hekat927

Congratulations, RayHFutureNurse! And Jacqueline, your post was so informative and touching, thank you. This thread has had some really good pointers on hospice work. Since I started this thread, I have been working in an LTC facility (you were spot on, texastaz; they want experience, which is a great thing). I work in a memory care unit, and we have a hospice patient in our unit that we all love. I am moving forward in school to become an RN, and I still would like to work in hospice, along with geriatrics. I know that it is difficult work, and I hope that I will be up to the challenge as I gain more experience. Please keep posting your experiences; knowledge will only help us do the best that we can! Anna

Thank you so much, Beate. This was very helpful to me. Anna

Bteurope, Thank you for your reply. Did you start working for hospice straight out of CNA school? I know what you mean about 'it's not for everyone'. I had a couple of classmates that rotated into the hospice unit during clinicals, and they said that they would not be able to do that on a regular basis. I've had people close to me die (one of them in hospice), and the way I dealt with it depended on how close I was to them. I am very empathetic, though, and even though I might not know the person and their family, I would definitely feel for them. How do you deal with this? Anna

Hi, I am newly graduated from a CNA program, due to take my licensing exam on April 19th. In the meantime, I have been applying for just about anything that has the words "CNA, NA" in them. Recently, someone forwarded a job posting for a facility that includes hospice. I had not gotten the opportunity to work in this unit during clinicals. Do any of you have experience with this type of nursing? What would you say about this if you were brand-new like me? I appreciate any advice that you can give me. Thank you, Anna

Wow, we're having the same problem with not enough open slots here in Arizona, too. They don't do it by lottery, but by how soon you finish your pre-reqs and get your application in. The interesting part of it is, if you already work for a hospital, or are accepted into a fellowship program run by a hospital, you get moved to the front of the line. Of course, everyone is applying to the hospitals so that they can get moved to the front (and maybe have their tuition paid by the hospital). I've read that the average wait time is now almost a year and a half for those of us who don't have connections. For those like us, who don't want to wait forever to get into the field so that we can still contribute, it's very frustrating. That is one of the major reasons that I am going to go into a private nursing school, even though the cost makes me gag and I may not be able to pursue a bachelors later without doing some more pre-reqs later on. I don't want to wait any longer than I have to. I'll be pulling for you to get into a slot real soon. The great thing is you have quite a few skills in your previous field that will translate well into nursing. Are you planning to go further than being on the floor? Sounds like you have enough skills to possibly teach nursing later on, and goodness knows, we could use some more teachers.

Hi Mossback, Yeah, this isn't a fun economy to be in right now, is it? I think it's cool that I found a little pocket of fellow media people who have decided to make the big leap into something else. What was your job at the news station? Are you done with your nursing studies and in the field?

Hi Mr. Tom, Yes, there are lots of us changing our careers, welcome to the club! I'm taking a bio with lab, medical terminology, and nursing fundamentals this January. Then I'll go into Pima either this fall or next May. I've already knocked off my Psych, math and english. Pima doesn't require the Chem to enter for their ADN degree. I'll take that later if I decide to bridge to a BSN program (cause they will require it for that, I think). I wished I could have tested high enough in the math to just go into the Chem when I first started back, but I hadn't had algebra in 20 years, so I didn't score high enough. Good luck to you!

Wow, azmomof2, ad sales. That is the other part of my job; I handle religious advertising. I have to say with the way the economy has tanked, I feel really bad for our reps because revenue is so hard to come by when you're the 2nd buy in this market. And you're not kidding about word spreading like wildfire; we keep being asked if we're still in business. The Sun City paper is part of our company out here. It's a nice community paper, but like everything else, they're going through some heavy changes right now,too. Yeah, I agree with you about not taking Chem online; I tried taking it through Rio Salado. Did great on the labs, which took a lot of time to set up and run in my house, but didn't have time to study as much as I needed to for the "lecture" part. And it's not true that online is the best for people who work. That Chem was set up for people who had a lot of time outside of the class to study and write papers. We were going through a reformat of our papers AND I had just started learning pagination at the same time. I really overestimated my work schedule at that time

You will do well! The best thing about all of us doing this when we're older, is that we really appreciate what we're doing now as opposed to when we were younger, and we're driven to succeed. We've found out that our brain cells do NOT atrophy as we get older, and that we can learn new things and excell in them. Hey, you went from pasteup to graphics on a computer! Nursing is another new skill set that you will excell in. Thanks for the tip on WIA, I'll check into it. Pima is going to cost about $39,000. I'll run out of my generous severance before I finish my pre-req's, and the 401(k) is going towards paying down some bills, but I'm going to attempt working part-time this year to make the severance last longer. Hang in there, all of you, and the best of luck to you all!

Thanks for the reply, CJ. Kansas City Star, now that's a good paper! I've been at this paper, The Tribune, for almost 15 years. It's a Freedom Communications paper. We compete with the Arizona Republic, a Gannett paper. I've been in newspapers for over 20 years, even did pasteup, too, before I became a marketing assistant and paginator. They blamed the downturn on the general public not reading print papers anymore. I don't know if I buy it or not, but I saw this coming awhile back and started taking classes towards nursing. I wanted to do a job that I could be proud of, that made a difference and helped people directly. Not that papers don't do that, too, but I think that you know what I mean. I've thought about going directly into a private nursing program, and I actually am torn between going into an electroneurodiagnostic program to get my foot in the door at a hospital (and maybe they'll pay for the nursing program), or just getting the student loan and going into the private nursing school (Pima Medical Institute). I'll have to see how it all pans out. I know what you mean about wanting to get it done! I have a younger friend who has taken all of her pre-reqs, like, over a year ago, and she is still waiting to get into a program. They're saying now that the average wait time is going to be 2 maybe 3 years. I can't afford to wait that long. If you don't mind my asking, how much is the program that you are in?

Hi, I have been taking my pre-reqs for nursing for a few years part-time while working fulltime at a newspaper here in Arizona, and I've been out of school for 20 years, too. I've been surprised by how well I've done compared to the few semesters of college I took all those years ago! My biggest mistakes were trying to take chemistry and bio online (but I learned a good lesson there). Now that my paper has laid off a bunch of us, I am going to go as fast as I can finishing up those pre-req's. The slots for entry into a nursing program have been cut back, though, so I'm a little concerned. If you all are in a program, how long did you have to wait?