CrazyCatLadyRN

This might be appealing to an ED manager, but it means nothing without experience. I work in a trauma center and you work for 6 months to a year before they put you in the course.

Yes, you could work for both. I think every state is differen't. In my state you can challenge the state paramedic exam after you have worked as an RN and have obtained your EMT-B certification (which is one semester). I went to EMT school the summer between my second and third semesters of nursing school with the intentions of possibly doing this and because I wanted the experience. There are also a coupld RN's in my ER who have their firefighter/paramedic certs and work both. Several nurses I work with in the ER work on the side for flight nursing companies and actually are able to do the same things as a medic with an RN license with the company (intubate, decompress, etc) because they are trained on it within the company.

Just thought that I would come back and update, since it has been a few months. I know after I first got my needlestick and even now, seeing posts where people came back with updates later on made me feel a lot better... I'm at almost the 4 month mark after my needles stick. I did the month of antivirals (which weren't too bad) and have had up to the 3 month testing for HIV and Hep C. It was negative!! Unless you have had a needle stick yourself, you cannot begin to understand the relief of getting a negative 3 month test. At my facility they test for HIV/hep c upon initial exposure, then again at 6 weeks for just HIV and then at 3 monthjs for both, 6 months, and 1 year. .They don't test for hep c at 6 weeks because it takes longer than that to show up. My hospital pays for you to be followed by an infectious disesase doctor who manages your antiviral therapy. She drew a cbc and CMP every other week during the meds. I really did feel a whole lot better after talking to her. She said that in her 15 years of practice, she has never had a HCP seroconvert from an HIV +needle. Another huge thing during this whole process has been that my husband and I were trying to get pregnant when I got stuck. So of course we stopped and have been taking the necessary precautions since then. It really has been completely heartbreaking. Wanting something so bad, and not being able to have it, because of something that you did. My job recommends abstaining from becoming pregnant for 1 year after an exposure. My infectious disease doctor told me that this is a very outdated number though. She said that with 4th generation HIV testing most people would test + after 6 weeks, since these test for the antigen rather than the antibody, which would take much longer to show up. She said that in order to be extra safe, waiting 6 months before trying to conceive again would be safe. This whole thing has really impacted my whole life since it happened. Not at day goes by that I do not think about it. As a nurse in the ER, or even a nurse in general I find myself thinking about things some much differently now. Your whole life can change in an instance from 1 thing that you do at work. NEVER sacrifice your safety, it just isn't worth it. I hope someone going through this same thing gets some sort of comfort from reading my post. I know I personally spent days on the internet looking for anything to make myself feel better, Has anyone else been trying to get pregnant when a needle stick occurred? How long did you wait to try and get pregnant again? xoxo

I work in a very busy trauma center and had a needle stick Monday morning at work. I walked into a patient's room and noticed a butterfly needle sitting on the bedside table with no vacutainer attached and thought it was odd since I remember throwing everything away after drawing his blood. Put on gloves and picked up the set and in the process somehow felt a small prick on the back of my hand between my thumb and my index finger . immediately I took of my gloves and noticed a tiny drop of blood. It appeared that the opposite end of the set where the adapter needle for the blood tube grazed my hand. Immediately I irrigated my hand in the sink and washes with soap and water. Went to go talk to the charge nurse and got distracted by a new patient who was very upset. After this, I totally lost my train of thought and forgot to report the incident until 2 days later when I was at home. I immediately freaked out because i know the patient is HIV positive. tHe next night at work I notified my anm and charge nurse and spoke with 2 of our ER drs. Both of them said to not worry since the chance of conversion is so low at 0.3 % with such a superficial injury. And that meds really might now be needed. I still went to employee health office this morning once they opened Though and she did all the testing for HIV and hep and all the needed paperwork. She convinced me it would be worth it to start the meds for more piece of mind and to follow up with infectious disease. Has anyone on here had a similar situation and started PEP later than 48 hours? I'm beating myself up so bad about this, its killing me!

