monkeyadale

I also did not find study groups useful. Most of the time I ended up teaching other students the material, which was fine until test time and I heard "but remember you said this so that is why I picked answer A how come I got it wrong when you got it right, I was going off of what you told me." UGH! Not to mention the fact that it does usually turn into a gossip/gripe fest. It works for some people, you can always try it and if you don't like it go back to studying on your own.

I knew from the minute I did my surgical clinical in nursing school, I wanted to be a CRNA. I just found it so fascinating and thought "this is where I want to go someday". Now I am a very smart girl, all A's through school, catch on to things pretty quickly etc. etc. Approximately 3/4 of my class wanted to become CRNA's. When it came time to job hunt, I accepted a med surg position on a surgical floor while the rest of my class waited for an offer from a level 1 (because only level 1 will do) trauma ICU. They were planning to do "the year" and then head off to grad school. They ridiculed me because I would be "an old lady" with the route I was taking before I would be a CRNA. No offense to any new grad who started out in ICU, but I had ZERO previous patient care experience. I am as green as they come and knew there was no way I would be effective caring for the most critical patients before I had any experience outside of my clinicals. I absolutely knew I had beginner assessment skills and that for me (and my future patients) a life or death atmosphere was really no place to try to hone my skills. Of course the floor I am on has a much higher acuity then I was led to initially believe and I do find myself feeling very inadequate during codes etc. I have had a difficult transition from student to practicioner and some days wish I would have just went for the ICU job. (2 patients instead of 7-9). I am currently looking for a new unit that has a lower acuity because even though I have learned a ton in the few months I have been working I recognize that absolutely NOTHING beats experience. We learn from past experiences. I am starting to pick up that "nurses intuition" and am realizing my intuition is pretty darn good. I am not talking about VS changes, fever, dehisses, bleeding, etc. anyone can spot those, but those subtle changes you cant even really quantify that tell you something is not right. That intuition only comes from what I have previously seen and at the expense of my previous patients. That is how you learn in nursing, and there are days that I feel overwhelmed with the responsibility I have undertaken. It is a very humbling thing to be standing over someone lying in bed, sick sick sick, and depending on YOU to pick up problems before they escalate and to keep them safe. There is absolutely nothing wrong with ambition, everyone needs goals to strive for, but we owe it to the people who trust us with their lives, to prepare ourselves as much as we can before we jump into "advanced practice". I do not want to be a good nurse, I want to be an excellent nurse, and one day an excellent CRNA. For myself anyway, that means starting off slowly working with less acute patients and taking small steps in the direction I would like to go.

Verbal orders are a routine part of every shift on my unit. We take multiple ones every night. Just another thing that bothers me about my unit.

