rme999

I am a 60 year old male on disability and recently had a heart attack and some major back problems. I had to withdraw from school 7/8 of the way thru an ADN program. Should I try to go back or will my long term health and age keep me from acceptance or success? Disabiity is boring.

Hi all, I'm an older guy (mid-50s) in my last semester of nursing school, getting an ADN after already having got a BS, JD, and MBA years ago. This is my second career, after early retirement. I am divorced, my kids are grown, and I am free to travel. I'm looking for some nursing career advice. The things I have loved most about nursing school have been a psych clinical rotation where I got to know and connect with some of the clients and their families pretty well over several weeks, med/surg rotations where I got to know the clients and their families, and latest of all, a rotation thru day surgery at a smaller hospital where I have followed clients thru pre-admit, pre-op, and recovery/admission/discharge, and have also gotten to view many of their surgeries. My dilemma is that although I am absolutely LOVING the day surgery, including interacting with the surgeons and OR nurses, the clients and their families, and even the sight of blood (I think of surgeons as sort of glorified carpenters, using hammers, saws, nails, drills, and soldering irons to fix people, build new structures, repair leaks, etc), there is no real patient care continuity besides the acute care until discharge or admit. I get to interact with the patient and family thru preop and recovery, but have no way of following up to see longer-term outcomes. In psych and ortho rehab and med/surg, I got to follow care and recovery and interact with the patients and their families over a longer period of time, but without the hands on immediacy of preop, PACU and the actual surgical procedures. Is there a specialty out there that will give me the best of both worlds? Getting to know the patients/families and their psychosocial issues over the longer term, but also getting to be hands on in the OR, ER and/or PACU? Anyone else dealt with this issue in a satisfying way? Am I missing some obvious solution? Thanks!

Hi Dammy, I don't know. I haven't joined SNA :-) There are different COMMUNITIES on ecampus for ECC and Brookhaven, but I would think NLC and ECC would be pretty much the same and NLC people would have access to the ECC document ........... Richard

Hi again, The CD comes with the big hardcover book. I'm at ECC, by the way. Richard

Hi Modelmama, There are three med-surg books in the books, all related to Ignatavicius 6th ed. The Big hardcover book is ISBN 978-1-4160-3762-0, the big paperback (Study Guide) is 978-1-4160-5479-5, and the little paperback (Clinical Companion) is 978-1-4160-5189-3. Hope this helps! Richard

Hi Oneday, A lot of it is in the COMMUNITY tab. At El Centro I have the ECC-AD NURSING community in my Community list. There's also a Brookhaven Nursing Community listed but I can't get there. I would think Northlake would use the ECC community stuff, but I don't know. I received an email from James McCarty last Thursday with the schedule for the 3 day orientation attached. Most of the things say ECC, but a few (peeing, for instance) say ECC/NLC. I don't know if there's a separate schedule for NL. Most of the forms seem to be somewhere in the Community under Forms, or hidden in the RNSG1423 tabs under COURSES. I still have not found anything that looks like an "immunization release form", or a "1460 lab schedule". We're also supposed to have an access code for something called "Virtual Clinical Excursion" but I can't find it in my book box .... Hope this helps! Did you ever get any emails? Richard

Hi Mom35! I don't know about you, but I plan on going home each night after orientation, so I figure if we need a form, they'll tell us on Tuesday, and I can bring it Wednesday! I am obsessing about this stuff way too much! Richard

There's definitely stuff that needs signatures but most of it seems to be left over from the Spring 09 classes. For instance, under RNSG 1423, Course Documents, the first thing is "ADN Forms" and it's a form we sign that says we will obey policies about 16 different things, and we have to initial eack of them... I don't know when we need to do that, but for Spring, the announcement to do it was posted in January ... Richard

Hi guys, I can't wait to see us all in our non-flattering scrubs! Mine have been sitting in the bag from Majors since the day after orientation ... now I'm afraid to look! Of course, I'm a guy, but we don't want our butts to look horrendously big either :-) Do we actually use the scrubs before the actual clinicals start? A lot can happen in 7 weeks LOLOL (no more Skittles for me!) I haven't loaded the e-books yet ... I just have a laptop, no desktop in use, but if I had both I think I'd put them on the laptop so I could take it to class instead of the book itself (a lot of people seem to think that's the way to go). Of course, if your battery dies during class you might wish you had the paper book with you. Has anyone looked at all the stuff that's on eCampus under the Nursing Community? I think we're all finally members there. There are detailed syllabuses and notes for the classes ... it looked like about 300 pages of stuff for 1423 ... I don't know whether to print it out or not. I guess they'll tell us. Last but certainly not least ... does anyone know how many more little expenses we'll have as school starts (besides background check, pee check, stethoscope, BP cuff, name tags, etc etc)???? Do any Parkland people know which Parkland location the clinical is at? Looking forward to meeting y'all next week! Richard

Hi Chickpea, We got an email from Kanora about a stethoscope sale by the SNA, but today the SNA Community posting says it's been cancelled. Should we all be thinking about getting new stethoscopes, or is the WalMart one I got for HPRS1204 sufficient for now? I've been reading about the Littmans but wonder whether we actually need anything good before clinicals start 7 weeks into the term? Any recommendations? Thanks! Richard

Hi All, This is sort of on topic, with all these hours that are not reflected in the number of credits ... I'm only taking 8 credits first semester because I already have all the support courses. Is that enough to get a Dart pass for El Centro? Do I have to look for that form that I can get signed that says that 8 credits in Nursing is a full time load? Thanks! Richard

Yes, i got them a while ago (at Majors) but i haven't really looked at them yet. I think I'll try to load the e-versions on my laptop this weekend. Are they running separate orientations? Richard

I haven't gotten anything from Kanora, but I did get an email from Dr. Branscome with information about RNSG1423 as follows: In Course Documents on eCampus check-out the classroom schedule. You will have class on Mon.(Sec.5110) or Thurs.(Sec. 5120). There will be Orientation at ECC all day Tue.(Aug. 25), Wed.(Aug. 26), and Thurs.(Aug. 27)of the first week of classes. Regular classes will not begin until Aug. 31. Good luck and program yourself for success! Hope this helps! Richard

HI all, No email yet, but when I went to eConnect this morning I was already registered for my RNSG classes, and I just paid my bill, which included about $20 in insurance. The two courses show up on eCampus as well, but nothing under Community. I'm getting excited! gonna read eCampus. See y'all soon! Richard

I haven't received anything ewither (ECC Fall 09). I thought that July 21 was the day we were supposed to see something on eConnect about registering for classes, getting insurance, etc. There is a little more info on eCampus though. If you go into the Community tab, and then search for Nursing and then click on ECC AD-Nursing, there's an announcement that Ms. Becker put up today with info about Terrell clinical orientation. If you go there, and then click on "Hospital Info" at the top of the screen, there's a bunch of stuff about the different clinical assignments (it's last year's stuff though, I think). LOL I'm getting tired of having to hunt stuff down on eCampus ... an email would sure be nice. Maybe tomorrow!