Sterren

I've been doing inpatient nursing for 4 years but I'm seriously considering a move to home health. I love what I do but for family reasons I need something with more flexibility, and I have a friend who does home health and finds it to be amazingly flexible and rewarding. I have an interview coming up in a few weeks and I know that's the time to find out about this particular company's scheduling and hours. However, I know there are a lot of different options out there and would love to hear from people already doing this job, about what your typical day looks like. It seems impossible for home health to be LESS flexible than the 12 hour shifts I work now, but I also don't want to change jobs if I'm wrong in assuming this might be a better way for me to balance the needs of my family with my career. Thanks so much!

I hired directly into L&D, and have never worked a single day of med-surg in my entire life. L&D is it's own little world, and a lot of what you'd do in med-surg wouldn't even have any usefulness in L&D (and vice versa). I'd go for the OB job, the knowledge you will gain there will be much more use to you in eventually getting to L&D.

I would try to go straight to OB if it's an option and you know that's where you want to be. The job market is pretty bad for new grads in every specialty so take what you can get, of course, but I wouldn't force yourself to do med-surge if you don't need to or want to. I never worked a day of med-surg and don't feel that limited me in any way. No, I wouldn't be able to place or use an NG tube without looking up policies and asking questions to guide me first. But that doesn't really matter, because I've never had a patient with an NG tube! A lot of the time, med-surg does exactly nothing to prepare you for what it's like to care for two patients in one body, one of whom you can't see or evaluate except for ONE vital sign (heart rate). While I highly respect and value med-surg nurses and all of their knowledge, a lot of what you do in med-surg has very little relevance in OB (and vice versa). Good luck, I hope you're able to get your foot in the door in OB through a preceptorship. It's an amazing place to work!

Specifically for OB I'd keep an extra pair or socks (and shoes) just in case you get splashed. Wet shoes are not fun. I keep a spare stethoscope, snacks, tylenol, basic toiletries, about $5 in change, a book for nights where not much is going on, pens and sharpies, and a spare water bottle in case I forget mine.

I worked up until my water broke too. By choice, twice. I could have started my maternity leave sooner but I didn't want to waste my maternity leave sitting at home being bored waiting around for my baby, I saved that time for after the baby was actually born. Unless she was complaining loudly and often about how she still had to work and how unfair it was that she had to work until she went into labor, you really don't know if she did it on purpose or not.

I make more money than my husband, so I guess I'm one of these young breadwinner nurses you're talking about. My husband and I don't really think of it that way, though. We both work the same number of hours, but I get paid more for my time than he does. We both like our jobs and neither of us wants to quit. We both take care of our children. We both wash dishes and fold laundry and go grocery shopping. It's not MY money and HIS money, it's OUR money. I don't really care who makes more money or who is the "breadwinner", we're a team and that's what matters.

Why don't you request the same thing every week then and trade for whatever days you don't get? Then you've got your fixed schedule. I have a coworker who has worked the same thing every week as long as I've known her, and that's how she does it. I happen to love the freedom of self-scheduling and appreciate that nursing has a flexibility a lot of other jobs don't, that allows me to get wednesday off one week because my kid has a ballet recital, and saturday off the next week because we're going out of town. If you want a set schedule then request one and trade for what you don't get, just as you're suggesting everyone else should do to accommodate your desire for a fixed schedule.

Well no, but I'm straight and married and all my patients are female. Honestly I think it's very unethical and unprofessional. I don't really buy the "well what if you bumped into each other at a bar later" either. If it was a significant enough nurse/patient relationship that it's remembered after the patient is discharged, then it's significant enough that there are boundaries that should not be crossed. It gives me a very icky feeling to think about a nurse forming a romantic relationship with a patient. Not okay.

Sorry the bed is uncomfortable. It's not my fault that you came to the hospital and begged to be admitted for labor when you were demonstrably not in labor but were whiny enough that the doctor admitted you anyway, and then ordered NPO and bedrest with continuous fetal monitoring. Be careful what you wish for.

I'd want to work at Seattle Grace/Mercy West Hospital. The residents there do EVERYTHING.

I had a patient recently that I really connected with. After we discharged her, I wondered how she was doing and wished I'd given her my email address or something so that if she were comfortable with it, she could update me on how things were going for her. I wondered, though, about the ethics of doing something like this? Is it okay to share your email address with a patient? This is the first time I've ever been tempted to do so, she was just such a great person and going through something really hard. For her part she asked if it was possible for me to float to the unit I discharged her to, so I could continue to be her nurse, and she asked me to come and visit her while she was still hospitalized. So I believe that the connection/bonding/whatever term you want to use went both ways. Thoughts?

This.

No. I'm not interested in being a guinea pig.

