Teacher2RN

Me! Me! Me! Pinning and graduation are both May 8th! Honor status is already established so all I really need is a C in my Psych Nursing class and I'm good to go!

Because you are also checking to see how much residual is in the stomach and if you need to hold the feeding because of too much residual.

That's a nice resource you've created for your students! I made my own as a student by buying a spiral bound set of 4x6 notecards and wrote out everything myself that I thought was important as we learned about it or post conferenced about it in clinicals. It was very valuable to me to make it myself. It's a work in progress. I have one more semester to go and plan to add to it over Christmas break. Your resource will have a lot of information available for students at a glance without them taking the time to create one themselves.

I worked in food service in High School and did more food service as well as retail work through college while I earned a degree in teaching. I worked as a teacher for 6 years and every year got worse. While I took pre-reqs I worked as a bank teller because it was the first place that would hire me. It took me 6 months just to get that job. Now I'm working as a CNA and finishing up my program. I guess we can say that nurses are very well-rounded individuals from reading these posts.

This has gone on all semester. We're in one of those weird 16 week classes when up until now every class has been 8-10 weeks. I'm seriously just sick and tired of being with the same people all the time when last year things were changed up every so often. I normally don't complain but really, enough is enough. I'm not super angry, just frustrated. Lecture day used to be my favorite because it was a quiet time to just sit back and learn, but now I'm counting down the weeks until this class is over. Only 4 weeks, plus a day the week of Thanksgiving!!!

I just sat through a 3 hour lecture that really got on my last nerves. For one thing, the instructor started incredibly late, as usual and most of these problems are due to the instructors classroom management, but here we go. It was 3 hours of clicky highlighter pens highlighting every single thing on the power points, only not until the instructor mentioned that it was important. Shouldn't everything on there be important since it's just notes? Then you have the feet scuffling, chronic pen clicking, constant sighing from the incredibly rude and impatient person sitting in the row in front of me. Then there are the people who have to color code everything in the power point and noisily switch pens or highlighters or whatever they're using to defile their powerpoint slides to make them easier to study from. The worst is the constantly getting off track by students and even the instructor, which caused more sighing and toe tapping from the impatient before-mentioned student. I'll admit to being a little ADD at times, but today was the absolute worst. I managed to entertain myself quietly with the internet on my blackberry and marking pages numbers in my power points so I can go back and study in peace and quiet. I understand that people are doing what helps them learn best, but do they have to be so noisy?

I'm right there with you. I HATE working as a CNA. I love my residents, but just like you, I hate where I work. I keep going because I need the paycheck and I know it's just a temporary stop on the way toward something better. I hate feeling grimy all day because I'm so sweaty. I hate that I'm always behind because I can't find anyone to help me do things for residents who are a 2 assist, and I hate the cliquiness of the other employees. I actually called in today with a "fever" because I just needed a day off between school, working, and working on my days off. Make sure you take time for yourself and like the others said, keep applying for other jobs. Good luck to you as a nurse. This is good experience.

let's see. I have a bachelor's degree in education. I left that job to pursue nursing and to help my husband pay the bills, I've taken a job as a CNA until I graduate from my ASN program. I don't consider myself too smart to wipe butts. In clinicals when I cleaned up patients, they thank me are are so happy that someone took care of their mess. They don't care who cleans them up, whether it's the nurse, the patient care tech, the student nurse, etc. It makes my patients feel better when they are cleaned up. Keeping the patient clean actually prevents skin breakdown and infection and is part of a nurse's job. Luckily we get to delegate that job sometimes. Anything that is in the realm of a CNA's job is also included in the job description of an educated RN. If the CNA or Patient Care Tech is unavailable and it has to be done, the RN better do it. Please find out what the scope of practice for your desired profession is before you waste time in nursing school. I hate, hate, hate vomit, but it's one of those things that the more I'm exposed to it, the more comfortable I'll get.

yup, don't worry about it yet. You will cover it in med surg. I'll dig through my stuff and find a website that my instructor provided us that gave a really good explanation for interpreting ABG's and post it later. It's good info and you can print it off and save it. I found it! See if this helps. My instructor posted it on Blackboard for us to use as extra practice. http://www.ocalaregional.com/CPM/ABG%20self%20learning%20module%2006.pdf

That would do me no good. We skip around so much in the book it would be a complete waste of time to read ahead. We don't get the syllabus until the first day of classes, which is clinical orientation. We can start reading ahead then for the lecture later in the week. I wouldn't worry about it unless you know for sure what the format will be for the class. My program builds upon concepts so that we're constantly reviewing to supposedly make us better prepared for the NCLEX. It's such a bear to follow the reading assignment as it's written in the syllabus that I have to use post it flags with the page numbers marked in order to keep track of what I need to read. Don't worry about it and enjoy the rest of your summer. Good luck!