I counted myself very lucky when I was able to land a job 2 months before graduating because so many new grads are having such a hard time finding work. My new job that I was so excited about has become a nightmare. My husband is currently out of work and I am breadwinner for us and our children right now. I feel the floor I am on is extremely unsafe and putting patients at risk as well as my own newly earned license. I want to get off of it but my recruiter says I have to stay at least six months before they will transfer me. I have applied to every hospital in a 50 mile radius but mine is the only one currently hiring. I really don't know what to do. I feel a huge ethical dilemna here, do I want to eat or do I want to do whats right? I am on a surgical floor, we get heavy patients, most of which should be in SICU. Many of whom just transferred from sicu and they have mulitple issues which require diligent observation. I am on midnights and my load is usually 7-9. I almost always have at least 3 GSW patients, MVAS, Cardiac, etc. On easy nights I may get thyroidectomy, lap choles, small bowel resects etc. I can handle those pretty well because for the most part they are relatively stable. It is the GSW, MVA, PE's new onset cardiac, etcs, that scare me because of all the complicatons, and there are ALWAYS complications! New onset arrythmias, critical lab values, blood, shock, etc. I have basic telemetry skills, no acls, but here I am with tele pts every night, I can barely start IV's and if one goes bad your option is to poke them until you get something or pray one of the other nurses can help you out and actually get it (never happens their too busy). Or if you can't then you have to leave said patient with no iv access until am when IV team comes in. All of our nurses are new, the most senior nurse on nights has 6 months experience. They put me on my own before I even had my license with the other RN's to pass my meds for me. I have already been asked to be charge nurse twice!?!? and it is just a matter of time before they will ask me to precept. (my preceptor graduated 2 months before I did) I showed up for my shift last night and it was just me and one other RN who is 1 week out of orientation and just out of school for 14 patients. She had a patient who needed blood (I have hung blood a total of 3 times) and she had never done it. So not only did I have to watch my patients (1 I had to call RR for and it turned out he was having an anterior MI) but I had to help her hang her blood. I am so frazzled right now my nerves are literally raw. We get no breaks on this unit because 2 RNs have to be on unit at all times. Even if we could take a break its not like you would ever have time to, and to make it all worse, they just changed our matrix and now we will always have at least 7 on nights. I cannot do this. It is too much and too hard. I have never had one night where I did not have at least one patient have a major complication. Trying to balance 2 or more patients going bad is very difficult and if you do call RR you are expected to remain in there with the patient during the RR, which makes sense to me but what do you do with your other people? They need attention to and they may not be critical but they need orders fast to relieve their issues or else they will need a RR. I am interested ultimately in critical care. I wanted to start out in medsurg to build skills (especially assessment skills) before moving into ICU but at this point I would rather just be in ICU. My recruiter tells me to hang in there, that I am on a fast track to any ICU i want when I finish my six months, but I am not sure I can finish six months without losing my mind. (3 months left) I do value the education I am getting on this floor. We do everything except vents. I can now handle Chest tubes, wound vacs, pca's, epidurals, drop NGS without any problems. I have seen patients go into shock, bleed out from DIC, CIWA, have MI's etc. I am getting nothing but praise from my manager (but I think it is just because she will do anything to retain people) and my recruiter but I just don't know how long my nerves will last. It is starting to affect my personal life. I do nothing but sleep on my days off. My schedule this week is brutal 4 12s, and I am seriously contemplating calling off one of those nights. Shouldn't a unit be staffed with at least one RN with more than 6 months of experience? Shouldn't we be allowed to leave the unit for at least a few minutes for a break? Who do you complain to about these things outside of the hospital because everyone I have complained to in the hospital knows and doesn't care.

I work on a surgical floor and have to second freetobeme's sentiments, urologists are the worst for me as a group and most of the ones I work with are not good with their patients. Second place goes to the cardiac docs. ENT's are usually the nicest but we do have a female ENT who is a nightmare and every one in the hospital is afraid of her, even the other docs, her one redeeming quality is that she is actually great with her patients.

The trick worked for me in Mich. Took my boards on sat, tried the trick and it told me to contact my board and today I found out from the state that I passed and am now an RN!

Thank you both for your replies! Karenmarie, you bring up an excellent point, I don't think many of my patients, are getting much, if any education pre-op. Many times they will say to me...your the only one who says this stuff to me. Medsurgemess (cute name btw), I like your response about the LTC or private duty nurse and will be sure to use that one. Maybe that will spark some initiative.

I work on a general surgical floor. Many of my patients are cooperative and take my advice seriously but a good number of them are not. I watch them suffer needless complications from immobility, overuse of narcotic meds, and refusal to cough and deep breathe. What should be a 2 day stay ends up turning into a month and now they have a uti or atelectasis which turns into pneumonia or they get MRSA, and a lovely little opiate addiction as a parting gift. I have had patients ask me to scratch their feet for them, wipe their butts for them, help them put their pants on. I would not mind if they were not able to do these things for themselves but they are! It is very very frustrating and I really would love to hear how other nurses handle patients who refuse to get up and move around at all. I will always pre-medicate but they refuse anyway. One trick a PCT taught me was to tell them they have to get up in a chair so the tech can change their sheets, then the tech strips all the linens off the bed and doesn't come back for a couple of hours. Sneaky and underhanded perhaps but at least it gets them out of their beds for a little bit. Any other tips you have found effective in your practice would be greatly appreciated!

I would like to thank each of you for your response and for just confirming for me that this is in fact a crappy situation. I have been doing some investigating and basically found out the floor I am on is always training new grads because no one stays, they have very few home staff most are floats and they will basically take anyone with a pulse. It is very frustrating to learn this now. I did clinicals at this hospital (different floor) and when I talked with the manager and the nurses everyone told me what a smart choice I had made and that I was going to love it. Grrr. It has been a very rough few days. I cannot just quit becuz my family desperately needs the money, so I am just going to look around for something else and hopefully something will come up soon. I feel a little guilty griping about my job when I read so many posts on here from new grads who cannot even find one, but this floor is just not the right one for me.