I think it really depends on the person. There are areas that I would consider insanely stressful, that might be someone else's day in the park. I happen to love the area I work in, and don't find it that stressful, but I'm certain that someone out there would rather gouge their eye out with a spoon than work here because of the stress they would experience there. It's just a matter of what you like or don't like, and what you can and cannot tolerate in a given 12 hour shift.

You will probably make 50K as a nurse, working 3 days a week most weeks. True. You will also probably feel ridiculously underpaid when you consider everything you have to know, do, understand, and put up with over the course of what is often a VERY long 12 hour shift. I love that I make as much as I do. And I love my job, the very large majority of the time. But when I look at what my job actually is, I'm absurdly underpaid (just like every other nurse out there, IMO). I do think you are seriously limiting yourself and your potential job prospects by requiring that you would need to work days, in San Diego, in a children's hospital. Day shifts are typically fought over anyway, and "earned" a lot of the time by putting up with nights for a while. Usually day shifts go to experienced nurses. I've heard hiring is downright scary in California, and I imagine children's hospitals are probably even harder to get into now than normal adult hospitals. Also, remember that you may step onto a peds unit as a nursing student and find that you HATE it. It's a good idea to have a back-up plan. If you're only going to nursing school to be a peds nurse, and then you find that you just can't handle being around sick children all day long, and you have no back-up plan, that's a lot of wasted time and money on your part.

You are obnoxious and unhelpful. We've taken a vote and will not be unlocking the door for you when you come back from your cigarette break. Goodbye! (oh, how I wish we could get away with this sometimes)

If you write orders, give the chart to the secretary or put it on the correct shelf or in the correct bin (and if you don't know where new orders go, ask) so that those orders are made known to everybody else who is taking care of the patient. If you choose to instead write orders and then leave the chart in a cubbyhole at the end of the hall, do not even think about yelling at the nurse when those orders weren't noticed 3 hours later. If you haven't bothered to talk to me, and let me know you were in the room while I was with my other patient, and then you haven't bothered to let me know that you want to change something in the plan of care, and then you haven't bothered to put those new orders in a place where someone else might actually be made aware of their existence, then guess whose fault it is that those orders were never completed? That's right, yours. Not mine.

I read the whole thread. Again with the assumptions about what other people do or don't do. I still stand by my post. If your attitude in real life comes across as it does online, it's no wonder that night shift nurses respond to you the way they do.

I know one person who got 75 questions and failed. No matter how many questions you get, your chance of passing is about 85%. It doesn't matter if you got 75 or 260 or anywhere in between, the average pass rate is 85%.

First I would like to say we all leave things unfinished sometimes. Day shift or night, sometimes you just don't have enough time to get to every single thing. Your coworkers should understand that there are occasionally not enough hours in the day, and understand that things will not always be completely finished at change of shift. As long as it's not a habit to leave all kinds of things undone, it shouldn't be a big deal when it happens once in a while. That said, your posts imply that you think night shift does nothing except pass meds at 9pm and then hang out and chat and wait for the sun to come up. For that reason, I think swapping days and nights for a week would be a fantastic idea. I think you would be in for a very rude awakening. Furthermore, if your attitude in real life comes across as it does in these posts, it's no wonder your night shift coworkers react to you the way they do. Assuming that they do nothing - not even talk to the doctor - all night long, and behaving according to that assumption, is not going to earn you much forgiveness when you pass off all kinds of unfinished tasks.

I can tell the difference between a boy and a girl. I'm sorry that the nursery is painted pink and that you've got a department store's worth of girlie clothes at home, but the baby is STILL a boy. Yes, I'm absolutely sure, I'm a well trained medical professional and have developed the skill to identify a member when I see one. Hope you kept the receipts.

Your advice is not only unhelpful, it is WRONG. No, your precious 15 year old angel who's pregnant should not start pushing as hard as she can when her cervix is only dialated to 3cm. Yes, I really do know what I am talking about. Stop giving such bad advice, or go home. Or even better, do both.

based only on what you said I'd guess previa, because an abruption CAN be painful (although isn't always) and advanced labor involves strong contractions. I ruled out the fetal bleeding one just because it doesn't make much sense to me. I'm really torn between A and B though.

action, meet consequence. Bet you won't do THAT again, will you?

Of course you CAN do it. Personally, I would not. A tiny baby at home takes up a lot of time. If you want to breastfeed, you need to consider where and when you would pump in clinicals and at school. You need to consider the (lack of) sleep you'll be getting at home, and whether you'll learn at the pace required in an accelerated program. You need to consider the choices you'll have to make between spending time playing peek-a-boo with your baby or studying for the exam you have tomorrow. My advice is to have a baby and wait a year to go to school. Then you'll have a toddler, which is still crazy difficult in nursing school but way more sane than having a newborn in nursing school. Good luck. This is a really hard decision to make, I know.