ideastoday

Clearly, this affect RNs directly, along with a lot of other people in healthcare. If you make more than $65k, your employer will no longer be required to pay you overtime, period. Also, nurses will almost certainly be classified as "learned professionals", and therefore also disqualified. I don't see any way nurses' overtime will survive these two tests. The hospital you work for could voluntarily choose to continue paying overtime at 50% above the normal rate as they did before, or if you have a union they might be required to under the union agreement. Otherwise, forget about it. The article at the link below has good information. http://www.hpae.org/nursemobilizeforotpay062503.htm Frankly this is an outrage and needs to be stopped. You can see the Department of Labor proposed rule changes and contact information here: http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/fedreg/proposed/2003033101.htm Greg

Perhaps I need to clarify. First off, I appreciate the honesty. Not being in the medical field now, I am coming from a position of ignorance, which is why I started the post to begin with...to get answers. I guess what I need is a sense of the job as a whole. How often does one encounter these really gross situations? I know I can do whatever I need to do. If I have to deal with something less than desirable every couple of days, or a couple times a week, no big deal. But if I going to be putting on hip waders to go to work, I need to look elsewhere because, while I could do it, I'm not going to be happy putting myself in a situation where I have to do it constantly. It has been my opinion that this kind of thing was occasional in nursing. Reading some of the horror stories here makes me think otherwise. If someone could provide a sense of perspective, please? Thanks for the replies... Greg

I'm getting ready to go into a BSN program in the fall of '04, and am having some second thoughts. I had originally planned to become an RT (radiology tech), but switched to RN because I would ultimately like to be a Physician's Assistant or Nurse Practitioner, and the BSN seems like a much better route. What I'm wondering is, are there areas of nursing I can get into that are relatively "clean"? I'm not squeamish in the sense that I pass out easily, nor would I be incapacitated by death issues. I am compassionate and think in many ways I would enjoy the "helping people" aspect of nursing. However, I am a little concerned about how happy I would be constantly dealing with feces, urine, severe injuries and so forth. While I am a pretty compassionate person, I'm also not sure about entering a career where I had to deal with that every day. I guess my question is, are there specialized flavors of nursing that I can get into where I would have the option of dealing with a somewhat cleaner working environment? Or is that sort of thing so unavoidable in nursing that I need to consider another career path altogether? I keep hearing that nursing is very diverse and there are a lot of different ways you can go, so I'm hoping this I can find a role in which I would be happy. Thanks in advance, Greg