Atlas09

The pancreatitis may have been caused by damage done from drinking, but it wasn't from alcohol still in your system from 4 years ago. Either you misunderstood or he didn't know what he was talking about. The third leading cause of pancreatitis behind #1 alcohol/drugs and #2 Gallstones is #3 Unknown etiology, but some doctors are too arrogant to admit they don't know the exact cause when it doesn't really matter.

It will indeed affect that lab results, if you can't turn all of the things running off, you need a peripheral stick or an A-line.

If your patient is on high dose pressors you should have an A-line to draw labs off of period. Titrating high dose pressors without an A-line is just plain dangerous. I've titrated one low dose pressor off of a cuff before, but nothing that I felt was a high dose or anyone on more than one gtt.

Holy crap! 10-12 on primary care? My wife does primary care nursing... no techs, EVERYTHING is done by the nurse, she has 3 patients. Her last hospital was primary care with 4 patients but that was rough, 3 is doable. In my honest opinion anything more than 3-4 primary care is unsafe period. If your hospital is saying 10-12 patients on primary care a piece in acute care setting... run, run now.

Thanks for the reply, I'll look into some advanced patho courses and some prep for the GRE.

Some background on myself. I am 24 and currently work in a large ICU where I have been working for about 3 months now. I previously was a med surg nurse but got tired of that setting. I decided about a year ago I wanted to be a CRNA. I'm currently working on my bachelors and should be done in February of next year. Unfortunatley my undergrad GPA prior to my bachelors is quite bad. I went to engineering school out of highschool with no desire to be an engineer and then after a year wandered about the academic sceen until deciding to be a nurse (which I love by the way). I wasn't motivated in school and my undergrad GPA is about a 3.0 with mostly C's in my sciences. My bachelors program however I'm holding a 4.0 and plan to graduate with it. So here is my question, I want to be a CRNA and will do whatever it takes. So what will it take? Can you guys tell me what certifications I need to go after? What extra classes to take? I know that I need to do some graduate science to show that I can handle it and I need my CCRN but what else is there I can do? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I ended up accepting a postion at Banner Baywood.

What hospitals are these that pay 10% weekend and 20% nights? I would like to look at these hospitals too as I am moving to the area. Thanks.

Does anyone know if Banner pays a weekend premium? If so how much?

I currently live in Ohio (so very cold, so very hot) and am looking to move to AZ. I am talking with banner good sam about their critical care internship and wondered what you guys could tell me about this hospital. What are their ratios for med/surg and also for critical care? What kind of reputation do they have? They mentioned that there is a sign on bonus for living within a certain distance of the hospital, so how is the neighboerhood? Any other info you can think of would be appreciated. Thanks.