So my goal is to have the PCCN done before August. I recently took the month long AACN formatted critical care class (ECCO) that was offered at a local community college. My telemetry unit sends nurses there several times a year to increase the knowledge base on the unit and also requires you to do it before you begin doing Charge. I bought the PCCN Certification Review book by Brorsen and Rogelet and have been doing practice questions from that. I also have the workbook/textbook that we used in the ECCO class as a reference along with a Critical Care Nursing textbook from nursing school as a reference. I was wondering if people who have taken the class think that this would be enough study material and your reviews if you have used this practice question book. Any study tips?? My ANM goes to a PCCN/CCRN review every year and gave me all her notes that she took during the two day class too. SO nervous because I've heard horror stories about these tests! I'm normally a pretty good test taker, did very well in school, but it's been 2 years since college and this whole study thing is just not as easy as it used to be!

I finally hit one year as a nurse about a week ago.... And it feels great! One year really does make all the difference. I work on a busy surgical tele unit and I never thought I would actually feel comfortable going to work or dealing with a crisis. For all other new grads out there, keep your head up, there is light at the end of the tunnel! You will get through it!

Yeah. I like it. I do know my student has to take on at least 2 pts on their own by te end of internship. But again, this is under my log in so it's never really independent. So maybe the first night had them do all te meds then the next night have them do all the skill type stuff, etc. While still incorporating it all into the big picture of what we do.

thanks wish_me_luck! good advice!

Thanks for the advice! I already planned on the paper brain. To think like me they will definitely need a copy of my paper brain! I can't function without it! Im glad they picked me because I feel like I could really help with bridgi g the gap between nursing school, nclex, and the real world. Especially since I just did it haha. I've still got all hose nclex topics and study tools fresh in my mind. When you have precepted how independent did you let the student be? How much did you let them chart, etc. they will have to be under my long in.

My manager told me that I'm going to be Precepting a nursing student next month on their internship and I'm really excited! I love teaching and this time last year I was the nursing student on internship. It sounds so crazy to me! Any how I was wondering if anyone had tips on Precepting. I did my internship in a pacu so it's a little different than where I'm at now. I work on a surgical telemetry unit. I haven't spoken to the student yet about what their requirements and syllabus says but was just curious as to other people experiences Precepting. Thanks!

Ive been a nurse for almost a year now. I work on a surgical telemetry unit and I think that it is a really great place to start. It's more critical than regular med surg but not as acute as ICU with et tubes and drips and stuff. I honestly don't think any new grad should start in the icu. You really do need the experience. I don't care what anybody says. There is no way 2-4 years of school teaches you enough To mange tubed pts on multiple drips. And the skills you gain from balancing 4-7 fairly acute pts on a tele floor is awesome. So here's my advice....if you are interested in icu or a specialty do it for your internship, then start out in a tele or step down unit. That way you get your feet wet and see what it's all about. Then after you do a year or so hopefully that will lead to a job. I did mine in the pacu and it was amazing, you see so much. I hope that my surgical tele experience will someday lead me back there :-)

I work surg tele. We have a monitor tech that watches all 12 hours and an RN sits for them on their breaks. We have to be acls and basic arrhythmia certified. There was a 60 hour class we had to take for the b.a. Cert. strips have to be signed off by the RN by 10 that shift and we document the rhythm every 4 hours just like our assessment and vital signs. I know the medical floors w/o tele on do vitals bid. I love monitors and I hate floating to medical floors. I feel so in the dark with vitals only bid and no tele.

I work surg tele. Days has 4-5 and nights 5-7. It's nuts. Most of our pts are really on the edge of being unit pts.

Ask lots of questions! My preceptor always told me if you aren't asking questions I get worried. I graduated last spring with my bsn and have been on a surgical telemtetry unit since June. It's challenging, but you learn a lot with surg pts. There are so many body systems affected by surgery and there are also a lot of things that can go wrong. Last night I had 2 post op hemmrhoidectomy pts which seems like a simple procedure and one went into acute resp failure with respirations of 4 and high co2 and wound up on a bipap. The other have awful urinary retention and we had issues getting a catheter in. Once we got it in he drained 2400 cc! And those were just 2 of 6 pts. You'll learn a lot! Good luck.

