RNDude

I'm leaning toward this one as well. I had been looking at Western Governors, but their unusual grading system might be a problem for continuing on in some grad programs later. I would love to read about anyone's recent personal experience with this program as well.

I am saddened and so sorry for your loss. When I worked night shift, I found staying awake at the wheel on the way home to be a dangerous challenge sometimes. I would nap in my car sometimes, regardless of the discomfort. I've certainly heard some horrifying accounts from fellow nurses about close calls. I wish it were common practice in hospitals to provide a place to shower and a quiet room with cots so that tired shift workers could nap before braving their commute.

One thing that I have never heard of, though, is a male student measuring cervical dilation. I don't even recall the female students doing that assessment, just the licensed nurses and MDs.

There was a nurse who bewildered everyone, talking about "keypos" over and over through an accent. It turned out that she was saying "K-Phos" for potasium phosphate.

When a new thread is about a topic covered in an old one, I think it's kindest when someone posts a link in the new thread to the old one. A smart newbie will learn to do a search, and many users interested in the thread's topic will appreciate the convenience. What I find more troublesome than new threads on old topics is threads with ambiguous titles. It's easier to select threads of interest when posters make the effort to create descriptive subject line; I also think it increases the signal-to-noise ratio of the search results, making redundant threads less likely.

There's a new grad at my hospital in his 50s who is really sharp and doing very well. In my ADN program, there was a woman in her 60s who graduated with me. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend nursing to you on the basis of your age. Good luck!

Huntington is a fantastic place to work. Their new grad training is extensive, and many employees stay for decades and return after trying other hospitals. Yes, they are nonunion. That has a plus side to the professionalism of the work environment because lazy nurses can't hide behind a union. I'm not union-bashing, they play an important role in a hospital with an abusive administration, which I have not seen at Huntington. I don't know what you mean by nurses not being treated well. Benefits are great, and the work environment is very collegial. My understanding about the lawsuit is that it involves many years ago, when the hospital began allowing 12 hour shifts. They chose to calculate pay using "time and a half" overtime after 8 hours, while other hospitals paid straight pay. Wages were adjusted so that the 12 hour shift didn't become a budget-busting giant raise for everyone, such that the 8 hour pay plus 4 hours at time and a half for a shift ends up being the same total as if the 12 hour shift were paid as all straight time. Please set me straight if I am wrong, but that is my understanding about this old lawsuit.

If you can get an early look at the first semester's syllabus, get your textbook and start reading the pages assigned in the syllabus, you'll be doing yourself a big favor! There is a lot to read, and getting as much of it done as possible before school starts would be a big advantage and stress reliever. If the school won't give you a copy of the syllabus, plant yourself in the halls where the nursing program is taught and find a student willing to share a copy of the syllabus from the first semester. It may have changed somewhat from one semester to the next, but in my experience not much. Good luck!

I abandoned my application to LA County College of Nursing and Allied Health when they wanted me to repeat general micro because it had been more than 5 years since I had taken it, even though I had been a microbiology major and general micro had been followed by several micro classes, including medical microbiology. Other than that negative experience myself and some hearsay negative comments about the school, I don't know too much about it. I would agree that Pasadena and Glendale have good reputations in the area. Definitely apply to more than one program.

I put in my very first Foley in one of my L&D rotation patients. She had commented prior to the procedure that she had had unpleasant prior experiences with Foley insertions, but she didn't indicate any problem with a male nursing student providing this for her on that day, and the procedure went along smoothly. I was a lot more nervous than she was, this being my first time. A few months later at a fast food restaurant, I was caught off guard when the cashier recognized me and announced to the entire dining room, "You! You put in my Foley! And you did a really good job!" :imbar

I happen to have had had a discussion with an infectious disease doc about these statistics in my last semester of nursing school. I came away from that conversation with the understanding that these results are interpreted as meaning that if you get a needle stick injury, AND the needle is contaminated with blood from a patient KNOWN to be HIV+, then your chances of seroconverting to HIV+ yourself are actually less than 1%. I think this may have been pretty much said already, more or less, but I just want to be clear the statistic doesn't seem to be for needle stick injuries overall, but rather for the needles from known HIV+ patients. And yes, hepatitis is by far easier to transmit. Get those hep-B vaccines!

hehe. surely you know someone you could gift those to. might get you some strange looks, though, and might take some explaining... =)

Southern California hospitals seem to hire new-grad RNs from ADN programs and BSN programs without apparent preference. At my hospital in particular, I have friends who graduated from a BSN program who were hired for a med surge unit, while another friend and I graduated from an ADN program and were hired for the ICU there. I definitely never got the impression that our ADN made us second class in the hiring process. Now, our hospital benefits include tuition reimbursement so that we can complete our BSNs if we like on the hospital's dime. I would have paid more myself and waited at least a year longer to start working as a nurse if I had chosen the generic BSN route instead of starting with the ADN. On another note, many ADN programs seem to have higher first-attempt pass rates on the NCLEX than many BSN programs, for some reason!

A staff member apparently took her own accent into account when writing on the dry-erase board in a little old lady's room. "Plan for today: breeding treatment". The patient was a little worried about what they were going to do to her.

Good point about him potentially getting stuck with men's scrubs if he ordered some for me, but in this case he stated that he had a shipment on the way, and I offered to come back and look at what he was already about to receive, asking him when they would arrive. Only then did he say I need to special order for him to take me seriously. Weird. Anyway, thanks for the scrubs source suggestions. I'll check them out!