MissBrahmsRN

i work with several RNs that have stretched lobes, most of them wear clear glass or plastic plugs to work. none of them are stretched larger than 1.5 inch though. nasal piercings are common, many of my coworkers have a discreet nose stud and most of them have more like 3-5 earlobe piercings! policy says no artificial nails but fake fingernails abound. policy doesnt care about polish color only says "unchipped and no nail jewelry like rhinestones" so you see black, orange, flowers, all sorts of cute nail designs.

i just wanna know one thing....are you hiring?? to be fair, my first nurses week they had free 5 min chair massages and last year i think they had a nice meal on days and i did get a nice wooden picture frame with facility logo on it, i gave it to my daughter and she put a pic of her & her BFF in the frame and covered the logo with cute stickers i think i saw another one of those picture frames at salvation army last week, should have grabbed it for my other kiddo...how nice you are to make nurses week so special...i think they did cool stuff like that for doctors week...

central texas

i'm trying to move into outpatient surgery PACU and/or Pre-Op. i have 2 years experience in inpatient hospital critical care and still cannot seem to get a callback, even for PRN positions which is what everyone tells me I need to secure to get my foot in the door. i'm certified in BLS, ACLS, PALS, willing to work 8,9,10,11, or 12hr shifts (many of the centers are open 0700-1700 or 0600-1700 and I'm happy to work the entire day), willing to take a paycut, proficient at time management & verbal communication, great patient teaching skills, I've got several apps out on the various websites for the open positions, I've called around to inquire (I know that clinical nurse managers at these sites are extremely busy and don't have time to be bothered so I just speak with the receptionist and get a fax number for my resume and cover letter.) the receptionist tells me to fax the resume and i'll get a callback but no luck so far for the last few months... some of my coworkers are reviewing my resume to give suggestions but I'm open for any kind of tips/advice/thoughts, what can i do to make myself more marketable, get a callback or two? I know that 2 years isn't alot of experience but I am smart and willing to learn!! ps: what does "fulltime" mean at a surgery center? five 8s? four 10s? three 11s? or a combo thereof? thanks so much for any suggestions...

i work critical care for Seton at Brack. If you like adult cardiac (including transplants) Seton Medical Center on 38th also known as Seton Main is the place for you. If you like adult heavy trauma, trauma with a large dose of neuro thrown in then Brackenridge is the place for you. If you do NICU with the super teeny early babies then you want St Davids Main on 32nd street. All are good hospitals but i will warn you, St Davids does not have CAs in their critical care units so you will be responsible for everything with almost noone to help you. I have admitted a couple of St Davids ICU survivors with stage IV decubs cause the RNs there dont have time to turn their patients. to be fair i have never worked in their unit but this is what i'm hearing from my patients. could be one bad RN.

that's absolutely ridiculous. whether people approve or not, using tobacco is LEGAL. period. testing for it, and treating it's users like hard core drug addicts is just wrong. my grandmother smokes like a freight train and i dont like it but she's happy and it's legal. she smokes outside away from everyone on her own time. it's none of mine or anyone else's business.

i also meant to add, if they dont want tobacco users on our staff, well there goes about 85% of your surgical staff. including the surgeons actually they'd lose a good portion of the doctors as well as a good chuck of the nursing staff. whether or not you agree with smoking to deal with it, medicine is stressful work..

so what makes the cut i'd like to know?!? a SBP of 130? 140? 150? what the hell sorta lab values are "acceptable?" it's my personal medical info and my boss has no business knowing my blood pressure! and i'm a nonsmoker but last time i checked nicotine products are legal. all of the hospital systems in TX start their RNs out at barely over 20/hr, the market is saturated and they can get away with it. i started at less than 22/hr but fortunately i was able to move over that pretty quick...