I guess you could say I'm obsessed with school and love learning. I graduated with my BSN April 2011 and started working on a Surgical-Telemetry unit in June 2011. I've pretty much been thinking about my next step since before graduation. I love my job, but I know it's not the end of my journey. I defintely want to pursue some sort of graduate education. My question is when is it a good time to go back to school? I've considered doing a NP and/or a MSN in education. The CNL degree also seems interesting. I have a lot of friends who went directly into NP programs from their BSN, but that just didn't seem right to me. I am looking at begining fall 2013, if I do it. Is that too soon? Too little experience? After graduating, would anyone hire me with being such a new nurse?

I've been out of school for about a year now but here's what I did...I had a 3 prong folder for each class as well as a portfolio that could be divided up. We used PowerPoint pretty much in every class so I would print the PowerPoints for that class that week and bring them in the folder to take notes on and then file them by week in the portfolio at the end of the week. We also were given objectives to guide us With the reading so I would type those while I read and printed them out to go with that week.. Sort of ended up being like an outline for the chapters to study with. When I got to the tests I had each week neatly organized with outlines and PowerPoints with all the notes on them. I used a back pack but with the lightness of the folders it was easy to take 1-2 books you might want to bring..don't try and carry everything for a class for the whole semester! I did it for a few months and there was no need. You just kill your back.

I'm not sure about the exact time frame, but probably a good bit, since while on the drip it is going to be quite high to be therapeutic. They always have to be put on coumadin or lovenox once the drip is stopped too. So their coag levels are going to be prolonged.

12 weeks- surg/tele

6 weeks is not long enough! I got 12 weeks on a surg-tele floor and I felt like that was barely enough! If your NM doesn't want to help, go to your nursing education office and even HR. That's not right to put you in those situations. I understand we are supposed to be nervoud for the first year or so..( I definitely still do after 6 months, feel like I'm going to throw up on the way to work sometimes), but it's not good if you don't feel confidant passing meds and doing assessments. Remember, it's your license, not theirs!

I totally feel your pain! Pts just don't get it! Last night I came on shift to a pt returning from dialysis and he didn't want to wait for me to check his blood sugar before he ate his dinner (which was already 3 hours late at this point). SO I did his normal HS blood sugar and it came back critical high, did a stat blood draw and it came back 518. Now this guy is screaming at me because we are sticking at 11 PM and saying that if you would have given me my insulin on time we wouldn't be doing this now.....I'm sorry, i'm not the one who HAD to have my dinner before checking my sugar. And the whole time it's 518 and we are trying to get it down, he's complaining about not getting his night time snack. Clearly we can see where his priorities are. Needless to say, he came to the hospital because he is noncompliant with his DM. While this is going on, I have another pt faking seizures to try and get ativan .......what is wrong with these people!!!! Luckily my co-workers are amazing. Too bad some of yours aren't being as supportive :-(

there are some 8-5 jobs, but if you work in a doctors office. There really aren't any hospital jobs, especially peds with those hours. It is doable to land a peds job after graduation. I actually think I'm the only one out of all my friends who DIDN'T wind up working peds out of school. My advice, go the teaching route, it's far less stress and much better hours, especially if you really want to focus on your kids right now. I couldn't even imagine being a new grad with kids at this point.

I think it's more frustrating than anything with pts like this because a lot of the time there isn't a whole lot you can do. Especially when it's since the md's don't wanna order pain meds or something else out of your hands.

Since I started nursing I have developed TMJ, IBS, a stomach ulcer, and lost at least 5 pounds. Not to leave out the psychological symptoms.,......moodiness, depression, and anxiety. It's ridiculous. The things this profession can do to someone. I have yet to find a good stress reliever that fixes all this. I think we should all be allotted mental health days :-)

I am on month 6 of my nursing career on a busy progressive care/ tele unit. I think I can count on one hand how many times I ate lunch in the break room, and I think they were during orientation when me and my preceptor covered for each other. On nights we have 5-7 pts and it's really hard to catch a break. Everyone does help eachother out though so we all tend to stay towards the nurses station when we chart and sometimes eat there too. There is no way to communicate when you are on opposite ends of the unit at night (no over head or anything). I lost 5-10 lbs since I started working.... Best suggestion is gatorade and meal replacement bars you can eat at the desk. I know it's gross, but I can't function without food all the time. There's been times when I can feel ny blood sugar just start to plummet and I feel like I'm going to pass out. The gatorade helps :-)

Spring 2011 BSN Kaplan (program made us use it) passed first time with 75 questions