stopthepenguins6

ACT, SAT...either way, it's pretty much the same difference. Both test general skills and try to predict how well you'll do in a college environment. If you get through your basics and pass, you'll have absolutely no issue passing the TEAS. It's the basic, general stuff. Read a passage, determine what words in a certain sentence mean...determine the main idea of this paragraph...that kind of stuff. It really isn't anything to stress over :).

From our ICU we can be pulled to anywhere the "critical care" nurses work in our hospital...namely PCU (max 4 pt a nurse) or to the ER. We never get pulled to a med/surg floor. Our PCU staff will go to ICU or they will go to telemetry. And our ER...well, they'll stay in the ER, or they'll go home . The only time I've ever seen an ICU nurse go to med/surg or telemetry floor was when a nurse called in to staffing for extra hours and was told they only had an opening in med/surg and she was given the option to voluntarily go for some extra hours. We rotate turns for our floats, so if you're number is up, you go, as long as you've been off orientation at least 6 months.

If it's the same TEAS I took, as long as you graduated high school, you'll pass. Seriously, the questions on there for math and English were things covered when I was in 8th grade. Basic algebra, basic word association, etc. Did you take the SAT? It's not even 1/10th the difficult of that, IMO. Especially once you go through you basic pre-reqs, your algebra, your English 101, etc...it's a breeze.

Apologies, with the med/surg floor I worked on, I saw maybe 1 hospice/comfort measures patient every few months. I didn't think about the fact that maybe that was unique to my floor :).

I'm actually in a smaller town, however we're about 30/45 minutes away from an area with several large, well known hospitals, so our hospital tries to stay competitive as far as payment goes. As far as staying awake on night shift, It really depends on how you personally handle it. I'm fine as long as I keep the same schedule, even on my days off. The problem is when I try to switch my schedule back to being awake during the day time, for instance if we go on vacation, etc. I know some co-workers with children handle that with minimal issues, but I find myself tired all the time if I try. My husband and I went on vacation a few weeks ago, and I was miserable trying to stay awake during the day just to spend some time with him. I'm the type of person that needs to stay on nights all the time, or on days all the time...I couldn't imagine working swing shift like some people do. So my answer is do what your body tells you to do, and if you find that you need a day shift, don't hesitate to make it known to your manager that you'd like to be considered as soon as a position opens up. I'm already on the list at work, myself. I look forward to seeing daylight again . But as previous posters have said: it's not all about the money. If you go into nursing just for the money, you'll be miserable, bc while the money is good, no money is good enough to deal with what we deal with Just for the money, if that makes sense. If it's your goal, go for it, be a nurse, go into debt, then dig your way out of it like the rest of us ...but do it bc you want to be a nurse, not because you hear they make good money :).

You can never guarantee that you won't see death, as we are healthcare providers and things do happen, but you can help to minimize your level of exposure, as it's all in where you work. If you work in a critical setting, an ICU, an ER, hospice, oncology, etc., you can expect to see some death. But if you go somewhere like orthopedics, med/surg, labor and delivery, things like that, you will typically have transferred your patient out before things get that critical. The risk is still there...even hip fractures can go bad quickly, and babies can get into distress during the birth process, but those events are few and far between on a typically healthier, lower acuity floor. When I worked on an ortho floor, I never saw death. Now that I'm in the ICU, I see it frequently. It was scary for me at first, and it was due a lot to my own insecurities about death. I had never dealt with a dead body, but now that I've had a few patients that died, it's easier. It's still a hard thing to do...you never get over the respect for human life. But it's easier to be in the room and not be uncomfortable at the fact that I'm bathing a deceased person now that I've had some exposure. Was it the fact that the bones were from a child that got to you? If so, avoid pediatrics. Or was it just the fact that they were bones? Figuring out exactly what it was that got to you is key, because then you can figure out what to do to fix it, whether it's just a need for more familiarity, dealing with your own fears, or a weak stomach.