i'm cutting it kind of close paying for classes using minimum loans. before you go back to school, make sure you have some money set aside in savings to cover any unforseen costs. you may have to commute to clinical sites, so save up some gas money. here in richmond, we have some clinical sites that are up to an hour away. luckily we're only there for a few weeks before we switch to someplace local. if you only take two classes at a time, you're going to have money left over that will get sent to you. put that away to use for later when nursing classes start and you'll be taking a full class load. you are very much like me and need to know all the little details of how this is going to affect you. i wish i'd dug a little deeper and learned more before i jumped in. my first time through college was taken care of by my parents so i had to figure all this stuff out this time around. i felt like an idiot at first. the staff on campus are great resources. i saw you asked a question about compass testing. that's just a pre-test to make sure they place you in the right general studies classes. you may need to remediate in math or english before they let you take math 111 or eng 111. that's to make sure you can be successful in those classes. ivy tech offers the remediation classes...math 050 and english 050 (i believe) to get you on target if necessary. it doesn't affect your admission. also, there should be some required nursing info sessions for you to attend before you can even apply to the nursing program. they'll give you more information there and you can fill out the nursing program's application. they'll tell you about the teas test and the rest of the selection process. ask at the student affairs office for an info packet about the nursing program. they'll get you on a mailing list to send you information.

You shouldn't make too much money to qualify for loans. Our combined income both years I applied for financial aid was around 45K. I'm taking out a total of $10,500 (or $1,750 per semester) to do the ASN program. That includes my year of pre-reqs and general studies before starting the nursing program. I had a few classes already under my belt due to already having a Bachelor's and those just transferred. A good source for financial aid info is the financial aid department on your campus. They'll have you fill out the FAFSA to determine eligibility. All you need for that is your 2009 tax return and it will have the financial info you need. Most likely you'll qualify for a loan. The good news about the loan is that it's really not that much considering what people pay for private schools or 4 year BSN's and you should be able to pay it back fairly quickly once you get a job. You can charge all your books from the campus bookstore to your financial aid account so books won't be out of pocket. Just be prepared the first semester to pay some out of pocket because you'll be getting almost all the books you need for the entire program. Mine were around $1,000, including stethescope and uniforms. The good news is you'll use them more than one semester. I have a separate bank account where I put my excess loan money after it's disbursed by Ivy Tech so I can carry it over to another semester if necessary and not use it for anything else. You can take out just the subsidized loan, which is what I do or you can take out additional money that is unsubsidized. The interest accumulating while you're in school is paid for by the government for the subsidized loan. An unsubsidized loan will accumulate interest while you're still in school, which you will have to pay back, so you have to be careful about that. Before you can take out the loan you also have to do an online "counseling" session that tells you what you're getting into and will educate you about your loan. Your financial aid department will be better at explaining all this and be able to answer your questions. I made a last minute decision to look into the nursing program right before classes started and was able to apply for and get financial aid literally the week before classes started. You're doing the right thing by getting all the info you need to make an important decision. Good luck. If you have any questions, feel free to PM me. We may not be on the same campus, but I can probably help any time. Oh, you need to be going at least part time for financial aid..that's 6 credit hours per semester. That's why I don't recommend taking just one class at a time. Also you'll need to set aside financial aid for summer classes. That's where having the extra savings account comes in handy. Student loans are only disbursed during the fall and spring semesters. I hope all this info helps.

I'm currently at Ivy Tech in Richmond. I'm in the second semester of the RN program and only have one gen ed class left to take. I'm actually finding that just taking the nursing classes alone leaves plenty of time to take 1 gen ed class each semeseter. I don't recommend taking one during your first semester of the actual nursing program because it is very intense. There are only actually 7 classes after the pre-reqs so it is very doable to take 2 each summer and take one or two while you take your pre-reqs if you feel like you are a strong enough student. Also, keep in mind that you have to have at least 6 credit hours to receive financial aid if you're going to be taking out a loan. The nursing staff is really great on my campus about advising us on how to plan our classes. We have one person in our class who hasn't taken any yet and she plans to cram them in over the summer and during the second year of the program. She's been advised that it can work due to the amount of time we're scheduled to be in class. That's the determining factor. The nursing faculty is probably your best resource.

Since we're pretty much on thanksgiving break and I won't see classmates for a week I wanted to brag to someone who understands. I finally got a 100 on a med surg test!!!! I'm so excited! My first two tests were kind of shaky and I never thought I'd even get an A on a test in there. I may not make an A in the class, but I'm going to work really hard for a repeat or two until this semester is over. I hope everyone has a safe and relaxing break.