TiffyRN

I did a BSN to PhD, and the university had decided to exclude the infamous "3 Ps" from my program the year before. Without those, I wasn't considered an APRN, and would not have been able to teach many graduate nursing courses. My chair strongly suggested I get a post-masters NP certificate to improve my resume. After a couple of years I landed a job at a large health system and am very much happy I didn't get on the tenure track hamster wheel.

I work as a nurse scientist in a large healthcare system. I defended just a few months before COVID hit and job searches were difficult, especially for a novice researcher with only conference presentations. I continued to work bedside as I was rejected over and over for nurse scientist and academic positions. What eventually worked for me was getting closely involved with shared decision making, meeting and getting into discussions with our entity nurse scientist. Vol testing to work on studies no one else wanted to fool with. While I still lacked the requisite "2 years experience", (HR held up my application) my entity nurse scientist brought me to the director as a strong possibility. I was encouraged to add some items to my resume that included any kind of research, mentoring, academic type activities I had engaged in over the last few years including my relentless effort on that abandoned study. I got past HR and found an amazing group of highly talented nurse scientists who have mentored and encouraged me the last 2.5 years. it is literally my dream job ?

I am open to helping. I don't have a MSN as I went through a BSN to PhD program and currently work as a nurse scientist for the last 2.5 years.

Different facilities will offer clinical ladders that can offer hourly difs for achieving various clinical and professional activities. Some (like my employer), will often cap how high one can go on that ladder if one doesn't complete a higher degree. Pretty much all the activities/certs you mentioned would count towards clinical ladders depending on the hospital. I would inquire with your leadership to see if negotiating with HR is effective in any way. Policies certainly change, and this is a time where nurses hold some negotiating power, but what I've heard in the past is that pay rates are kind of restricted by years of experience, local "market surveys", and projected budget. Now, in one's first few years of practice, you may find moving around may help increase one's pay if one is willing to "shop around". The largest % raises I've ever had have been from changing jobs or market surveys. Having said all that, I've been in this business through MULTIPLE cycles of boom and bust for nursing demand. If I had to do it again, I would have let my hospital pay for my BSN years ago. Instead I waited until it was nearly impossible to get a new job in my specialty (NICU at the time) before deciding to get it done finally. Waiting until I was 40 to go back was frickin' hard. And who knows, you may uncover some hidden passion. I found out I loved research; stranger things have happened.

What is particularly attractive to you about Walden? it's usually wise to focus on universities with strong research programs on the topic you are interested in. I didn't do that and was just lucky that I bonded well with a professor who had a similar background and was committed to my success.

Well, I have learned some about this topic. It does seem that at Vanderbilt, they will integrate 500 hours of clinical practice so that no DNP grad has only 500 hours. That is the only mention of additional clinical hours I see for MSNs with prior APRN certification; unless you want to add an additional certification, say CNM. The course of study for DNP does not seem to include clinically-focused courses (advanced counseling, pscycho-education); instead it is more what I think of as typical for DNP: policy development, advanced informatics for data extraction, scholarly writing, evidence translation, and of course, the scholarly project. https://nursing.vanderbilt.edu/DNP/dnp_curriculum.php If your goal is to complete a terminal degree and learn something on the side, that can be done through PhD and DNP. But it will be more self-directed. I LOVED the freedom of being given flexible assignments that I could focus on the topics of interest to me (with few exceptions). You will have electives and practicums that should be very flexible as far as topics.

"MY goal here is complete the terminal degree while learning something applicable onthe patient care side" There really aren't too many options for a terminal degree unless you want to start an entire new course of study (PsyD). If you want to enhance your patient care skills, the world of literature is out there! Then design either an EBP or research project to implement or further explore your new found patient care knowledge. You are correct that PhD/DNP aren't designed to further clinical skills unless it's something like BSN to DNP. If you want a terminal degree, there aren't too many options. Those degrees are research-focused in order to help the graduate further (or translate) the field's knowledge.

