singwithme123

I interviewed for a position a while back, and the manager told me two weeks ago that I was selected for the position, she was sending paperwork to HR, and HR would contact me "in a week or so" with the official offer. I still haven't heard from HR, but I have maintained contact with the manager who tells me that the offer is still coming. I would say send a brief email after a week, letting her know that you remain very interested in the position. Most facilities will not issue an offer until they check references, and sometimes that can take a while.

You are probably correct. I could see this being written 8-10 years ago, but certainly not appropriate now! I know it is a tired old subject around here. Just thought it was odd to see a new article about it.

Is it just me, or is it odd that in this day and age an article like this is being published?? This was from 2 days ago.. The U.S. Is on the Verge of a Major Nursing Shortage - The Atlantic

You live in SC, so you are going to have to jump through the hoops required by the SC BON. I would suggest you call them and discuss your situation and determine what your options are.

Banning family or significant others is totally against The Joint Commission standards except in certain specific situations. If hospitals are certified by TJC, they are likely moving away from "visiting hours".

Well, you know, that was a really boneheaded thing for her to do. I know that she is your little girl, but your little girl screwed up royally and will likely face some pretty stiff consequences as a result. You aren't going to find any sympathy here.

OP - Have you actually been offered an RN position anywhere yet?

There are probably hundreds of new grad RNs on this site who would KILL to find an RN job in a hospital and be able to make $25/hour.

I'm sorry, but I also wonder what you truly expected from a nursing career. I mean really. And your statement about considering making $25/hour to a "volunteer" level of pay?? That is almost offensive. When I graduated as an RN in 1986 my starting base pay was $9/hour at a hospital. At that time and even until today, I have been basically satisfied with my income in a wide variety of RN positions. No, I will never become rich as an RN, but I never expected to. Something about your position on this really bugs me...

The closest hospital to Gatlinburg is LeConte Medical Center, which is part of the Covenant Health system. It is a small facility, but a fairly new, nice building. It used to be a great place to work, then leadership changed, culture changed, and I'm not so sure now. Covenant Health has several other facilities in the Knoxville area. It's a good system, RN pay is probably going to be around $22-23/hour, but cost of living is low and there is no state income tax. (Go to Covenantcareers.com for info) Tennova Health is the other major system in the area. It is for-profit (as opposed to Covenant), and therefore the pay is likely higher. I have never worked for them. UT Hospital is in Knoxville - Large teaching hospital. Pay is probably about the same as Covenant Health. They are a magnet hospital, so if you do not have a BSN it may be hard to get considered. East TN Children's Hospital is also in Knoxville.

When I worked in the cath lab years ago, we always had an RT and 2 RNs on the call team - Two RNs in case of an emergency situation. (We had multiple labs running during the day, so scrub techs were utilized in place of RNs scrubbing most of the time. But the scrub techs didn't take call.)

Perhaps have a discussion with your instructor? We have no way of knowing how this happened...

Thank you so much for this perfectly-said post!!! I hate the posts that ask things like that!!!

Sounds like it is one of those programs that is only teaching to the test (NCLEX), not actually instructing someone to become a competent nurse.

Making sure that core measures are completed is not outside the scope of practice for a nurse. Writing the order yourself for VTE prophylaxis or the ACE-I for a CHF patient is another story, but I doubt you are being "coerced" into doing that. Core measures are evidence-based best practices for patient care. Yes, most of them require a physician's order. However, I have seen plenty of situations where core measures were missed, and it was the fault of the nurse. (M.D. orders SCDs, but the nurse never documents that they were applied or refused. There is an order to remove a foley on POD #2, but it isn't done. Discharge instructions are not complete or documented properly. Things like that..) It is probably a huge hassle for some quality nurse or your nurse manager to be crawling up and down your back to make sure that things get done. I promise that there is some hospital finance person or CEO who is crawling all over them about it too, because of the impact that it has on facility reimbursement from Medicare. Most non-profit hospitals run on extremely tight margins, and they rely on getting every single penny of reimbursement that they can in order to survive. With value based purchasing, there is a financial incentive for the hospitals to make sure that their core measure scores are high. Unfortunately, historically there has not been any sort of similar financial incentive that impacts the doctors, but that is changing. So... Take a deep breath, and ask the dang doctor for the order or the needed documentation. Even tho it doesn't feel like it sometimes, the measures really are important, and they are EVERYONE's responsibility.

