Pedi-Gree

The Health Sciences Centre is an inner-city university hospital and the largest trauma centre in the province. It's comprised of the General Hospital, Women's Hospital, the Rehabilitation and Respiratory Hospital, Cancer Care Manitoba and Children's Hospital. It covers an area of about 35 acres, with a mix of old and new buildings. A person could find their niche in pretty much any specialty area they want to there. The surgery programme is high-acuity due to the nature of the hospital, being a trauma centre and also because they are a referral centre for the whole province. They have a cardiac sciences programme and a transplant programme as well. The Surgical ICU is very busy. One nice thing about HSC is that it's pretty central so you could live almost anywhere in the city and only have a short commute. We lived about 15 minutes from the hospital in an upper-middle class neighbourhood; parking is a bit of an issue there because of the hospital's location but I'm told they've built more parking into the campus since I left. Housing is quite affordable in Winnipeg. Property taxes are a bit steep but it balances out with cheaper utilities. There's lots to do in Winnipeg, too. They have a symphony orchestra, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Manitoba Theatre for Young People, , a professional hockey team, a CFL football team, a professional baseball team, some of the best curlers in the world, Festival du Voyageur... and one of Playboy's 10 best beaches for pretty women only an hour's drive away. Camping in the Whiteshell is another great feature, as is the opportunity for cross-border shopping. There are definitely worse places to live.

Which hospital are you interviewing for? I worked in Winnipeg for many years so maybe I can help. When you're having your interview and you feel an "um" or and "errr" coming up, just pause. Don't say anything until the urge passes, which will only be a matter of a few seconds. It doesn't matter if you're in the middle of a sentence, just pause. Remember too that with a phone interview the parties have no nonverbal cues to assess each other with. That can be a mixed blessing. I was interviewed over the phone for my current job and it went very well. If they ask you something and you don't understand what it is they want to know, don't be afraid to ask for clarification. As for questions about the hospital and the unit, you should ask about practical things, like what the ratio of senior to junior staff is, and what level of acuity the patients meet. You should ask about orientation and how long you'll have, how they choose preceptors and whether they have a formal mentorship program. Ask too about public transit and parking! Winnipeg doesn't have a light rail transit system, just the bus.

I'll bite. Just what EXACTLY do you do hushdawg, who do you do it for and why do you believe that you have a role to play at allnurses.com? You have a lot to say about things you have no first-hand knowledge of and seem not to be interested in hearing from those who do have that knowledge. How about you put all your cards on the table?

I worked in a hospital that used the PRN system of assessing acuity. There were dozens of criteria that when added up gave a score for the patient. It took the bedside nurse about five minutes to run through the list and circle all the interventions the patient would need for 24 hours, add up the cumulative scores then pass it on to the unit secretary to enter into the computer. It seemed to capture the essence of caring for each patient and gave the administration a clear indicator of how busy each patient would be. Of course, it got tossed out like yesterday's newspaper and staffing went to Hades.

This might offer some insight into the situation: Fired Filipino nurses seek reinstatement Anne Kyle, Leader-Post Published: Friday, November 21, 2008 REGINA -- Some of the Filipino nurses fired by the Regina Qu'Appelle Health Region said Friday they are hoping they can win reinstatement through the union grievance procedure... For the rest of the story: http://www.canada.com/reginaleaderpost/news/story.html?id=cc037ece-df64-4fbd-9d8e-72ed24ba8851 I don't know what the labour relations climate is like in Saskatchewan, but where I live the government is very anti-union and has made the labour relations board quite toothless. This sort of grievance wouldn't get very far. And as Alexk49 mentioned, there hasn't been much chatter about the CRNE in the last few days on this thread. Most candidates should have their results by now.