@saheckler I haven't been on this site for a while for reasons. I'm glad you are sticking it out and about to finish. My advisor was a perfect fit for me, but not for a couple of my classmates. So it is hard to help people know how to pick an advisor because I think the MOST important thing is to find an advisor that believes in you. Having said that, one of my advisor's personal axioms was that the main thing one needs to complete a PhD is persistence. I also have an incredible stubborn streak so my biggest motivation was my husband, on hearing that I was beyond frustrated with school, would say: "Then go ahead and quit!" He did this because he knew that was my strongest motivation. But, if any school is harming you, take a break, find another program. It's not worth the trouble/damage. Also, know what you want to do with that degree. I didn't when I started my program, but the stars/planets/vibrations were aligned and I found a job well suited to my strengths and preferences.

I defended my PhD in nursing in Fall 2019. I had a couple of classes shared with the DNP students. The dean of the DNP program was on my committee. I know much more about the PhD program obviously. They are quite different, probably mainly due to the fact that national nursing organizations (maybe AACN?) accredit ADN/BSN/MSN/DNP programs whereas PhD nursing programs are regulated by usual regional accrediting agencies.

First of all I'd recommend anything you write be a "guideline" and now a strict policy. This will allow for some flexibility for individualized patient care. Our thermoregulation guidelines were recently re-written and if I recall them correctly, we can consider transitioning to open crib if the following conditions are in place: 1. At least 1600g 2. At least 34 weeks AGA 3. Has been stable in an isolette on air temp of 28 or below for at least 5 days. 4. Has gained 10g/kg per day for the last 5 days. And these are guidelines not absolutes so for example I have a 1800 g 34 week kid who has been on the lowest setting the giraffe will allow (around 25C) for days but is constantly over 99F axillary, angry, and screaming, and has had one day of weight loss but has been generally trending up. I will likely pop the top on that giraffe and trial them on open crib status because they may gain weight more consistently if they aren't hot and screaming all the time.

I've been in my current unit for 18 years. The dwell time for tubes was originally 3 days but those were stiffer plastic tubes. When we changed to silastic tubes the dwell time was changed to 3 weeks, then mysteriously changed to 2 weeks. We recently had a comprehensive review and rewrite of tube policy, and now dwell time is 30 days. We do reuse tubes if they are dislodged but not grossly contaminated (dropped on the floor). My experience is that the numbers tend to rub off after about 2-3 weeks so I doubt any tube is doing to last the newly dictated 30 days.

Not familiar with the niv-nava but kind of have an idea from internet searches. Maybe lay down a square or rectangle of duoderm on the chin for stability, then use H-cut tape with one half on the duoderm and the the other half wrapping around your tubes (we've used it before to secure 2 OGs when the baby requires continuous venting and feeding. Then cover the chin section with about 1/2 a tegaderm. Optional to lay the tubes flat against the chin (not sure the implications for your edi cath). Sometimes works fine to allow the tubes to stick straight out from the mouth but I prefer they are secured under the tegaderm on the chin as they are the tiniest bit less susceptible to being grabbed. With a really slobbery kid, this might only last 3-6 hours but usually longer than straight tape on chin.

Apparently it is very much dependent on how your department feels. The dean of my PhD program didn't like students to list PhDc so it wouldn't have been in my best interest to go against her. As for ABD, I've never seen that as an official designation and if anything, I always thought it wasn't complimentary. Such as a lot of people out there are ABD but it took special persistence to actually finish the dissertation.

One of my PhD professors was/is a JD as well. I don't know which one came first. I know she's tenured and has now moved into the position of director of the PhD program recently. She's taught special topics on biomedical mediation, legal and ethical leadership. I'm sure there is plenty of room for people with JD and nursing PhD.

While I'm not sure my program is classified as "competitive", it is a based out of traditional brick and mortar State university. The PhD program is largely online. I was required to go to a campus week approximately once a year for in-person interactions with our professors and others students. While I had already defended a few months prior to the stay-at-home orders, they don't seem to have affected the PhD students that much. There was a halt to research requiring in-person contact but otherwise things just kind of continued as usual. The earlier courses were administered by Blackboard with a lot of email support. As one progressed and started working more with a dissertation advisor, there was a lot of more personal email and phone calls. One other in-person requirement was that one's final defense had to be in-person on campus but that changed at the height of the stay-home orders. For that period of time, students defended remotely using Skype for Business with all their committee members remotely attending. Also, in my small PhD cohort, 3 of us were in the same general geographic location, but that was about 6 hours drive from campus. A couple of other students lived 3-4 hours from campus, and a couple more lived in the general metropolitan area as the university.