Jullydjen

Yes, we had one ordered by a doc a few months ago on our floor (med/surg). We printed out the recipe from the hospital intranet and hand mixed it on the floor. It called for milk and black strap molasses, which the supervisor bought at the store, and it was heated in the microwave, but only to about 105 degrees. It was instilled like any other large volume enema. Was very messy, and wasn't all that effective.

I think that low TSH means HYPER not hypo thyroidism.

Forgot to post about the books. Yes, most of them you buy the 1st semester, but then some are added as you go. They are very expensive, try getting them used. Half.com and amazon.com are good bets. You may be able to sell them again when you're done - I did. New versions come out all the time though, so that can be difficult. Be sure to get the right version!

I could write a book on what it was like to be in RACC's nursing program, there is so much I could say. I will try to condense it down to the most relevant. As for working on the weekends, I did this myself actually. I did it part time though. I waitressed, as it was the only job I could get with hours that were flexible enough. Especially, toward the end, you will be at clinicals for an 8 hour shift 3 days a week. Plus lectures, plus exams, plus papers to write, plus extra work to prepare for clinicals, and on and on. The downside to working nites/weekends is that is your study time. You will be burning the candle at both ends, but where there is a will there is a way. We needed the money so I had no choice. After the fist semester, you will be qualified to sit for the cna exam. You can go on the PA government website under education, and it will give you the procedure. Basically, PA will let you waive the cna courses and sit for the exam if you have completed a the first semester of an ADN program. As for the nursing program, it has been changed since I graduated. Our class was the one that had out first year in 3 terms, and the second year in 2 semesters. We were the transition class when RACC transitioned to semesters from terms. Our instructors told us that after us, the program would be heavily revised. I am not sure what that entails. I imagine that our first semester will be lectures on history of nursing, basic nursing math, and fundamentals. The skills you learn will be basics - bed baths, changing beds, bedpans, ambulation, taking blood pressures. Some skills you have to perform one-on-one with an instructor and are graded pass/fail. If you fail, you have to repeat it, and they only let you do this once. I failed at taking blood pressures the first time and I was so upset!! I laugh about it now though because I have become an expert with practice! Clinical time starts off slow and ratchets up in time and difficulty as you go. You will be in a clinical group of 8-10 students and one of the instructors will be your clinical instructors. You will be in uniform, and it must be impeccable. They are very strict with this. The first clinicals will be just one day a week, from like 8AM till about 1-2 PM and they will be at a long term care facility, like Phoebe Berks. You will have one patient the whole time. This is when you get to practice your skills, and learn to read a chart. You will have lots of prep to do , especially when you start to give meds. You will only give oral meds at first. The next clinical will be at a hospital, on med-surg, and you will have one day of clinical, and one patient per week. As time goes on throughout the nursing program, you will have more clinical days, in increasingly acute areas (critical care by the end), and will have more patients (4-5 per day by the end). You will also get some "special" clinical experiences thown in, like OR, ER (possibly), pediatrician's office, NICU, and others. These are one-day experiences. There is a lot of at home work to do to prepare for clinicals. In the beginning, you have to go in to the facility the night before and look up your patient. You have to know a lot about the patient, their conditions, meds, treatments, etc. Later in the program, you will no longer have to go the night before. You are expected to hit the ground running. You will have a pre- and post- conference each clinical day (to start). Eventually, preconferences are eliminated, you will just have postconference. These are little informal get togethers with your clinical group and clinical instructor somewhere at the facility, but off the unit, usually in a conference room. Some are actually like a mini-lecture, most are just debriefing sessions relating to clinical experiences. I hope this helps to answer some questions. If I cn think of any other relevant info, I will let you know!

When we went "live" with CPSI, our hospital had a whole team of "superusers" to help transition the hospital into CPSI. They took over where CPSI left off. The reps from CPSI came to our hosp for a few weeks first to hold classes for all of the staff on how to use the system, then they went to all of the units and just kind of stood by to be available for us to ask questions and get help as needed throughout the first few weeks. The superusers were staff nurses with a little extra CPSI instruction. Our hospital does not have an informatics nurse. We still have CPSI issues frequently. things have to be tweaked to fit the way our facility actually functions. CPSI is def not user friendly, or easy to learn. This is not a use right out of the box system.

I went to RACC and graduated this past May. Overall, it was a very tough program. I would highly recommend getting all of your non-nursing classes done while you are on the waiting list, even if you have to take summer classes. Once you start the actual nursing program, it will consume your life. I don't know if you are married or have children, but if you do, it will be even more stressful. It can be done though - I am married with 3 kids and I graduated cum laude. Working full time will be impossible after the first semester. Every single classmate that I had that tried it flunked out of the program. The instructors were very smart, but I would say mostly old school. They did a good job of teaching the basic skills and theory, but seemed to be out of touch with the real world of nursing, the way it is today. They seemed to be overly nit-picky, but maybe that was for our own good, I don't know. Some of these instructors have since retired. Clinicals were super-stressful, but a good learning experience. And I got to see many things that people not in the medical field would never see in their lifetimes - babies being born, surgery being performed, and many fascinating procedures and skills at the bedside. Make sure you get lots of sleep, be very prepared, and do your best. You will be expected to think and act like a real nurse, with none of the perks and no respect! Be humble.... Exams are challenging, all based on N-Clex (2nd semester on). You must have a 78 to pass the exams, (and the course). Easier said than done. There were tears after every exam, and plenty of times where the highest grade was We graduated into a terrible job market - Reading Hospital had a huge hiring freeze and would not hire even their own students! I had a job lined up before graduation, and it was because I applied to jobs before the rest of the herd. I put my first application in four months before graduation. I had an interview and had the job lined up to start 3 weeks after graduation, and I got day shift on a med-surg floor in a hospital. I took my NCLEX in July and passed with 75 questions. LMK if you have any other questions and good luck!

Yeah, it's awful! Our hospital went from Meditech to CPSI, and it's like we took a huge leap backward. It makes even simple tasks cumbersome by making you click multiple screens to do just one thing. Also, each screen loads so slow that I want to rip my hair out when I do my flowcharts. It takes > 5 sec to load each page on the flow charts! Doesn't seem bad till you consider that each flow has about 5-20+ pages, each patient requires at least 3 flows, and we each have 7-9 patients.

I wish I could give you a hug, cause I know how you feel!! I have also had a very long road to reaching my goal, and I'm not there yet. I know what it's like to have to keep plugging away at a job I hate, racking up debt, deal with the daily grind, and trying to be a wife and mom to 2 preteens and a preschooler. I decide to pursue my ADN at the age of 28, after I had my last child. I had fantasized about it for years. I was put on a 2 year waitlist and I was so frustrated at first. I did the math and realized that I wouldn't graduate until I was 32, and at the time it seemed so far off in the future. After awhile, I decided to just make the most of it, and use my time wisely - I took classes and started to put my house in order to prepare for nursing school. It has been a long haul, but I will graduate this spring, and in retrospect, the time flew by, and 32 no longer seems old to me. I am saying this to let you know that you are not alone. Things won't magically get better once you are in nursing school either, actually they may get worse for a time because of all the stress and drain on your time, money and energy. Your family will say they support you, but will act out because you have other priorities besides them. Take it in stride. But you can do it, you just have to take it one day at a time, one hour at a time if you have to. You may consider taking a few classes to help boost your GPA a bit, while you are waiting to begin the nursing program (maybe you are already doing this). You will get there, it doesn't matter when, as long as you get there. You have your whole life ahead of you :)