girl, how on earth do you do it?? even when i worked days, after 12-13hrs running around at work all i had the energy for was to put my feet up & watch TV. even then i crashed usually within a couple hrs of getting home (DH found me passed out on the couch more than once) and then after my 3day run i was sooo tired i spent the next 2 days just sleeping 10-12hrs a night then not having the energy for housework or cooking dinner or anything until a couple days before i had to be back.

is your manager ok with a trial period? i had a coworker who tried days for a couple weeks then decided it wasnt for her & went back to nights, our manager was fine with the trial. if you can try it, go for it!!! she found that she was just as exhausted on her days off on days as she was nights and nights paid her more money so she went back to nights. i think it's the 12hr shifts that just take everything out of you. one of the beauties of hospital work is that you arent bound by the M-F 9 to 5 schedule. there's a schedule out there for you, whether it's 7-7, 3-3, 11-11, you name it, go find it!!

i would NEVER accept a job from a manager that said something like that unless i was desperate. he/she has told you two things right there: 1- they do not like employees who take a day off, even if you are sick 2- they do not want their employees to have an appropriate work/life balance (ie: they dont seem to approve of leaves or vacations) could never be a good thing working for someone like that. i worked for someone like that many years ago, they said something similar in the interview but i was naive and brushed it off. turns out she became angry when: i took a week off many months later(doctor-ordered btw) due to severe pregnancy N/V. (she was informed about the pregnancy during the job interview and i had plenty of PTO in my bank to cover the time off also my doc sent her a letter.) she also became upset when i had a family emergency with my husband being very very ill several weeks later & took some time off (again had plenty of PTO to cover it) and said to me, "isnt there someone else who could help take care of him??" she seemed to have no problems with single employees who took two weeks off with one days notice "cause i got a cheap ticket to Paris on expedia..." and called in 2 hrs late "cause i just dont feel like working today, ya know??" she seemed to want only single childless employees for some strange reason, i ran out of that job PQD...

we dont do seniority, if you are fulltime (36hrs weekly) then you are expected to sign up for 4 weekend shifts per schedule (each schedule is 4 weeks.) the way we do holidays is everyone fills out a sheet in late Sept telling which is their 1st choice off, their 2nd, and their 3rd. The choices are Thanksgiving Eve, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Years Eve & New Years Day. if you want to work one of them or all of them (like i do, cause i want the moula) then you put that on the holiday sheet. then they assign the holidays out and that's that. it's worked pretty well. Management doesnt care as long as the shifts are covered, some people find a buddy and split a shift into 2 6hr shifts which can be really nice.

Texas is not begging for nurses that's for sure. Texas is flooded with new grads & everyone with experience who can't get jobs anywhere else!! In my system we have 100+ people competing for one experienced slot in some cases..and there are zillions of new grads everywhere.

i think i was misunderstood. in our hospital system preceptors get their normal hourly wage plus a precepting bonus (kinda like a shift diff) for precepting. so for example, say your base pay is normally $26.00/hr and you work nights and you have been precepting for the last month on every shift. so your hourly pay is: 26.00 + 4.00 (night shift diff) + 2.00 (preceptor pay) = 32.00/hr. even if you work days and you precept you get 28.00/hr which is alittle less than a 10% bonus. as one of my preceptors put it: "a couple more bucks for me to sit more & be your mini-charge?! why not?" i cannot believe that preceptors dont get paid in other systems...that's ridiculous!! they should be getting their regular hourly wage plus any applicable diffs! i never saw anyone give their preceptors gifts. it was understood that they were getting paid for precepting and gifts weren't to be accepted, it would constitute a conflict of interest since the preceptee is also getting rated by the preceptor.

i didnt get my preceptors anything. not that i didnt appreciate all they did for me, i really do, and i was sure to tell them at the end of my residency and since i still work on the same unit I still tell them often how much they've taught (and continue to teach) me. i opted not to get them a gift though, i had 5 different ones and besides, they get an extra $2 an hour for precepting. it's not much but it does add up when you spend 36hrs a week precepting for a long time, it's like a 10% raise!!

