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!

I've watched a second-year peds resident intubate a toddler with a critical airway in a single patient room containing two patients, the other an adolescent who was on a low air loss bed and also trached and vented. To get to the child's head he had to crawl between the other patient's ventilator and the pump tree of the crumping child, under the wall-hung monitor and a variety of tubing, cables and pieces of equipment at head of the bed. Why didn't the staff move the patient to where there was more room? There wasn't anywhere else they could have taken her in an overcrowded unit with very inexperienced management. It was about the worst in-hospital situation you could imagine. But we work in conditions like this every day. I totally understand the OP's point of view, but I can also see the value in trying to optimize whatever factors one can.

I worked in a unit that used them for bigger kids. They worked very well. I remember on kid, an adolescent with Down Syndrome who was admitted in septic shock. Very ill on admission and several days before he started turning around. When he did, well I think we all know how kids with Down's are when they start feeling better. We needed to keep the ETT in and in the end he had an ETAD across his cheeks holding the ETT and another one on his forehead securing the circuit so he could toss his head to his heart's content. He looked quite odd, but it worked. We did have a lot of trouble with the NeoBar. The sections where the ends of the bar were laminated between the Duoderm and the outer covering would delaminate and the tube would just slide out.

Maybe you should deal with them directly and not use your sister as a go-between. Then you'd have the information directly from them and you could ask any questions that occur to you while you're in contact with them.

I'm surprised fiona59 didn't respond to your question since she's an LPN and is in Alberta. (Read some of her posts.) I guess you could try that but I don't think it will get you anywhere because you don't have practical nursing education, you have RN education, and as it's been said before, this was a special arrangement with the health regions, CARNA, CLPNA and the government so that they could distract the public away from their failure to produce the promised results of hiring 500 registered nurses. The RNs who are working as LPNs were in Canada already before the problems with their education and competencies had been identified and the parties had to go into damage control mode. It's not likely to be continued for subsequent intakes of new IENs.

I looked at the online postings at Capital Health and see that there are vacancies in both grades. However, of the actual postings there were 32 for LPNs and 212 for RNs (not including any that might have more than one position per posting number). Of the LPN postings there were only 10 for full time positions and 6 of the others were for positions less than 0.5 FTE. For RNs, there were 104 full time positions and 17 less than 0.5 FTE. That's quite a difference. Considering that foreign workers are required to have a full time position and work full time hours in order to obtain and maintain a work permit, I'd be very surprised if the Local Market Opinion would be favouring LPNs when only 9% of the current full time vacancies are for them.

WOw, this is pretty basic, and in a large part self explanatory. Infusion volume = the amount of fluid in a given infusion ie a bag of IV fluid, a minibag of antibiotics, the amount of fluid in a drip chamber etc Drug dose = the amount of a drug ordered for the patient ie Tylenol 500 mg Flow rate = the rate in mL per hour that a fluid runs at ie NS at 100 mL/hr Infusion rate = the rate in mL per hour a drug infusion runs at or alternatively, the amount of infusion fluid given over an hour ie dopamine at 5 mcg/kg/min Drug dose volume = the volume in mL of a specific drug dose ie Give labetalol 40 mg IV q1H for systolic BP >180. Labetalol comes as 1 mL = 5 mg so 40 mg of labetalol will be contained in 8 mL. Concentration = the amount of drug or other solute in a fixed volume of fluid ie 200 mg of ciprofloxacin in 100 mL D5W = 2 mg/mL.

I'm not sure I understand the question. Blood can only hang for four hours, so the minimum rate for a transfusion of 300 mL of PRBCs would be 75 mL per hour. That is basic information related to blood transfusions. In peds patients the amount of PRBCs transfused is calculated based on a number of factors and rate is only one part. But when we have sickle cell patients on our floor, the hematologist and the hematology NP decide how much blood to withdraw, how much blood to transfuse and how fast to do it. The last kid we had was getting a unit of ~300 mL over about an hour.

Your delay might have something to do with the fact that the temporary permission for Filipino RNs to work as LPNs in Alberta was a pilot project, an attempt to salvage a plan that went off the rails. When the Alberta health regions began recruiting nurses from the Philippines they hadn't done their homework and didn't realize that the standard of nursing education there had deteriorated significantly at many schools. They weren't prepared for the number of people they hired as RNs who weren't being assessed at the level of competence RNs need for registration in Alberta. So they had all these people who were already here and no way they could put them to work as things were. So they decided to temporarily allow them to license as LPNs. I doubt this was ever considered to be a long-term thing, because there is no shortage of LPNs in Canada and LMOs and their associated work permits are not available for LPNs. Also the average Albertan has NO IDEA that this is happening, that their provincial government has spent millions of their tax dollars on a plan that failed so spectacularly. Although there have been press releases announcing the recruitment drive and the arrival of those hired as a result, there has been nothing in the news to inform the people who are ultimately paying for all this that they're paying for LPNs when they thought they were getting RNs. In folk language, that is called buying a pig in a poke. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_in_a_poke) The newly anointed Alberta Health Services department is wise to wait until the results of this experiment are known before letting any more people follow this process. Their political longevity is on the line.

Didn't chinky give you a link to the form for SRNA's credit card payments? And the package that janfrn linked you to has the same form in it. You're applying for initial registration. Is that what has you confused? You can't be registered anywhere without an initial registration. Your grad nurse registration is your initial regsitration in Saskatchewan. So you use the form that chinky pointed you to and that's all.

RPNs (LPNs) and RNs only share an educational track to a point. Many provinces won't accept partial completion of the RN track as entry to practice for the RPN/LPN field because there are specific differences in scope of practice and they prefer that candidates for PN status actually have PN education. You need to check with the licensing body for PNs in the province where you're planning to live. Ontario is pretty strict about things.