Badger4lfe262

Laura G wins my vote the videos and her question book as well as PASS CCRN questions, don't bother with the book it will make your head spin. Kaplan's book was worthless, not enough detail and the online questions were not pertinent to the content actually covered on the exam. If you want a challenge try the orange Ahrens CD that comes with his book - 2 150 question tests he is a hemodynamics guru!

I know it has been a little bit since people have posted but I just wanted to post on here from an alumni perspective. I graduated in May 2010 from the Accelerated BSN program and I am more than happy with the education I received at OCU. Some of the professors are young in their career or have been out of the workforce for awhile but things are like that no matter what program you are in. Either way most are more than willing to go out of their way to help you learn. I have used Professors as professional references that is how close of a bond you can get, I did not get that in my first degree. I feel they prepared me as best they could for the real nursing world, there is only so much you can learn in a classroom nursing is definitely a "on the job training" kind of gig. The program is expensive but that is because it is at a private university, I basically thought of it as I would rather spend the money up front and get out into my career than wait around on a waiting list to get into a more affordable program. There are ways to cut down on costs of text books by renting them online from Chegg.com or other places. If you are in the program and make it through you will be very happy when all is said and done and you get your "passed" results for NCLEX. Good luck!!

When I was in nursing school I was spending my day in the peds ER, 6 yo child comes in, apparently a frequent visitor to this ER with a lot of chronic problems, he was found down at home and is 20 minutes out by the time he gets to ER. His stomach was so inflated and he was very mottled and extremities were cold. The team worked on him for at least 45 minutes before the doctor finally called it after. His mother and grandmother were sitting in the corner of the room just crying please help him please help him and then when it was finally called they were laying on him and pleading for the staff to restart efforts. Finally some nurses wrapped him in a blanket and let her hold him. The rest of the family came and was there 6 hours even after the coroner left.

We normally run Zosyn over 30 minutes

I work on a surgical care floor, pain is one of our biggest issues of course. I normally have no problem getting pain meds for a patient but when one of my patients started talking to me about the dosing chart and how heroin ranks compared to morphine and other drugs I was soo uncomfortable that day I really did feel like a dealer.

Oklahoma City University

Aspirus Wausau Hospital is hiring on new grads still. In my orientation alone there were 6 new grads hired, so try applying with them. The pay is a little lower than Madison though the cost of living is lower. Good luck!

Do the best you can with what you are given. Some days you will be with what seems like a nurse that doesn't want anything to do with you. This happened to me often in school, but if you put forth the effort and dig in that is all you can do, some nurses will respond and some won't. I am on orientation at work and now am not allowed to do anything but shadow. Take advantage of clinical, if your patient goes to a procedure go with them because once you hit the floor you will never be able to just pick up and go with a patient to see something awesome exciting and new!

We have electronic scanners that also have some charting flow sheets so we can do pain assessment, med administration, acknowledge orders etc.

Stay at your job, the job market right now stinks and a lot of people I talked to recently that just started where I just started said no one took their LPN time as experience!! Money is better than no money and it is always easier to find a job while employed.

No they do not have an entrance exam, as long as you meet all the pre-reqs with the needed GPA you are accepted in. The way they tell if you meet the pre-reqs is that Miss Clarey will request an unofficial transcript first and then sometimes they need a syllabus to see if the classes are compatible with what OCU offers. Need any other info just let me know, what I don't I just graduated this May 2010 from the accelerated program. Good luck!:)

I recommend Kaplan, I took it and think it made all the difference in the world. The diagnostic test allows you to see what content you are lacking knowledge on and they have over 30 hours of content video for you to watch. This personally was the best thing for me because I cannot sit and read that Saunders book it is way to dry for this girl! Also, the Qbank questions are really good, I felt they were higher level questions than what Saunders offered, but I also did get the Saunders Q&A book which even though not all were higher level questions I think you can learn more from answering a question wrong and then understanding the rational than by reviewing content. I disagree with the person who said you can't take more than a minute on a question or the computer will down you. This is not true. NCLEX gives you the next question based on the answer you chose, and you can take as long as you like. Kaplan even tells you straight out when you use their method it will take longer, thats OKAY because its better to take your time, understand the question and know you answered it correctly and take less questions than to answer hastily to "keep pace" and take more questions resulting in fatigue. One of the worst things you can do to screw yourself over while taking the test is trying to figure out what the computer is doing and if you are getting higher level questions or not, that's not what you are there to do you are there to kick NCLEX butt! Take each question as it comes one at a time and after you answer move on to the next one. Forget about the last answers you won't see them again. Good luck

Remember, the longer you put it off, the more information you will probably forget and the more anxious you will become. Make sure you know your lab values and common endings for drugs. Other than that, it sounds like you are doing lots of questions. NCLEX is like children. If you wait until you are ready, you will never do it. Good luck, remember, the worst part of NCLEX day is all the dang palm scanning and fingerprints, the rest you have practiced all through school to do.

just wanted to write a post for anyone who tries the pvt and gets the lovely 'the candidate currently has test results that are on hold. a new registration cannot be created at this time.' message. i didn't see a lot of posts about it on here so i thought i would post. i took the test on saturday and couldn't get on the website until sunday due to the site being down for some reason and me forgetting my password...well when i got on finally i got that popup...it sucked everywhere on here it says your results will take longer, but i was able to get my quick results monday around 8pm..so not bad. best part of all i passed i took 75 questions in less than 40 minutes ...can't wait to get the letter in the mail now.

I feel everyone's pain. I just graduated from an accelerated bachelors program. I have applied to many different jobs in many different places. You name it I have applied to it..I ask almost EVERYONE I come in contact with if they know of anyone that can get me a job. It's really embarassing but at this point my fiance and I are both unemployed and taking turns terrorizing each set of parents for a week at a time...its getting REALLY old. There are hospitals in my area that are laying nurses with experience off so therefore saturating an already saturated market. Also, I heard that a lot of hospitals are laying of the nurses with MSNs first because they have to pay them more so its better to keep the lower salary nurses on board. Nursing shortage...maybe but I have yet to see it. Good luck everyone.