So i graduated in May and took a job as a GN on a surgical floor. I was told low acuity pt.'s, great teamwork, lots of help around, and you will be eased in and not given anything you cannot handle..... BS! My fist day I shadowed my preceptor, my second day I was told here are your 7 patients have at it, and to top it all off my preceptor is charge so she is very busy also. The other nurses cannot help...they all have 7 patients to. The staffing is ridiculous. 3 nurses from 7-3 then at 3 one nurse leaves and the other 2 split her 6-7 patients until 7:30. If you lose a pt, you lose a pca. if you gain another pt, you do not get that pca back. Most of the techs are great but twice now I have had pt.s with bad vitals and the tech did not tell me.. example =post op 1 day with bp of 196/94 no hx of HTN, c/o HA, u/o 75 ml in 4 hrs! I try really hard to stay on top of my pts vitals and output but it is almost impossible with 7 pts, teaching, talking w/docs etc. I just feel so inadequate and completely overwhelmed. They are very big on independant decision making which basically means, if you have a problem, figure it out yourself. Even little things like how do i page this doc? the response i get is always you have to figure this out yourself. okay well my patient is going south and all i really want you to tell me is which one of the 12 sheets of phone numbers posted behind the desk should i be looking at? sheets which still have the names of residents long since gone as contact people for certain docs. It is so very frustrating. To top it all off I start midnights next week and just met my midnight preceptor and found out he graduated from nursing school TWO months before I did!!!! It just seems like a bad situation to me, but other nurses I talk with tell me this is how it is, its the same everywhere. The most patients I have ever had in clinical were 4. 7-9 is very difficult for me right now and I just do not feel like I am giving quality care. Yesterday my "low acuity" patients were 2 GSW's, 1 post pneumo with a CT, 2 very complicated wounds with vacs, 1 MVA, and 1 with DT's who was intent on ripping out his JP drains. It seemed like everyone had complications at 18:30 (critical lab values, abnormal vitals, iv infiltration etc.) I was late to report and my preceptor just kept coming up to me and saying can we go yet? arent you done yet? She never offered to help, it seems like the only thing she will do for me is pass my meds. I literally just came home and cried. I have to go back tomorrow and am dreading it. What I really want to do is get in my car and drive to my mothers house...lol. If my family was not depending on my income I really would do just that. Please, experienced RN's out there, tell me it gets better! Thanks for letting me vent!

The New York section of this site is littered with threads about new grads unable to find jobs, even considering relocating. But regardless of where you live reckless borrowing is never a smart thing. That debt will follow you for the rest of your life. Look at all the people who "just went for it" when their mortgage brokers told them they could afford homes worth 3, 4 or even 5 times more than what they make. Look at where we are now because of that. Not to mention that the credit market is tightening and it is very hard to find private student loans nowadays, even if you do find one the interest rates are usually prime or liber + anywhere from 3 - 10. You will be paying for them FOREVER! Even if you make 70,000 a year! and in that case nursing better be your passion because that is the only thing that will keep you sane while you are working tons of ot and living in a tiny box becuz you owe 800+ a month in student loans.

No need to define what fighting the system is about to me.......have done it on many an occasion. Here is where our opinions differ: A person being denied an opportunity because of the color of their skin, etc......an offense worth fighting for. A student who can not pass a required exit exam after the maximum attempts prescribed by their school policy which they agreed to when they signed up for their program.......not so much.

Are you seriously comparing challenging a schools HESI policy to the struggle for civil rights????:angryfire Instead of trying to "fight the system" spend your time and effort studying so you can pass the test.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvbcLzFtM6I&feature=PlayList&p=54D67EDA9A51CBB7&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=46

Hi and thanks for your reply! :bowingpurSpecifically I was wondering if the program is 100% online and how the clinicals work. You already answered one big question by letting me know you don't feel overwhelmed! Thats very good to hear. Also is there alot of research papers, group work, etc. I just received an email from them stating that they are handling all communication online now but the site it directs me too is for U of M Ann Arbor and I'm not sure the information there would apply to U of M Flint or not. I cannot believe Oakland did not accept you with a 3.9 my GPA is 3.8 so I am thinking I probably don't have a shot at Oakland. Thanks for your reply, Lisa

Greetings All I am trying to decide between U of M Flint and Oakland University for RN-BSN completion. Both programs are online, Oakland's is cheaper so I am leaning towards that one. I was wondering if anyone has attended either program and could offer any opinions on either school? Many Thanks, Lisa