Nurse212

Having two different jobs in the same year will NOT constitute 2 years of experience. It will simply be recognized as having worked in two different areas of specialty. If you can handle working 4-6 days of the week and enjoy the two salaries, why not? While I agree that it could lead to burn out, that is highly dependent upon your age, relationship status, children and goals. Do what makes you happy. Nurse212

Negative. Not only are you wrong in your presumptions, you're essentially dead wrong. Regardless of ****** overlooking all 4 institutions (Cornell, Columbia, Allen and Morgan Stanley Children's Hosp), Columbia has been known, for many years, to be the anchor institution, if you will, holding everyone back. That is the one institution that has kept NYP from attaining magnet status. That isn't speculation or even an assumption that is a KNOWN fact amongst administrators. Reasons? Simple. Columbia up to just last year was still hiring ADN nurses. Columbia's patient care is NOT on par with Cornell's patient care. Columbia's medical staff is also more research heavy versus concentrated on clinical care. How do I know this? I've worked at both institutions and as a PCD (MedSurg at Columbia & Cornell), I can tell you that EVERYONE knows that Columbia holds the NYP institution from true progress. That being said, **** as well as a few other administrators have tighten the proverbial belt and made various changes that will allow for Columbia to come up the ranks. Namely, they have made the BSN requirement institution-wide, so nurses are mainly hired as BSN only. Also, they have implemented the new MSN requirement for all of the Patient Care Directors (PCD), this means that as a PCD, if you don't have an MSN within a 2 year time frame after this became instituted, you get demoted. Again, let's not paint a wonderful picture of unilateral prestige when in reality there are some downfalls. Nurse212 P.S. Also, for clarity's sake, NYP is NOT a magnet hospital yet. While they are ranked #1 in New York State and #6 in the nation, they have yet to receive that designation.

It largely depends upon which hospital within NYP you apply to. For instance, if you apply to Columbia Presbyterian (Uptown Manhattan) with only an associates, you could get hired if you do well with the interview. On the other hand, if you apply to Cornell Presbyterian (Upper East Side) with only an associates, they will simply reject you (Unless they have extreme circumstances playing a role). Why this works this way is simple. Cornell Presbyterian, on the east side, is their flagship hospital if you will. Where as Columbia Presbyterian is more of their dreaded step-sister hospital that they don't keep as close of an eye on, so they tend to have practices that are a little more lenient. As a whole, NYP does not want ADN nurses on their staff, unless they have already worked there for some time and are just being grandfather'ed in. The hospital is ranked #1 in NY state and #6 in the nation. They only want the most experienced nurses on staff with the highest academic accolades. While I do believe that an ADN nurse, can at times, produce the same, if not better, work than that of a BSN nurse, this is not always the case. More and more, the lack of higher education has become taxing on these hospitals by way of overall patient feedback.

That is correct. I have been working at NY Presbyterian for 4 years and have recently tried to get a fellow girlfriend a job there, but, as per the recruiter, they will not take any ADN nurses, especially without any experience. Let me be clear, while they do have a "new grad" waitlist, rest assured that it can be a VERY LONG wait. They will aim to hire any and all BSNs with 3-5 years of experience, before they even look at a new grad BSN. They spend way too much money in training new grads to even bother looking at them. It's a shame really that any and all hospitals do this, but the bottom line is that it saves them money. Nurse212

I worked at HSS a few years ago. For those that care, here are the Pros vs. Cons.. PROS: It's a very well organized hospital. You have brand new equipment. The place is always clean. The fellow staff nurses tend to be friendly and most are very young. The pay is very good as compared to the other top hospitals. (Pays a little better than Cornell and only lower to that of the top paying hospital Sloan Kettering) The patients are not chronically ill and so their stay is limited in time, which yields less actual treatments by way of antibiotics and other regimens, which makes your job as a nurse easier. You can learn much about orthopedics if you pay close attention. You can grow professionally as a nurse by following various leadership tracks. CONS: Nurses are constantly being overworked. Most of the staff nurses on the floors rarely get to take a lunch break (I can't speak for OR, PACU or clinic nurses). Some surgeons can be rude, egotistic and may even refer to you as a maid. Most managers know that they can rely on pretty competent nurses to keep the floors running along with a good group (3-4) charge nurses, rendering them useless and a complete waste of funds for the hospital, since all they do is sit around and either check their emails, go shopping online or plan little vacations when they should instead be offering an extra hand of help or their guidance based on their vast experience. Truth be told, the only thing I ever saw a manager do at that place was fix the schedule every month and yell at their staff whenever they took a moment to sit down and breathe. Their residency programs are pretty good, but the actual preceptors that you get on the floors are not trained to be preceptors, so instead they give you bits and pieces of the overall picture, which if not careful can provide for potentially error-bound new grads. Aside from those pros/cons, HSS is a great place to work at. You will find that it is certainly the best orthopedic hospital in the city, dare I even say the nation. Also, compared to the floor nursing that you could do at other hospitals, the floor nursing at HSS is certainly much easier and less demanding. The key to that place is remembering that besides the great surgical care that the patients receive, they are also selling a brand of service that is particular to HSS and very corporate in nature. Good Luck!

What hospital do you work for?

noni, how did it go with nypresbyterian? 212

Thank you very much for the book information. I'm figuring that with 1-2 weeks of time for study, I can probably go ahead and read the entire book while answering all questions within the chapters and then, towards the end, just knock out all of the questions from the CD-ROM. I'm figuring that by doing so, I'll definitely fair out well. Again, I'm still amazed by the fact that they would make it so ambiguous as to give you an entire book to serve as a "Study Guide". All other hospitals pretty much give you an outlined study guide that at the very least gives you the med list that is needed for study (Sometimes even if the list is exhaustive, just having the names goes a long way). C'est la vie! 212

Problem is, I've heard from 3 reliable sources that the Pharm exam they give at Columbia Pres (Uptown) is completely different from the one they give at Cornell Pres (Downtown). I mean, we are talking polar opposites here... Still, I'd like to know what book they recommended for study, because if in any way the book has proved to be effective, than I'd like to buy it for study, regardless of how long it is.. Yels, you might be surprised by the exam you end up taking, that one I heard is not that bad.. 212

Also, OR if you have AIM, feel free to send me a message at: NYnursing I'm online.

OR, What book did they recommend for study? Also, all they did was recommend a book for study? Did they not even provide you with an outline or study sheet to breakdown the meds? While we all know that the calculations portions of the exam is a breeze, I find it very challenging to walk into an exam with no direction at all. Was the book they suggested truly helpful? 212

Haven't heard anything from anyone as of yet... Check your PM's

Has anyone taken their exam recently? Do any of you have some good pointers to study for their pharmacology exam? Do you remember what types of questions were on it? Is there anything that you would have done differently to study for it when looking back? Thanks for any and all of your help! 212 P.S. Feel free to send me a private message as well..

That statement above is completely untrue. Although I have a BSN degree, I can tell you that an ADN nurse makes the same if not just 1K less than a BSN nurse in 99% of all hospitals if and when they are both new grads starting. If you are an ADN nurse with 1 year's worth of experience, they will start you at the same rate that they will start a new grad BSN nurse. For instance, say NYU starts their nurses with "0" years of experience at $70,500, yet they advertise that a BSN degree will get you $1,500 more, while a new grad with a BSN will get $72,000 starting, an ADN nurse with a year's worth of experience will also get the same $72,000 as well since they have a year's worth of experience that has to be compensated for based on their pay scale. 212

Last I heard from a few per diem nurses that do work for us at NYU and at Lenox is that Lenox Hill is going to start laying off nurses after the new year.. 212