawsuits, failure to either implement or enforce hospital admission policies, power plays, and unfortunately, many nurses that are burned out or lazy and do not want to get another patient...so they hold onto to the ones they have as long as possible. Additionally, there are the uncooperative attending physicians that do take some time in writing orders, or if you are in an academic facility, the numerous residents and interns that have to see the patient before they are admitted. Lastly, the on-call personnel that are found in many ancillary departments such as radiology in the smaller facilities also compound the problem. Patients must wait until the CT tech or sono tech comes in to do the test before the patient disposition can be made. It is a mess, and the solution is just not a simple one. One thing that I strongly believe will help to alleviate the problems is the nurse to nurse relationship. I believe that floor and critical care unit nurses need to do a share day in the emergency department, and the ED nurses need to do a share day on the floors and in the units...nothing fosters more understanding of what each other must deal with than getting a first hand account.