sugarbush

I feel your pain... I am an experienced RN and can't get a job in CT. Thankfully I am employed in KY, but my wife's job transfered to CT. So Now we are living 700 miles apart and making frequent trips back and forth. The nurse recruiters I am speaking with are saying to give it a year and things will start to turn around. Hospitals in CT are receiving 100s of applicants for every position they have open. I have been told that if you don't have a family member employed at the hospital, to put down as a referral, to forget about even getting an interview. I am also trying to be creative and seek out any and all job opportunities.... been looking for almost 3 months now.

Hospitals have never liked hiring new grads. It usually is expected when you enter nursing school that when you get out you will have to work in a nursing home for a few years. The new grad thing isn't about the nursing shortage... Job openings in hospitals are mostly filling previously filled position, not a new position. So the area has a set number of experienced nurses and they move around positions. There is a shortage, My average pt load is 7 pts... We don't even have time to take breaks and it often takes 1-1.5 hrs after the end of our shift to finish our work. Hospitals usually go a few years when they don't hire new grads until they get to a point that they have to to fill positions... then they do for a few years. As far as applying for 500 positions and not getting a job? My guess would be that they are applying to the same places over and over again... After a while HR gets sick of seeing your name.

I don't think the "trick" is valid. You can't retake the exam for six weeks if you don't pass, so it isn't going to let you register anyway. You also already used your ATT when you registered the first time so it isn't going to be valid for a second time. You can probably log onto your board of nursing and check your license status within the next day or so.

We are considering a move to the Waterbury CT area and I am wondering how the job market for RNs is in the area. I am currently a night shift RN on a post/op floor. I want to stay on nights and in the hospital setting, but am open to taking a public health job or LTC. I am also willing to commute within an hr in any direction.

RUN!!! If you are the only RN over seeing 3 LPNs and they say you are not the one liable for the decisions you make they are not being honest with you. If you are uncomfortable with the situation then turn it down. The only way these places will change is if people start telling them no. The bottom line is you are the charge nurse of the shift. You will be liable for the actions of EVERYBODY in your charge. Get used to that, it is part of the job you have chosen as a career and almost all RNs are going to be in charge at some point. But if you are not comfortable with it right now you need to find another job that gives you more time to grow into your RN role.

I work nights and our shift goes like this: 19:00 Get report 19:30 start passing meds and doing assessments, BGs, Changing past due IVs left over from days, Check charts for orders left undone by days, call pharmacy 100 times for drugs that are not on the floor and due at 2100. Do dsg changes that are due. Get done with all that about 0100 and start charting without stopping for a break. 0230 round before starting chart checks. 0300 Start chart checks and reconcile MARS for am shift start. 0430 finally have time to stop for a quick break before it is time to start am med rounds, consents for procedures, am BGs, Discharges for am shift etc. I don't know about day shift, but we earn ever red cent on nights.

I think the review courses are a complete waste of money. New grads just spent the last 2-4 years of their lives prepping for NCLEX. I know people who used review courses and the pass rate didn't seem any better than those of us who did without it. I passed mine in 75 questions without a course and no I wasn't a straight A student... I had a C average.

Central and Eastern KY still has a nursing shortage. Lexington's St Joe and UK are both hiring New Graduates.

If the ANA has their way by 2025 we will all have to have a Doctorate of Nursing to even work with patients. We wait long enough maybe we all will be upgraded to a DR. without going back to school:D

One thing to keep in mind is that generally people do better on a comprehensive final than they do on a general test. The general test is 50 questions all on related material so you have to know a lot about the subject. A comprehensive final is 100 questions on a lot of different material so you can only need a basic knowledge in each area because there are a lot fewer questions per area.

State school instate tuition costs about 7 K per semester counting everything, tuition, books, room and board, travel etc. I currently have about 48 K into my nursing education.

Why waiting until Fall? I passed level one on my first try, but I have a friend who did not. At our school when I started if you did not have a 77 at mid-term they kicked you out of the program... He didn't make it, but came right back in and repeated and did much better the second time around. I had to repeat med/surg 1 (second level) I felt like I learned a lot better the second time around and hope I am a better nurse for it. Nursing school is tough. The class graduating right now at my school started with 118 people and are only graduating 27 who started with that class.

I am male and had no problems in OB with patients refusing me because of it... I saw three C-sections...the day I was supposed to watch a vag delivery none occurred while we were there. I spent 4 days in postpartum massaging funduses and teaching breast feeding... It was so much fun trying to act like I knew something about proper latch....lol

I really liked OB and love pediatrics. C-sections rock.... My OB advice is do not forget Risk for Maternal Injury; Hemorrhage and Risk for Neonatal Injury; thermoregulation on your care plans. For Peds keep in mind that children compensate for hemorrhage... You will not see reduced BP until they are on the verge of shock. First vital sign indication of hemorrhage in children under age 8 will be Tachycardia.

Write a letter to the dean of your school, they can override the readmission board decision. Follow the chain of command and maybe you will get re-admitted. I know how you feel, I am exactly 3 days way from the same situation. I have not progressed before and have been readmitted, it sucks, but life goes on and sometimes we just gotta keep trying.

We don't get a choice in classes and professors; you have to take the class with the professors who teach it.

