Lennonninja

Believe me I'm trying. I've applied to every NP job within a 50-60 mile radius since May of this year.

I mean that’s their ideal situation, that I just never have days off. I am allowed to take unpaid days off, so that’s what I have to do to get a vacation this year.

I love the specialty but my work environment is toxic. Look into researching TCAR, EVAR, and pedal angiography. Try to find ways to explain narrowed arteries that is approachable to patients. I use an analogy to traffic personally. Yep. My entire job was a bait and switch.

9 years of RN experience, 1 year of NP experience. This is my new grad job. Vascular surgery NP here, only work in the outpatient office seeing vascular medicine patients, post ops, etc. No time in the hospital. M-F 8-5, $95k per year, 5 days PTO per year, no reimbursement for CEU, DEA, or licensing fees. No call. No benefits offered, no 401k. No raises or cost of living increases offered. Have to do all of the NP work in the office as well as all of the RN work and help at the reception desk.

I'm going through hospital credentialing right now. I was asked for 3 professional references. I used the surgeon I work for, and two of my preceptors from NP school.

In my opinion, you owe it to your future patients to have some work experience as an RN first. You may think you want to work in one area, and find out that you don't like it at all. I worked for 6 years before starting graduate school, and just now graduated and started working as an NP, with 9 years of RN experience. The majority of my experience is ICU and IR, and that experience is how I met the surgeon I now work for as an NP. He worked with me and learned that I was a competent RN who knew how to care for his patients, and asked me to come and do clinical with him, and then to be his NP. My RN experience has directly impacted my NP knowledge base and I don't know where I would be without it.

Not everywhere has a pediatric ED. The closest one to me is over an hour away, and I'm not in a rural area. Should you pass and become a nurse, you'll realize how important your psych nursing class was, no matter what the rest of your classmates said. Surprise surprise, nursing students don't know what real life nursing is like! Your 1% statistic means nothing. If the board of nursing wants you to have the education, there's no way around it. If you're upset about the cost of a textbook, try to borrow one. It would serve you well to try and calm down your defensive attitude before you finish school, because you sound like a chore to precept.

I went from med/surg straight to the ICU. It all depends on your hospital. Give it a shot!

I've been in IR for 7 months now, and we do radiology nursing as well. Decide what you can be called in for. Should you be called in for an inpatient ICU para or thora? Should you be called in for an inpatient lumbar puncture? Are you on call for both IR and radiology? Do you get a callback minimum if you're called in and aren't working for at least 3 hours (that's our callback minimum).

I work four 9s per week and take call (Interventional Radiology) and it's been a great change. I miss the extra day off from three 12s, but being able to do things on a work day is so nice!

I second this, IR is a good place for introverts. Short term interactions with people, and in the 5 months I've been in IR, I've only had 3 grumpy patients/families!

So I just changed from ICU to IR this year and am taking call for the first time. We have 8 RNs in our department, 5 Rad Techs. Because we have 8 nurses, we each take call every 8th weekend (Friday 5pm - Monday 6am), and 1 holiday per year. The Rad Techs are more on frequent call since there's fewer of them. Every 8 weeks I have 6 weekday evenings of call (5pm - 6am), so I have 2 weeks out of every 8 with no call at all. I never have more than one weeknight per week unless I pick up someone else's call. Rad Techs get called in for everything we do except paracentesis & thoracentesis procedures, those are MD & RN only. If it's just a bedside central line placement in off hours, the RN has the option to not come in. I've only been doing this 4 months so far, and the times I've been on call, I'm more likely to have to stay late and finish up late cases. I've only had to come in at 3am once. We do IR, CT procedures, Ultrasound, and Xray procedures (mostly LPs) and we don't get called in too often. Call pay is $2/hour and if you get called in, time and a half, for a minimum of 3 hours worth of pay, even if you don't work the full 3 hours. Edited to add - We are not yet combined with Cath Lab/EP but we will be in a few years. Lord only knows what will happen to call when that happens... We are a stroke center, but we do not do any interventions in our IR above the clavicle basically. My only 3am call was CT guided neph tubes for hydro. Some weekends nothing happens at all, and some weekends you're there the whole time, but at least it's only every 8th! They try not to call us in if it can wait until the next day.

I went from ICU to IR, and while the slower pace and better hours are awesome, I miss the adrenaline of the ICU. My plan is to pick up prn in the ICU and stay full time in IR while I'm in grad school.

That's literally the reason I did as many committees as I could at my previous job. If it looks good on a resume or an NP application, I would volunteer for it.

I work as rapid response when I was in the ICU. It was a separate role, but the ICU charge nurse was the back up rapid if there was more than one happening at once. I also worked as ICU charge. I absolutely LOVED this role! I enjoyed a lot of autonomy and bringing education to the nurses when working with their patients. The downside - everyone in the hospital (it felt like) would call rapid for IVs, even if they hadn't even tried a single time. Lab even started calling rapid to do lab sticks instead of sending a phlebotomist at times. This was really annoying.