there's a nurse who happens to be a male in my hospital's L&D. he's been there delivering babies for 20 years and many women have asked for him by name. i had a female OB who works there tell my pregnant coworker: "there's no one better when you are having a baby. he's amazing." my OB is a guy, i've had 2 female OB/GYNs in the past and while i know this is just bad luck they both had very poor bedside manners...both of them would basically qualify any issue i had with "well i'm a woman and i've never had that so...." the nurse who was there when my son was born was a female and she had 5 kids so she thought that she knew everything and basically was nice & gave me the epidural i wanted but kept rolling her eyes at me and saying things like, "i know it's not THAT bad." ummm...lady, it's not your uterus this time is it??? i asked for a male RN when i checked in but they said the 2 they had on staff were both off that day..stinks.. later when i was in nursing school the women working L&D were terrible. they were fine as RNs go but you have never met a cattier *itchier bunch of girls. and the two that i worked with that had kids of their own kept acting like the moms delivering were doing everything wrong.. i guess i've just had back luck with female caregivers in the female medical arenas:confused:

hey girl, i'm a night shifter & i appreciate you, i totally do. both shifts have alot of crap that goes all, all of it difficult in many ways. (i dont get many sleeping pts, where do i get some of those?? ) we all need to just chill, we have 24 hr jobs & we can't get it all done in our shift, it's impossible. when a nurse rolls their eyes at me during report & i have to pass something on, i just ignore it and think to myself, "well i guess SuperNurse coming on here left his/her cape at home today." then let it go, finish report, & clock out. as for being a night shifter, i will freely tell anyone who asks why i work nights: 1- not a morning person, i can't get up at 0500. doesnt work AT ALL. 2- nights generally is less s*** for more pay. not always, but generally.

i work night shift & i dont do caffeine much cause it makes me have trouble sleeping when i go home to bed! i also get massive HA from caffeine, get jittery & nauseated. I keep a pretty tight sleep schedule so I usually do alright but I stay hydrated, i carry hot herbal tea in a reusable lidded coffee mug and when that's gone i refill with ice water and drink ice water all night with lunch and snacks. i'm a total night owl so when i used to work days i had trouble going to bed on time to get enough sleep cause i like to be up at night!! I think i got it from my Oma she goes to bed at 0400 and gets up around noon, she's done that for 30+ years..

i can definitely see the 2 sides you are talking about. i work critical care & i have some thoughts: 1- those ICU nurses were completely unacceptable and need to go do something else or at least take a very long vacation. i have seen many ICU nurses get really hardened by the difficult death-day-in-day-out and hopeless cases they get...they dont mean it usually they just get numbed to it. 2- my hospital system has policies that dictate when patients are moved to various levels of care, it's possible for the MDs to override but it's very difficult. for instance, if they are getting more than a certain number of units of blood per shift they are moved from the floor to intermediate care and so on because the floor nurses have so many patients it's impossible for them to monitor lots of giving blood & give safe care to their other patients. bleeding from rectum & bladder is automatic critical care admit due to needing a monitor for frequent HR&BP plus serial CBCs plus lots of PRBCs. he means well but the doctor son is compromising the care of the other patients...i would not want her cause it's an unsafe assignment IMO. Also, due to an incident regarding standing orders for blood admin a few years back there is a policy that after a large # of PRBCs are given in a single admit (cant remember exact #) an automatic ethics consult is ordered to ensure that medical staff & family are acting in patients best interests. 3- i get annoyed when RN pull the "patient advocate" card on docs. i am all for advocacy but honestly, most of the docs are patient advocates too. there are definitely bad MDs out there who arent acting in patient interests but that holds true for RNs too.

i'd pay off our house, pay off the car, pay off my parents house, set a bunch in the bank for retirement & college then who knows...i'd probably work in healthcare again but on my terms, if they ticked me off i'd be out.

