Buggus

I was notified last week that I would be getting an offer by place A. I was so excited and said "yes" though no official offer was presented, but I was told I'd get it soon. It's only been 2 business days but I haven't heard anything but expect it to come tomorrow. Place B called me today to notify that I'd be getting an offer either today or tomorrow (tomorrow at this point). My plan now is to ask both places for a little time to compare the pay and benefits of both. But I feel terrible for getting all excited about Place A and saying yes, especially because I'm now leaning heavily toward Place B. I don't want to burn bridges with Place A if I have to tell them "nevermind". Plus, I hate saying one thing and having to call back and take it all back, I've been there before and it was SO AWKWARD. I guess there isn't really a question, but would appreciate hearing any thoughts. I have options, and I'm thankful.

I was offered a position on Friday, they said they'd be sending over my pay offer real soon. I have no idea what their benefits look like. Today, I was offered another position, same situation, I'm not sure of the final $ offer nor do I know anything about benefits. I'd like to compare the benefits in detail instead of looking at only pay, and I'd like at least a day to look this. Is this "ok" or frowned upon?

You should always dress to impress in an interview. I've had to do this before and in one situation, I was lucky enough to have a boss that knew I was interviewing and she told me to clock out like 15 min early so I could change into a suit and touch up my hair and makeup and go. In the other situation, I worked my shift, then headed straight to the bathroom and pulled a Superman and was in my suit in 2 minutes. That's really all it takes. Good luck!

The positions are for a large variety of areas in nursing such as utilization review, case management, health coach etc. So it sounds like it's for nurses that have worked with health insurance companies. I coordinated with case managers in my hospital positions, to get the right services for the patients, but I wasn't the one doing all the legwork with the insurance companies and fighting them for services, so I guess it's a no for me.

I'm sorry for the stupid question but what is managed care, exactly? Is it referring to working with an HMO insurance company? I keep seeing this requirement pop up in some job descriptions, and I'm not positive that I can say that I have experience in managed care.

Looking for some insight. I am currently an RN in a split elementary school position and oversee about 1100 students. Not only am I overwhelmed by the double work (2 sets of state reports, shot records, screenings, ARDs, puberty films, parents, kids, staff, etc), I've been having issues at one of my schools with admin and am ready to move on. My boss needs RNs in the float pool. Pros: in and out for the day, really expand my experience and learn what's beyond elementary school, if not enough call ins then I'm placed with a nurse to help lessen her load for the day, people are happy to see you because you're there to save the day lol, and no state reports/screenings/puberty films, ARDs, immunization records! Cons: driving everywhere in the district and not knowing where I'm going until that morning at 6AM. I'm terrified to discover the unknown world of MS and HS (drugs, fights, attitude), the thought of walking into a clinic I've never been in and start running it and giving meds and doing procedures and finding supplies gives me a mini panic attack. If you float, do you enjoy it? What don't you enjoy about it?

@Kooky Korky: As a commenter after you suggested: if they remember me for money, gifts, potluck items that they need me to bring, surely they can remember me for the event?! The hungry nurse sitting right there in the office with them lol! It sucks that I would have to ask, rather than be treated like part of the team and be included, but I guess that's what it will take from now on if I do pitch in ever again. I truly did hope/assume that it wouldn't keep happening, but it has and it finally really got to me -_- Btw, they just released the "weekly" for next week that goes out to all the staff, detailing every day's events/occasions. No mention at all about Nurse Day/Nurse Week...whomp whomp.

Yeah, it's like if you're going to expect money or gifts, at least include me in the occasions! And the bday thing I'm not even be mad about because it's in the summer so nothing they can do about that, but they've never even asked when it is and I've been there two years. So it's like don't pretend to plan on celebrating it when you don't even know or ask when it is lol!!

My front office staff is made up of 6 ppl plus they count me and counselors as part of the front office staff, so whenever there are holidays, celebrations, birthdays, random special occasions, I'm supposed to participate with them in parties, gift exchanges, whatever. So this week we had a few things going on: we were supposed to make some kind of basket for the PTA to raffle off so I was assigned to bring an item for the basket. It was also administrative workers day so I was asked to bring an item for each of the three secretaries as well as a few dollars to contribute to buying them lunch. It was also the counselor's birthday today so we were having a bday celebration for her and once again contributed a couple of bucks for that. I heard nothing today about the party so around 1 I asked if we did something for her today after all and was told "Oh yeah we got food from blahblah restaurant"... no one bothered to let me know this was going on when it did... no one bothered to ask me if I wanted to eat or grab a slice a cake or mingle at the party... and my clinic is in the front office where I'm in plain view. Funny, there's no issue when it came to asking me to contribute to everything this week plus all other occasions. They've told me before that we all contribute to these things but it's all good because they'll do something special on my birthday too, but my birthday's in the summer so, no... you won't. Maybe I'm overreacting but I'm almost always left out of these parties but yet have contributed whenever asked, so I guess I'm just frustrated and saying I'm absolutely done contributing. Thanks for listening...4 more weeks! :)

