~Mi Vida Loca~RN

Here is ours,

I finally got a call back. I am in Oregon on vacation and she called my house in CO and left a message. She told me to call her back (said nothing if I got the job or not) but of course it was after business hours when I got the message. So I call back and her voicemail says she is out of the office until tomorrow afternoon. This seriously would be my luck lol

BSN if you pass NCLEX is still RN. Did you mean associates instead of BSN?

There is also such a thing as policy and it must be followed no matter how some inexperienced student feels it is. As a Nurse, I will protect my license first, regardless if I know someone well enough or not. Just a FYI, I have never given a lortab, my patients were on stronger stuff. It's also pretty short sighted to think your opinion is the only valid one and to do the very thing you seem to have an issue with in your "debate".

Well apparently it doesn't matter what the State Board of Nursing says. Students know best LOL Ok I am really out. I haven't even packed yet.

I don't believe I called you our specifically. But regardless, in the real world, the nurse, I do believe, would be passing out ALL meds. Not only PO meds. Just throwing that out there since it keeps being brought up in this thread that the student needs to prepare for the real world. I was prepared for the real world, as I gave all medications and did all of my patient care and charting. Even if the policy stated a RN needed to be present for the administration of meds.

It wasn't a personal choice in my program nor a case by case scenario and it didn't matter how much the CI trusted you. It was policy. It was the schools policy and the hospitals policy as it is many places. I was never insulted because I was aware of the policy from day one. If I didn't follow it I risked getting kicked out. Never did I say the CI was telling us what to do or when to give it. Rarely was it my CI instructor the one with me. The CO-Nurse was, the actual nurse assigned to the patients that I was paired up with. I gave plenty of narcotics. Most my patients were on them. I gave plenty of high risk medications. Most my patients were on them. Clinical was supposed to prepare us for real world. So we gave all medications. The Co-Nurse simply observed, they didn't intervene, they didn't tell me when to hold medication or anything of the sort. At least they never needed to with me. I am not sure where there is confusion about this because apparently there is since I keep having to explain it repeatedly, yet the same assumptions keep being made. We worked independently without guidance as students when giving medication. (as long as it was within our semester, 2nd semester which is when we started hospital cliniclas was our only constraint. We couldn't give IVP work with central lines, give blood or tpn yet, we could third semester) We gave all medication. Whether a high risk medication, (I have also hung potassium) or protonix. The Co-Nurse (not the CI) was simply another body in the room.

I never said you had to stand in and monitor for 30 mins. First, we were giving more then just PO meds, often times my patients were on more then just PO meds. My point was, if I go in and give some morphine push and 2 minutes later my patient has a reaction of any sort. The Nurse of the patient is going to have to answer for that patient. What are they going to say. "Well I never saw what the student gave or if they pushed it over the right time frame, no one saw, the student was in there alone." or even with PO meds, usually multiple PO meds "Well I am not sure what all the student gave, the CI verified something in the med room and then the student went in and handled it themselves, I never checked anything, well Doctor they weren't supervised so I guess we can't be positive of the exact events." It doesn't seem safe nor legal to me because the student is not licensed and because of this it is of my opinion and the opinion of our local school and hospitals that someone licensed should be present during the administration of medication. BTW Heparin was just an example of a medication that came to mind. It could be anything. I also don't recall people saying it was ONLY in their 4th semester they were giving meds alone. It went from being able to give meds alone during the 2 years of the program, to only PO meds, to only routine meds. I guess my hospital is different, my patients didn't only have PO meds, or only routine meds as they were usually in the hospital for a couple days for something acute. Often times they were on new meds and the students were doing all the patient care and meds (IVP once we got in third semester and TPN and Blood and so on then too) because it was supposed to resemble real world. The Co-Nurse would be a fly on the wall in the room to observe. With that, I am leaving for vacation in 6 hrs so I am out. No one has to agree with my opinions (well actually it looks like a lot of places run the same way for the same reason) but regardless, that's OK. I have my lic. now and I will fully ensure I do everything to protect it. That includes watching any medication given by a student that is working with me in the future.