Any school that admits 110-120 students and fails out 70-80 of them is keeping the absolute cream of the crop and of course will have a high pass rate on the boards. That is not a reflection on the program as much as it is a reflection on the students they choose to keep. Like I said, I score well on the HESI I just have a hard time passing lecture exams. The problem is not in that I don't learn/know the material, but in that I don't do well with the way they write their questions. They have/had some really good instructors, but some of their better ones are retiring or recently retired and they have a lot of new instructors who are fresh out of graduate school. They rotate through lecture so the exam will have questions from 2-3 different instructors.....It is often really easy to see on the PAR sheet what instructors have bad questions because they are grouped together and you score badly in groups. You can forget about getting questions thrown out, you can argue that it is not valid or another option is a better option until you are blue in the face and most instructors will not give at all on them. The only way they will throw out a question is if only a couple of students got it right. I am not trying to scare anybody; just being honest and saying that nothing is going to be easy about it and it is not in your favor that you will get through it in one shot.... you might fail and repeat one or two semesters before you graduate. Last semester we had two students who graduated and then did not score an 850 on hesi so they had to redo the entire last semester. One of them scored an 848 and they would not give on the two points and allow her to graduate. If you are set on going to EKU here is the rundown.... You need a 90% on the math exam every semester or they kick you out....they do give you three tries on it though. I am good at math and have never thought it was really hard....The math exam is not multiple choice and IS all word problems, you have to show your work and your answer. They do not alow calculators the first semester, but do on subsequent semesters. First semester you have 2 classes, the firsts is a skills type class and is really easy, the second is a Fundamentals class and has one really bad instructor who likes to pull entire exams out of assigned readings instead of the lecture....good luck with that, half the class will drop by midterm. The director of level one is really nice and actually a pretty good teacher even though she has been teaching only a few years. You will have to do one history and assessment which is an 18-20 page written assignment on one patient. Level 2 you have two classes, medsurge I and OB. Both of the instructors for OB are hard core and a lot of people have problems in OB. If you have kids it will be pretty easy. You have to do 7 of the 18-20 page assessments, 3 in OB and 4 in M/S. The hardest thing about level 2 is all the time you have to spend doing and redoing History and Assessments. You will have very little time to actually study for exams. You also have to write a research paper in APA format. LEARN APA FORMAT....this paper can sink you if you mess up APA format even if it is the greatest nursing research paper ever. You take HESI and your score is 10% of your grade. Level 3 you have M/S II and Psych. Psych is not too bad, but you have to read the text and study just like anything else. M/S II is pretty hard. You only have to do 3 of the 18-20 page History and Assessments so you have more time to study. You also have another research paper and it will sink you of you mess up APA format... Level 4 is a walk in the park compared to the rest of it. You have a nursing integration type class that is just writing a weekly summery of lecture and nobody fails out of this. second class is an easier version of the previous two M/S classes. Have to score an 850 on HESI in order to graduate. You also have clinicals every semester.... it is 60 hrs the first semester, 60 hrs second semester, 140 hrs third semester and 190 hrs 4th semester.

I am an upper level Nursing student at EKU (To protect myself I will not say which program) and my advice is RUN!!!! It is a terrible program and many of the instructors think they are Gods gift to Nursing students. The graduation ratio is only 30% of the admitted class. I score a passing grade on the HESI, but have a hard time passing the actual nursing classes. I have had to repeat one semester and am on the verge of having to repeat another.....if I didn't have so much invested at this point I would Transfer to another college.... There are many other programs who pass higher ratios of students and take a lot less time and money....in the end we are all RNs. I have been attending EKU for 4 years now and am still at least a year out from graduation.... I have a prior degree and was a straight A student until I reached EKUs Nursing program.

lol... a "Sugarbush" is a stand of maple trees that are tapped for maple syrup. See; nothing sexual about it.

In the couple of hospitals I have worked affairs among nursing staff seems to be unusually common. The two hospitals I am talking about are in different parts of the country so I am wondering If it is a nation wide phenomenon? What about the job makes nurses seek out an extramarital relationship. After what we deal with in the course of a day usually sex is that last thing on my mind at the end of a shift.

Maybe nurses have been spoiled too long. What other degree can you get and even find a job in the area you want without relocating? I think some new grads might just need to look at the bigger picture. Consider working in long term care or per diem. Look at home health care or health dept.

ADN and BSN RNs have the same license and it should not matter what degree you have, both are qualified for the same entry level jobs. My opinion is that if you graduate nursing school without a job it is because your school failed you. They should be well enough connected with the local hospitals and other clinical sites to get any student from their program the connections they need to land a job. We spend countless hrs in clinicals at different sites while in school and should be using that time to make connections with recruiters and RN managers at those sites.

Many nursing students are "non-traditional" students going for second or third degrees. My class started at 104 students and probably less than 10 were freshmen right out of highschool. Most I would guess where in their late 20s early 30s.

Around here the pay is the same for ADN or BSN. The BSN programs are dieing out now that there are ADN-MSN bridge programs. ADN is more focused on nursing and the BSN adds in a bunch of management courses to bring the credit hrs up to 128. If I was advising new students I would discourage them from spending the extra 2 years in a BSN program.

I am in Kentucky also; I am in Lexington. We have University of Kentucky Med Center, Saint Joe Main and East, Central Baptist, Good Sam, and two VAs and all are hiring new grads. Central Baptist alone employs over 900 RNs. UK is on a hiring freeze for all non-essential staff, but that does not include RNs. Experienced RNs are hard to come by around here and all the hospitals work hard to keep them... Nursing students are recruited pretty hard when they rotate through clinicals at different sites. The hospitals have good relationships with the nursing programs and when you reach graduation you already have all the conections you need to land a job...