I'm feeling so deflated right now. On Friday, I had a teacher send me a student to get checked out after falling off the monkey bars. She hit her right arm so I checked it out. No complaints of pain, I touched her arm up and down and she denied pain and had no signs of pain on her face whatsoever. There was no swelling, no redness, no bruising, no changes in color. I did some exercises with her to test her ROM and she had full ROM, once again no signs of pain with movement. There were no changes while I had her there in clinic and the arm looked completely normal and equal to her other arm. So I gave her ice and sent her back to class and wrote on the pass for the teacher to send her back if she had any complaints. I did not call home as nothing in the assessment seemed abnormal and the student had no further complaints for the rest of the day. Mom comes in today yelling How did you not see her arm was broken? What kind of a nurse are you?” and all kinds of other stuff. Mom says that around midnight (12 hrs after the incident), she saw that her child was trying not to use her right arm and noticed that her forearm was white. She took her to the ER and it turns out it was fractured. I was truly shocked to hear this…the principal and teacher came in and we sat down to discuss the incident. I had my documentation with me and showed the principal and the mother. The principal agreed that I had assessed fully and appropriately and followed protocol and told mom that I don't normally call home for every bump/fall/pain and that based on my assessment, there would not have been a reason to call home. The teacher supported my findings by adding that the student not only had no complaints for the rest of the day (3 hrs) but that the student was also doing all her classwork/writing/coloring with the affected arm (she's right handed) and was doing so without difficulty and she had not seen swelling to the arm. The ER doc apparently told mom that the fracture would've bubbled up” right away so I guess this made mom feel like her child came in with all these obvious signs and I just ignored them when in reality this student had absolutely no signs at all and the assessment was normal and she even continued to function normally in class. Oh by the way, another reason mom's extremely upset is that the ER called CPS on her over the situation… I just feel so terrible about this. Terrible because this poor little girl went 12 hrs with an untreated fracture and terrible for mom who now has CPS on her case. We told her we'd back her with whatever documentation CPS needed to explain that the injury did indeed happen at school but that doesn't take away the stress of the situation right now. I also am afraid of what this means for me…but at the same time I feel like I assessed properly and, short of having xray vision, there would've been no way to know it would turn into all this. I don't normally call for every fall on an arm, leg, knee, elbow, etc, when everything else in the assessment looks normal, but now I think I will just in case it could be a fracture.

I'm guessing it depends on your district but my district does not have paid leave. You can take up to 12 weeks off without your job being in jeopardy, but in order to get paid you must use your vacation days, assuming you have any. Heck, even the major hospital system where I previously worked did not offer paid maternity leave. You had to use your PTO if you wanted to get paid. I don't think paid maternity leave is a common thing. You could try to time things so you can have your baby in the summer, that way you're still getting a paycheck and you have time off with your baby. Or you can purchase short term disability insurance (I've heard Aflac is great) so you can still get some pay while you take time off but those insurance policies usually have to purchased a year in advance before your pregnancy, so you may want to start looking into it now.

Oooh my turn, my turn! A 4th grader came in with a pass that said "tip of nose itches". Me: "Oh wow how did you manage to break every bone in your hands?" Student: "I didn't..." Me: "Oh good, so you can scratch your own nose. Back to class!" Ok ok, that dialogue didn't actually happen. But C'MON NOW!

Hey everyone! How do you handle phantom boo boos? You know, the ones where the student comes with some random pain that just started right now while sitting in class/walking down the hall/getting ready to do something they hate (math or PE, anyone?)...it's usually something like "I was just sitting in class and then it hurt right here" and the student points to a specific spot like this spot on their elbow, or forearm, or thigh, etc. No injury at all. Just a random pain. I get so many of these and I will not give ice for them because there was no injury and I feel like that will just encourage the behavior to continue any time the student wants to get out of class or wants a bag of ice just for fun. I've started looking at the kids like *seriously...* and telling them to walk it off . I honestly just don't know what to do about it or if I'm handling it the wrong way. It's the not the same kids doing it, btw. I'd call mom if that happened multiple times with the same kid.

RobinMRn, thank you for that attachment! I used info from your attachment and also asked some of the other elementary school nurses in my district for help and they sent me their PowerPoints which covered pretty much everything on your attachment too, plus a few extra things we struggle with specifically at my school. The presentation went very well and seemed to be a real eye opener. The teachers gasped in shock and laughed in disbelief at much of the info because they couldn't believe that these things were coming to the clinic (hello...neither can I and I'm the one that has to deal with them and assess them and document them and this is why I had to put together this presentation!). We went from 90+ visits a day to 60 a day, immediately. It's still a little higher than it should be since all other schools in our district that are our size get 40 visits a day on average, but hey it's a heck of a start! These kids were missing so much class over ridiculous stuff! And right now we're so close to testing time, so it was a good time to set the ground rules.

I am a new elementary school nurse this school year (though I've been a nurse for over 5 years) and I LOOOOVE my job, but I've encountered some challenges with things being sent to the nurse that should not be getting sent here. I'm seeing about 100 kids a day when our director of health service says I should be seeing between 30-40 like at our other elementary schools, especially because we're one of the smaller elementary schools at under 500 students. My boss wants me to give a presentation about what things must absolutely come to the nurse, what things are not appropriate to come to the nurse, and what can be done in the classroom with some of the small things to also help cut down on visits (ex: paper cuts). I once saw an allnurses member post a list that they send to their teachers and it had wonderful points but I can't find it for the life of me! I believe it was posted as a comment. I have a few points I've already come up with, but if anyone out there has a list or presentation that they like to use I would definitely appreciate it if you'd share it since I still feel new in this role and can use all the help I can get. I am hoping that complaints like "please clean glasses", "needs to blow nose", "shoelaces came out of the shoelace holes", "loves bandaids, just wants a bandaid", and "would like to nap" will soon be a thing of the past!