waited tables at 24hr restaurant. i was 16 made $2.13 hr plus tips and i loved it. had a great time at work and we were like a big family there, whenever i visit I always stop by and say hi to my old boss, he's the nicest guy. i blew every penny i made on trips to the movies & cds but i'm glad, it was a good experience and taught me alot. i was already planning on college but nothing like waiting tables with 40yo that had had a rough life made me definitely a believer in college!! my next job was a secretary for a GI office. made a third of what i make now but i had way more PTO and it accrued faster too. our PTO is a complete joke. i love what i do, but sometimes i wonder, my darling aunt at 47 has professionally waited tables at a 5 star restaurant for 15 years and she makes more than twice what I do working the same hours and she has better PTO too!!

patientson, i have to say your post gives me hope that there are more caring families out there than i have seen of late. a while back i had a husband who wanted his wife alive "cause her parents will cut me out of their will if she dies" it was awful. and the physician double-speak you bring up is very very real. many times i have had the physician come up, tell me, "yeah, there's no hope." then go in and tell the family, "well, things are looking pretty good here, you never know what can happen blah blah blah..." then come back out and give me the "this is pointless" look. it makes me so angry that we are not teaching doctors to tell the truth. they are so afraid of litigation (rightfully so in many cases) and we as a society dont do a good job of protecting them from silly lawsuits. i've heard of docs being called "Dr Kevorkian" because they gently suggested that perhaps the disabled nonverbal unresponsive 50yo with stage 4 decubs who is in the hospital for the 10th time in 18 months for sepsis could consider an out of hospital DNR order...then if the pt does pass the family sues because, "he was so young and had so much life ahead of him and you killed him." it breaks my heart. your dad is lucky to have you & your siblings. really lucky.

i wish my ADN took me only 2 years, but that was just the nursing core. the other classes took an extra 18 months on top of that. so really, it was 3.5 years for an ADN from my college. programs vary, in my ADN an 80 was passing BUT required remediation on top of that to proceed. we had peds, L&D, & mental health clinicals also. had no trouble getting hired, in fact we hire about 75% ADNs on my unit. HOWEVER, i am aware that i will probably need to get a BSN someday. just frustrated about the costs.

i truly meant nothing personal. please know that. i know you worked hard for your degree we all did. i myself have 110+ college credits & i am certain you have way more, i think you need nearly 200 for a bachelors. i have spent a fair amount of time looking at different RN-BSN programs and the ones that i can afford (ie: not go into debt for years to come) have only management classes. my system does do reimbursement but not enough to cover the entire cost so cost is a large factor in the decision. I also dont think it's fair that the hospital systems dont pay BSN nurses a higher hourly wage, it only encourages people to get the ADN cause it's cheaper. i am thrilled you studied advanced cardiophysiology, which school did you get your BSN from, i would love to take that class, i have lots of critical cardio patients. none of my BSN coworkers studied that, and i am very interested. we've all spent time at work discussing our education and many of the BSNs were able to get their BS out of the gate because their parents were paying for it. if that had been my option i might have done that, but it wasnt. the "dumb piece of paper" comment is meant for me, meaning that to me, since i am already a bedside nurse then it's reduced it to just another piece of paper in my file, not something essential that i needed to get my license and start my career. my coworkers who are in RN-BSN programs are studying: Art History, Management of the Nursing Unit this term. they're not quite sure how it will make them better bedside nurses but they are going into debt for it anyhow... perhaps the thing that needs to happen is the ADN programs need to morph into BSN programs so that the entry level is BS and the management level is MS like most other fields.

that's true, i never thought of that. i wish the ethics committees would get involved more often, sometimes i think the hospital likes the repeated weeks long hospitalizations for UTI/septicemia/cdiff cause i dunno..it brings in revenue?? (disclaimer: jaded person here who has worked for ALOT of corporations medical and not medical)