FLmomof5

This wasn't on the floor....this was at home. DH was scheduled for Sx for his hyperparathyroidism. (His initial Dx for that was 28 yrs prior. ) He didn't want anyone "cutting his throat open". Anyway, in the days prior to Sx, he started getting his affairs in order. He talked about this sense of foreboding and I tried to get him to call his MD about it. DH scared the living **** outta me.... After his Sx and D/C, he skyped me from MD's house (they were personal friends). Turns out that when they looked at his pre-Sx labs, they ordered a repeat because the MD didn't believe they could be correct! After Sx, the MD said that he has been doing these his whole career and hadn't seen PTH and Ca+ levels that high in a living, conscious pt! He was dying. If he hadn't had the Sx this time, he would not have lived much longer.

Nursecasey2, you beat me to the punch! I am also taking the same class and need to interview someone in nursing informatics! Did you ever get a reply? Anyone want to help this student out as well?

Our hospital has an exception for nurses that have family members that are first responders. My own situation is a bit odd.....my hubby is Active Duty National Guard. One of his primary roles is the planning, preparation and execution of hurricane plans.....but he is in a different state. His state getting hit doesn't mean that my state is getting hit. For that reason, I did not take the exemption. Check with your hospital, you may have an exemption and will not have to report.

I worked an IT job (full time + OT) while going to t FT EVE/WE nursing program. Honestly, I used the weekend to catch up on all studies and assignments. I went straight from work to my evening classes. It was tougher during the first semester because we had more classes that term. I also had kids at home (teens) and a hubby in Afghanistan. You can do it. You do have to choose school over anything else though. During term 3, my youngest (HS) daughter asked, "When are we gonna do things together again?" I honestly replied,"August 2010"...my graduation day.

Ahhhh, the joys of being hearing impaired! When I get home, I pull out my hearing aids......and the silence is blissful! :)

I had a 2.1 at the end of my BE-EE/minor in Physics with 154 credits. The NS I attended counted your pre-reqs only (3.8) and your test score on the NAT. Choose the right school and you should have no problem.

To highlight the examples above.... My brother makes 6 figures as a nurse in NYC (Manhattan specifically). His measley eff apt ran $3K/mo! Then there is the NYS income tax, the NYC income tax, 8.25% sales tax, yadda yadda. I earn $22.05/hr + diffs. (I am still NG status.) My mortgage on a 2K sqft 4 br 2 ba house is $1300. I pay no state tax. Sales tax is 8%. Gas is currently $3.47/gal (not sure what it is in NY right now, but I guarantee it is higher! ) Because of the housing market crash, you could buy my house for $70K less than I paid right now and the hiring of RNs is up here. If you have exp.....a specific hospital in this town pays $25 + diffs. We have a few good neighborhoods and 2 HS's in the top 10 in the country (they are magnet schools so your kids would have to have great grades to get in.) There are problem neighborhoods and schools so you would have to avoid them. The crux....I make far less than my brother but have a better purchasing power! Also, in many smaller areas, you may have census issues that cost you hours or PTO usage. Here...we never have census issues! In fact, my hospital allows OT if they have need and many nurses do it to pay off debt....including paying down their mortgages before retiring! With 'average' salary sites out there....I wouldn't give much credibility to them. They are usually higher than what you can expect to earn. Cost of living sites are fairly accurate. Cost of Living Calculator, Salary Comparison - CityRating.com this site says that if you earn $50K in Jacksonville, FL....you would need to earn $156K+ to have the same standard of living in NYC!

7p -7a! I love the night shift. You are crazy busy until about 12, but then you can slow down, check charts, clean up stuff not done on days, get things ready for the day shift so their shift is smoother. Get your charting done. Check on your patients simply because you can! :) I try to work 3 in a row. This gives me 1 day to sleep and then a 3 day weekend every weekend (that my hubby doesn't work....'cause I choose to work that weekend too!) At my last hospital, I HATED having to wake doc up in the middle of the night, but at this hospital, the PA is the on-call person and the PAs we work with are pleasant! No grief and we get our jobs done and the patient gets tx he/she needs! Another cool thing is when we get a late admit to the floor, the teammates chip in to get all the paperwork done before days comes in! How cool is that?!

In the LTC where I worked, AO3 patients and those with demanding families got the priority because they COULD say bad things, file complaints, et. al. It was a sad state of affairs. In my humbleness, I will state that I no longer allow anything short of a code to interrupt a current med administration (I now work in acute care).....the reason why is that I allowed my precepter to interrupt me in the middle of a task (I had pulled meds but had not gone to the patient's room yet). Crux of it....I made a med error. I had to go to the ANM, risk management, the MD and the patient to 'confess' what happened. Ultimately, no harm. Thank God. It is a lesson I will never forget and never repeat.

At my last hospital, this was a weekly/bi-weekly occurrance. We would be paid $2/hr for being placed on stand-by. Once on stand-by, you could be called in at ANY point during the shift. This seriously sucked because I worked nights. When you didn't end up going in (which was most of the time), you either went for the $2/hr or used PTO. At my current hospital, census is NEVER low! :) Sometimes a "bid-shifter" might be sent home @ 11P and his/her patients split among the rest of the staff, but I have never seen a regularly scheduled nurse called off. There have been times where our "extra nurse" (the bid-shifter) is floated to another floor. I am looking forward to being able to bid shift off my floor (you have to be with the hospital 6 mo to do this). Many of our nurses get 48 - 60/hr per week. In doing so, (like one nurse I chatted with) they have paid off all consumer debt! This same nurse, after paying off her consumer debt is now paying off her mortgage early so that she is completely debt free when she retires! BTW, this is at a not-for-profit religious hospital in a major city. We also have a 1-4 or 5 ratio on nights! (once in a blue moon, it might be 1:6 if a nurse called out and we couldn't replace the nurse...)

Esme, I was replying to a prior post without using the quote feature....so it didn't indicate the link. Libran1984 indicated that she/he uses it for low BP.... sorry for any confusion.

We didn't get our WIA acceptance until AFTER we were accepted to NS and we had to have BLS before applying to NS...so, in my case, NO, WIA did not pay for it.

I *never* friend co-workers.....well, one exception (she and I were NS classmates and now work on the same floor). My posts are either family or old friend stuff, silly stuff or, much to many a person's chagrin - political. I have insisted that my children remove inappropriate stuff from their pages, not only because it reflects badly on them, but because it appears on my page and could reflect poorly on me. I *do* have my employer listed which is why I am extra cautious. Nothing on my page should reflect poorly on my employer or me as a RN. Strange thing though......my hubby (US Army) deleted his FB page purely because some officer thought my political posts (highly conservative/republican) could be considered "seditious" and hurt hubby's career! Really?!? Wow. So being against the current Pres (aka: Commmander-in-Chief) and supporting his challenger is "seditious"?! Gotta love the "extremes" of politics these days. So much for the first amendment.

I've been working MS for 8 months and one thing I learned was how much I *didn't* know! It does take experience to recognize certain things going on with your patients. IMHO, ER acuity was too risky for me to not know quickly what was happening to a patient. I am glad I started on MS. I post this only because I loved my ER rotations in NS and thought I would love to work in the ER. Now, I am actually glad that I chose to go MS first. Many can go straight to ER from NS....I have realized that I am not one of them. If you can do it, OP, more power to you!

Just wanted to point out that research has shown that Trendelenburg is not effective and is no longer being recommended.