I think you would be surprised at how many people who posted to this thread (and who wrote the very same exam) are NOT IENs. To suggest that Canadian-born or naturalized candidates have a smaller and less-important stake in the results is rather self-absorbed. In my nursing school class there were a number of single mothers who were counting on a nursing career to help them provide better lives for their kids and an out from their mounting debt load, women just like me. There were also LPNs who had been laid off when the province purged them from the system who were desperate to have an income after having to put their careers and lives on hold. There were also young women from isolated rural communities who had no career opportunities in their hometowns who had moved to the city to go to school. I guarantee that the cross-section of candidates who wrote on October 8 will be virtually identical to that except for the small percentage of candidates who are IENs. Do you really think the results matter less to them than they do to you? And do you really think that posting on this thread every day that you have to wait makes it easier for you to wait? I think not.

Most IENs will be working more than 250 hours of supervised practice simply by being given their hospital orientation. That's only about 6 weeks of work. It's not such a big deal. Oh and if you think that references from previous employers are ignored, you're wrong. They figure into the overall evaluation of a person's suitability for a position and also provide proof that a person has worked the number of hours they're claiming when they're working out placement on the pay scale. It's not a triviality.

Didn't see this answered anywhere. It just means to use printed letters and not cursive letters. Block capitals are usually easiest to read, and that's why they're asking that - they want to be able to read whatever you've put on the application

I'm not overly familiar with the collective agreements in place in Ontario. If your facility is a union one, there will have to be a copy of the CA somewhere in the building for you to look at. If you work at a non-union facility but you're considering taking a position in a unionized facility then you should find out which union and get a copy of their CA to look at. That'll help you figure it out.

I think I just answered this question on another thread! As one of the other posters said, once the tubing starts to stiffen it's too late. But you can keep your new tubing (yes, you can buy just the tubing - Google the manufacturer) from stiffening by using tire dressing on it. Yeah, the kind your BF or DH or brother uses on the tires of his beloved '69 Camaro. After you've cleaned it, rub in a little tire dressing then after a few minutes buff off the excess. Smells a little of petroleum products but it sure works.

You want to be careful when you clean the tubing on your stethoscope. Too many applications of alcohol or Cavicide will cause it to stiffen and crack. Every once in awhile I use a tire dressing on mine. It's meant to keep rubber tires supple and lubricated and it works just dandy on stethoscope tubing too. Just make sure you buff off the excess.

There is very little in the preceding 28 posts that relates to universal health care and how it would affect nurses' incomes. Could we get back on topic maybe?

So let me see if I have this straight. You're paying $3000 in premiums a year JUST FOR HER. In Canada that amount of tax money would cover an entire family of four under universal health care. No deductible, no copay.

A lot of that will depend on what province you're working in and the collective agreement in place. In Manitoba, a 12 hour shift is 11.625 hours of paid time. There are three 20 minute paid breaks and a 37.5 minute unpaid break in each shift. In Alberta, a 12 hour shift might be 11.08 hours, 11.5 hours or 11.63 hours of paid time, depending on which hospital you work at. Where I work, the breaks are two 30 minute paid breaks and a 37.5 minute unpaid break. There isn't a "premium" for the last four hours of the shift because the contract will have a clause that covers the extended shift details such that overtime would only be paid in the event of working past the end of the scheduled 12 hours, or working through your breaks. In calculating hours worked they look at the number of hours actually worked over the course of a full rotation. In some places that's 4 weeks, in others it's six and in some places it might be as many as 12. In the space of 7 calendar days a person might work five 12 hour shifts, but then the following 7 calendar days they might not work at all. Does that help, or only make it more confusing?

Sounds like we were really lucky with the 2 1/2 hour classes we got. We're rolling them out next week. We didn't get the PCA or the syringe pumps, only the large-volume pumps. I'm alarmed (no pun intended) to hear that they're so sensitive to air. The pieces of junk we're using right now are almost impossible to prime either ahead of time or in a hurry without the dreaded unfixable air in line alarm. I hope we're no just trading one obnoxious alarm for another!