delvenia

thanks for your comment. i feel like an idiot almost everyday. very discouraging:crying2:

thanks for your comment. i feel like an idiot almost everyday. very discouraging:crying2:

i did home health my first 6 mo out of nursing school (hated it), i then did med/surg with telemetry for the last 18 months. just transferred to L&D on 11/7/11 and I feel like a complete idiot nurse with no experience most of my days. Everything is so different and some of the nurses are just plain evil!!! In our L&D we do our own triage, and we also rotate to operating room and post-op for our c-section patients. have have our own 2 operating rooms and post op rooms on our locked unit. it is very overwhelming and i am starting to wonder if i made the right choice. This is what i wanted to do since i was a child, but boy is it hard and the other nurses with their sarcasm and pure evilness sure doesnt help.

How do you access it on a Mac? I can't view my hours unless I'm on a windows based system

could just be nerves making you sick. i had a recent needlstick as well and i promise i started feeling sick like 2 days later, but it turned out that the patient was negative for everything (HIV, Hep B, Hep C), and he is low risk anyway (middle aged, married, real estate investor & etc). easier said then done, but try to think happy thoughts and your symptoms may just go away

i think mci did teach us alot. i work at norfolk general and i am not as impressed with sentara students as i am with the mci students. however sentara is much cheaper and you will get a bsn rather than a aas for less than half of the price

im in 5k and it's alright. i did days for my first few months and now im in nights. we have a pretty good unit

you need to do at least 1 year in like a med/surg environment or something similar. med/surg is considered acute care

it's slower in winter so they dont hire as much then. they start hiring alot around jan or feb. i applied to sentara last winter and didnt ever hear back. reapplied the end of january and had 3 interviews and was hired all within like 10 days. my unit, med/surg, at norfolk general, has like 1 or 2 openings, but if you try in the early spring or late winter, they will probably have like 5 or 6

Very nice post sister!!!

I am a jehovah's Witness and the person who aided me to becoming a witness has been one for 34 years and a Registered Nurse for 43 years prior to retiring last December. i work on a very busy med-surg floor and I am very happy that i have not come under the scrutany that the original poster has encountered by asking a simple question. it often amazes me how people who are looked at as being "saving graces" for many can be so cold to their own. Nurses treat their fellow nurses so badly sometimes, which is evident by many of the rude and offensive responses posted. niether the less, to answer your question, many of us witness nurses do end up hanging blood, however this was an issue that i pondered myself prior to becoming a nurse. i have had to hang blood approximately 3 times in my year and a half as a nurse. my collegues and management are exceptional in that we also have a mormon and others of many faiths there. i work on a very busy med-surg floor at a level 1 facility that gets patients flown in from other states. The other nurse and witness i spoke about has also had to hang blood in her career, but told me that often you can do trade offs. That is what i usually will try to do. i may do someones wound care for them of they do hang my blood for me. i am fortunate that at my hospital, tranfusions are usually a last resort for many of our doctors anyway. i have been on night shift for a few months and have not had to hang any. hanging the blood is a personal choice, as we are directed not to partake of spilled blood. we cannot give it and cannot receive it, but we cannot control what others decide to do. we still have to treat each patient regardless of their choices in life and whether or not we agree with them. upon talking this issue over with elders, we are able to administer it so long as it is not our blood being given. send me a private message if you would like to talk more

i am very fortunate because thus far, they have scheduled me for an extra 12 shift each week for like the next two months. i've been a nurse a year now on a very busy med/surg unit in the only level 1 and magnet hospital in the region. because of that, we actually get people flown in from northern VA and North Carolina. we also have a medical school on our campus and our hospital has 569 beds currently with 4 med/surg floor, all with different focuses and a few with step-down beds. i was told by one of the more tenured nurses that from around thanksgiving to the beginning of the year, the doctors may not admit as many people due to it being vacation time and patient's tend to not want to come in because they are usualy with families at this time of the year, thus i may get floated another floor or that i should hope that i actually get called off, which she said might happen. she did warn me that two days after thansgiving and christmas, we get a ton of diabetics and renal patients who may have overindulged so i will likely not get called off at those times. this summer was extrmely busy and frustrating. i am happy so far for the break been only getting like 4 patients lately rather than my full load of 6 but after reading some of the previous posts, i am getting a little nervous

it's hell!! run!!!!