Yea it would have been impossible in our program so it does come as a surprise. We were on different units throughout the hospital. There is no way the CI could have done it. Not when 2 students are on different units on the 3rd floor, 2 on the 5th floor, 2 on the 4th and so on. Our CO-Nurses only had 1 student. Not multiple students. We took care of the same patient load they had. So I was giving meds for up to 4 patients a shift that had medications due regularly, as did the other 7 students in my group who were all over the hospital. You implied we wouldn't be prepared for the real world. That the nurse was holding our hand and what would we do when we could not look at the nurse with pleading eyes I think was the phrase you used or something similar. That is not the case. Meds were always given in a timely manner as the nurse and I had the same exact patients, we prioritized the patients and started with patient A, the same exact way it's done in real life. To use your same words, " I'm making a point that in some states and nursing programs, that is not done and it is a foreign concept that some of us are unfamiliar with" So it should be understood that just because a program is not ran the same way your program was run, doesn't make it any less and the students can still graduate as perfectly competent nurses that will know how to pass Meds in the real world without a nurse present. As was implied by your earlier statement.

Your second statement further verifies my point, they are still under care of the Registered Nurse, which is why the registered nurse, the one with the license, should be watching the medications their patient is taking. If the patient has a reaction, if something goes wrong, the nurse can't simply say "well I dunno, I didn't see the medication given, I let the student go do it because they knew what heparin was" and not be held liable. It's not safe. It doesn't matter that you were checked off on how to do it properly. Most of us are. You talked down about what a disadvantage students were that had to have someone present. I was never at any disadvantage. My school has an excellent program. The hospitals rave about how great the students from there are. We were at no disadvantage that our school and the hospital had the policy. The nurse wasn't holding our hand, they weren't hovering over our shoulder. They will witnessing the medications given to THEIR patients. The ones they are legally responsible for. I am sure most students were in very high acuity units. That's why we didn't have to have our Clinical Instructor with us, we just had to have a registered nurse with us. If you were on such busy units I am surprised 1 instructor was able to be there for each student then to verify each medication before it was given and to check it out since you state that happened instead. I often had 4 patient and was pretty much giving meds every hour between them all, IV's, Push meds, PO meds. add to that numerous other students. There is no way the instructor could have signed out and verified before hand the meds each time. We passed out ALL meds for our patients each shift. As far as how busy and the acuity. I have been on just about every unit. Some of my regular patients and lower acuity units often had more medications. My nurses weren't to busy. They weren't going to risk losing their license because they were to busy, not to mention had I not been there they would have had to find the time to give the medication regardless. It's not as if it takes 20 mins to give a patient their medication. The last part sums it all up. They have a LICENSE and if something happens it is their license at risk. If you mess something up on their patient because they neglected to witness the medication given to the patient, it is their license at risk. Not to mention I can't imagine the lawsuits that would at least be attempted by the family members if there was mistake and there was no one licensed overseeing the medication given. I feel it is a tremendous risk and unsafe. A lot of schools and facilities agree. It's simply my opinion and in a lot of cases the rules and perhaps the law.

I gave a lot more then just PO meds. I was giving Morphine Push, Diluadid push, PCA's, Heparin, Lovenox, Digoxin just to name a few. It was school policy and hospital system (2 different health systems) that a licensed nurse needed to be present. It did not effect my schooling at all and I did not miss out on anything.

You are stilling going through the whole process of administering meds with a nurse in the room. When I am working as a nurse on my own I will give meds the same exact way I did when in school. I did the whole thing in school, but with someone overseeing. As it should be IMO. The Nurse is the one responsible for the patients, they took over report and took responsibility of that student. When you are working in the hospital under your own lic. and take report you are then solely responsible for that patient. I will not allow a student to go and give meds to one of my patients that I am responsible for without me overseeing. I don't have to be 2 feet next to them holding their hand to over see. If you mess something up what is the nurse going to say, "Oh I felt the unlicensed student was perfectly ok going alone to give meds to my patients." Mistakes with drugs kill people. It was NEVER a problem in my program with there being too many students. Our co-nurses we able to oversee things we did and they had the patient load already. Our instructor wasn't the one that had to be there. Just a registered nurse. I never sent pleading looks to the nurse of my NI, I was perfectly competent in doing it. Maybe it might feel different when the students who object to it actually get their license and are working and it's their license they need to protect.

Try to not stress about NCLEX right now and focus on getting through school. As my teacher used to say, "Don't waste a good panic." You will have plenty of time to stress about NCLEX later

Depends, are you ordering them from the Fredericks of Hollywood magazine.

No one here is going to be able to tell you how you did?? Did you try the Pearson Vue trick.