I have no doubt that you gave the medications. However, documentation is a pretty basic nursing function, and if it is isn't documented, then it isn't done. That's kind of simple. The facility is responsible for doing quality checks on the documentation, and missed documentation of medications, particularly several doses, is easy to catch. The facility could get into a great deal of problems with regulatory agencies for failure to catch and correct things like this. Instead of complaining about the disciplinary action, I would suggest that you admit fault, figure out how you let this happen, and come up with some steps to prevent it from happening again. You screwed up. Simple as that..

Mittelschmerz is a medical term for "ovulation pain" or "midcycle pain". About 20% of women experience mittelschmerz, some every cycle, some intermittently.

I was working triage one night, and the receptionist brought me the paperwork for a new patient, noting that the chief complaint was "problem with member". (This was back in the day when patient's without obvious emergencies were registered first and then triaged.) I went to the waiting room and called his name. He was sitting in one of our wheelchairs, so I wheeled him back to the triage room. I sat down, and asked him what kind of problem he was having. The gentleman stood up, dropped his drawers, picked up his member, and showed me a 3-4 inch laceration running down his member! The thing was nearly filleted! No blood. I was shocked, grabbed his arm, and and said, "Dear God, what happened to you???" (I know, not the most professional thing...) He replied that he had been climbing over a fence, fell, and he was cut by the top of the fence.. Yeah, right... Never found out what happened...

I would say that if you have the means and the opportunity to go ahead and get your BSN now (as opposed to getting an Associate's first then BSN later), I would do it. The job market is extremely tight for new grad nurses, and anything that gives you any advantage is worth it. There are hospitals that are reluctant to hire ADN nurses..

I would say that certain parts of the country definitely do have a shortage of EXPERIENCED nurses. I worked for several years as a nurse recruiter for a large health system in TN, and we were overrun with new grad applicants, but our managers would have killed for an experienced, motivated candidate. I no longer work for that company, but I just looked at their web site and there are still many full-time positions posted for experienced RNs. I truly do hate it for the new nurses graduating these days, as I believe that they have always been told that if they become an RN they will always be able to find a good paying job. 10-12 years ago new grads were certainly able to call the shots - What facility they wanted to work for, what clinical area, what shift.. Hospitals in this area fought over them! But things are vastly different now.

I will try to be gentle in how I say this... I have no thoughts on the position you are considering, but a potential employer may question your competence based on your poor grammar... ("I seen...") You might want to be careful about that in your communication with potential employers..

OK, never mind...

I catch myself saying it, and I read it all of the time on these boards - Why do we refer to our time spent getting our nursing education as "nursing school"? We attended college and got a degree in the profession of nursing, and saying "nursing school" feels a bit degrading to me when I think about it... I don't think other professions do this - Ever heard of "accounting school", "lawyer school", "human resources school", engineering school"??

When I was in the hospital after giving birth to my son, I was initially in a room next to the nurse's station. The noise coming form hospital staff visiting with each other at the nurse's station in the middle of the night was AWFUL! (This was not noise from official business. This was laughing and talking..) I had to asked to be moved to a room away from the station. So I guess my biggest suggestion would be to keep quiet in the nurse's station!

Hospitals are abolishing "visiting hours" in an effort to comply with Joint Commission requirements for patients to have access to their support individual. Having posted visiting hours is a big red flag for Joint Commission surveyors. http://www.jointcommission.org/assets/1/18/R3%20Report%20Issue%201%2020111.PDF