not sure of the current tuition. it is expensive because it is considered a private school. i graduated from there 4/30/09 and currently am a RN at norfolk general. i liked it. they have a wonderful Director and Ass. Director and i have heard so many complements about the abilities of MCI graduates, even from some of the instructors from at other nursing schools. The clinical instructors are very hard on you, but it makes you well prepared for the real world. I am very grateful i went there, because i have students from other schools follow me sometimes while at work and some of them are so laxed and not eager to learn anything. the cons, however, is the fast pace. it can be a pro or a con because as soon as you tired of a class, its over. the con is that you have to learn very fast and the school is extremely expensive. I was able to graduate without repeating any classes and i also worked full time.

Well Norfolk General doesnt. And an ICU and emergency room are two completely different areas. Norfolk General has hired new grads recently into the ICU as well, but not the emergency room. Patient's in the LEVEL 1 Trauma area of the ER are not yet stable enough to be in an ICU!! There is a huge difference. I work for Norfolk General in one of their Med/Surg Unit and we are considered acute care as well.

thank you!! your situation sounds EXACTLY like mine. you give me hope!!

I have 6 months home health experience and was recently hired to work at a very reputable Level 1 trauma hospital's Med/Surg unit (the only one in this region). My hospital is a Magnet hospital and has an overall wonderful training program and i have been trying to get in the door since i was still in school. I am so happy that i am finally employed by this network. this is my sixth and final week of orientation. i feel like i am doing a horrible job. i thought i was progressing at first but this weekend, i worked Fri - Sun and i just got to my 6 patient load on Friday. On Saturday i had 2 PCA pumps, 1 Heparin drip and 3 discharges that occured simitaniously. 3 of my patients were also on tele and two had to go for 2 seperate procedures. On Sunday I had 2 PCA pumps, 1 Heparin drip, a Facial fracture who was a new admit by night shift but i had to do the admission because they came 30 mins prior to shift change. I had never used a PCA pump until Saturday when i got my two pateints and had never hada heparin drip. There were 3 stat labs due at the beginning of my shift and my patient with the PICC line had an occlusion so i had to order activase and could not get her stat labs done. I needed so much help from my preceptor those two days. She seems to get so frustrated with my dependence. I really wonder if I am cut out for this. I LOVE being a nurse and i love caring for my patients. Most of my patients are so understanding of my mishaps because they say that i am very pleasant and i am always honest and let them know that i am a new nurse who is still on orientation. I have been told that I am too slow and I am so nervous. I spoke to my manager on Sunday and she told me that they expect me to sink a little at first for my first month or two that i am off orientation until i get a routine together, but that still didnt make me feel better. Most of the time i really think that my preceptor thinks i am incompetent to do this by myself. In all fairness, i dont know what i would have done this weekend if she hadnt been right there the whole time doing stuff. She did all of my charting, started all of my IV's, did 3 of my head to toe assessments. I am so frustrated. i should not have needed so much help!!! I have not handled all patients by myself yet and i only have two days left of orientation!!! When asked by one of the clin II's if i still felt ready to be off this week, about two weeks ago when i was at 3 patients, i said yes. I feel stuck and like i am going to fail. Any advice?

OMG!! i thought it was only me!!! These are my last 5 days on orientation. I too am up to 5 patients and what makes matters worse is my preceptor acts like I am way too slow and I feel like I am a burden. i have the same concern. i have had 5 patients for 1 day but i am going to request that i go to 6 on the day that was supposed to be my third day on 5. i am so scared that i wont be prepared and i feel like there is still so much i dont know. it is so frustrating. my hospital is a Magnet with everything electronic, so we already print out a nursing dashboard that gives us a generic schedule for each pateint. i try to pass all of my 8 and 9's together, 10 and 11's and so forth, but it is still hard. i thought i was doing okay until the day i went to 5 patient's. it blew my confidence. I had 5 very acute patients. 3 of which had GI bleeds and one that had started bleeding again. i kept having to pull labs and all of my patients but 1 had meds every hour. It was horrible. couldnt sit down. my job is really good about making sure you take you breaks, but the breaks went too fast!! i feel like a failure!!

my unit is 5 to 6 patients with a six patient max. however, there was one day that we had to split pods for half a shift until they could get a resource nurse in because two nurses called out. we had 7 pateints each that day and a Care Partner/Tech. It was horrible!!!!

As a nurse with only 6 months of experiance, all i can say is give it time. You first have to be familiar and knowledgable with the material learned and as time goes on and yoou see certain things you will start to think through how they effect various things in the body. The best example of this that i can give is growing up as a child, you learn the basic things first and then as you gain more experiance with the things you learned about, you began wondering "what if". its the same with nursing and any other instrerest or occupation that one has. dont get frustrated because it is very difficult at first, but in about 6 to 12 months, it gets much better. just give it time. focus on learning the body systems and what they do and the critical thinking will come naturally after a while. sometimes our instructors forget how it was to be in oour position because it comes so naturally to them. they forget at times that it is a process. just like if someone states something incorrect about soemthing that you know very well, you question "my goodness, they really dont know that!". so again, just give it time

I am a Homehealth Rn and i went to see one of my primary patients the other day. because i am a new grad and am being preparred to take the position as a on-call nurse, i am still in training after 4 months (until 1/15/09) and have to get signed off on everyskill in the world so it seems. he was trach care and after the visit, the trainer said something and then said how we sometimes say/do things that dont make much sense at the time and then laugh about it later. the patient was very, very pleasant and began to recount his recent hospital stay. he told us that as far as saying stuff that doesnt make sense goes, this is what happened to him: he had just gotten his trach put in and could not talk. everytime he pressed the call bell and nurse would answer and ask him what he wanted. when he wouldnt answer, she would keep saying "hello, hello" and then get upset and hang up. he said he had to call about 3 to 4 times before they actually came to the room. he laughed it off and said that they must have forgotten that he could talk right at that time. poor guy. i know i have made the mistake several times of asking my poor dialysis patients with no urine output if they are having any complications with urine output, burning, itching or odor. on thursday, i even asked my colostomy patient who is also on dialysis with no urine output, why she doesnt have a bedside commode :) How silly of me. As an excuse for myself, i was doing an admission and the 23 page Oasis B!!!!

i am also a new grad that has only worked in home health. at times it is very overwhelming, but overall, i like it

The cost of living in Chesapeake is now where near high. I currently live there and most nice houses range from $150k to $250k. I personally purchased a foreclosure for only $84k and put $14k in it and it's like a brand new 3 bedroom house. Im and RN but i am also licensed as a Real Estate Agent for Hampton Roads. Nice areas in this area would be VA Beach (high cost of living), Newport News (Oyster Point/uptown area), Chesapeake, Hampton. Hampton has a relatively low cost of living and they have recently built many new neighborhoods. They are doing the same in the uptown area of Newport News and the cost in both areas are pretty good....

I am a new grad and HH is pretty much all i know at this point, with the exception of my clinicals prior to becoming licensed. I can still see a huge difference in how it was at the hospitals and what i do. You are very independent in HH. The nurses who just want to go to work, get paid, and then go home seem to not last. I work for a hospital networks HH, so our patients are from our hospital up the street. some come from other referral sources, but the majority are from our hospital and our own networks Dr.'s so you actualkly have the ability the email the doctors and nurses, get your labs back like an hour after you drop them off to the hospital (all of our labs are considered STAT), and you have a slew of other resources right at your fingertips. I was very nervous in the beggining, but i now dont know that i could ever work in a hospital; at least not full time. the nurses who come from the hospital appear to have a harder time adjusting that us two new grads (they recently started a new grad program). everyone is put into 12 weeks training, regardless of how much experiance you have. I just finished my 12 weeks and am now starting another 30 days of training to prepare me for the on-call portion. i couldnt have asked for a better work place or job yes, you do seem to work all the time because people call you all day and night, but i usually just dont answer the phone once i am home. if i were at a hospital or Dr. office and someone called for me after i was gone for the day, they would have to leave a message. we also have a 24 hour answering service that people can call. you dont get many calls after 4:30pm though because most of the sources know that those are our business hours. the reward of getting to know and do so much for your patients and their families far surpasses the headache of the workload. at least it does for me...

when they came to our school, they told us that they will only hire new grad rn's that already have 1 years worth of acute care experiance. they also said that they make you work as a medical assisstant if you didnt have the experiance which i thought was absolutly weird. i had never heard of such. i would call them and get clarification and make sure. this was in feb of this year that they came