Ok, gonna stick my salary info in here for consideration, as I don't know what the differentials in your area are. I also live in the south, and just graduated, so this was my base pay info as a new nurse with an ADN. You'll also have to consider your shift differentials. I work weekend nights for now. That's 4 hours at $6/hr per shift, and 8 hr at $9/hr extra per shift. I also am able to work one shift a week for overtime (which I don't mind) which gives me time and a half, plus my shift diff. So, if it really comes down to getting yourself out of the hole that nursing school put you in, you can always pick up the extra shifts. So let's take a starting salary of 22.80. If I look at a typical 3 day a week shift, you get about 12 hours at 26.80/hr, and 24 hours at 31.80/hr. That puts me at 1084/week, which adds up to a base of 56,409 yearly (assuming I always work that shift.) Now, let's assume I work one extra night shift a week. With time and a half, that starts me out at 34.20/hr, plus my diffs. So, since there's only 3 weekend nights, let's say I get the standard 4/hr for my 12 hours. That puts me at 458.40, pre tax, just for one extra night. Even if you only picked one up every other week, that's an extra 1000ish per month, or 12,000ish per year. Or if you picked one up ever week, you'd get roughly 1900 extra per month (I'm down to estimating now, too much work to use my calculator haha.) Now even if you don't work the weekend night shift, if you work any night shift, you'll get a few dollars extra differential. And if you don't work the night shift, typically the last 4 hours of your day shift (3p-7p) will have a few dollars extra differential, so you'll have to add that in to consideration. Ok, all this math is making my head spin, but you get the picture. It's hard to look at the base salary for a nurse and know exactly how much you'll start out because there's a lot more to it then just that base number. Hope this helps!

I got a 99% and past with 75 questions my first time. I'd say they helped and were pretty accurate as far as the types of questions. You get the same feeling, the "uhhh...did I just pass that?" and hold your breath until you get the score. You'll walk out of the NCLEX in a panic, convinced you failed it because it made you feel completely and utterly stupid though, lol.

My husband's niece suffered a seizure in the womb, and was diagnosed with hydranencephaly. She was breathing on her own, despite having very little that had developed of her brain. The doctors wished to withdraw care and basically let her starve to death. His family refused, and she is 17 today. I can come at this from both sides of the debate of "If we can save, we ought to." On one hand, she is now 17, she loves to laugh, but that's about all she can do. She knows who I am, even if she can't speak, and she knows who she does and doesn't like. You can ask her questions and she'll make her "yes" noise or her "no" noise, and she loves to hear certain words. She is their little miracle child, and they love her all the more for it. She is now close to 6 feet tall, is tube fed, and lives on the couch. You will never see someone taken care of as well as that girl is. She has someone next to her 24/7, and I mean that in a literal sense. Someone always stays with her in case she chokes and needs suction or to track her seizures, etc.. On the other hand, It has changed the lives of everyone around her. They can't all go on vacation together because she can't go...they can't pack up and go to the park for the afternoon because she can't handle it, she has to sleep in the bed with them in case she seizes in the night or starts choking, etc.. I ask myself if I were in the same situation if i would be able to handle it. As a healthcare worker I look at the situation and wonder to myself if the decision they made 17 years ago to not withdraw care was worth the cost. But if you ask them, they'll say it's hard sometimes, but they'd gladly give up everything for her, even if she is a 24/7 total care kind of child. In reference to your question earlier about what happens when they grow up and are no longer in pediatrics, well, that's a question many of the families of these kind of children would like to know. 20 years ago, these children didn't stay alive, either by nature or by withdrawal of care. So we are now in a transition stage. The doctors that have been caring for these children as pediatric patients for their entire lives will no longer be able to care for them as adults any more. When our niece gets sick, in a couple years she'll no longer be able to go to the children's medical center where she has been treated her entire life, having had dozens of surgeries, but will have to get a new set of doctors who know nothing of her diagnosis and how to treat them, because up to this point, these children never survived. It's a scary thought for us!

I've been a tech for three years, and I start my first RN job (ICU, panic!) next week. I can tell you from personal experience (I've worked LTC and orthopedics in those three years, so geriatric is a huge part of it) that you get used to poop. When I went into healthcare, I started as a tech to make sure I could handle it. The thought of cleaning up poop and wiping someone else's bottom grossed me out, but I said "I can do this" and I did. While I certainly didn't enjoy it, after a few months, it just became part of the job and no longer bothered me. However, if poop is a make-or-break for you, how about you look into something like postpartum? Your mothers will, for the most part, be up and taking care of their own bodily functions, if you catch my drift, and though you'll have to assess that area, you probably won't have to wipe as many butts, as you put it . You may have to wipe some tiny butts, but they are so much cuter when they're only a day old. As far as the death and dying goes, that is a part of life, and you'll have a hard time getting away from it. There will be areas where you will see less of it, or see it very rarely, or may have to deal with families less when it happens, but I can't think of any areas that are death-proof, so to speak. So that's my advice: go somewhere like pediatrics or postpartum. There's no shame in admitting an area isn't for you. I started out in nursing school thinking I would go pediatrics, and came out of it going "omg, I will NEVER go pediatrics." But that's the wonderful thing about nursing: there are so many different areas that you can go. Look into a transfer, and don't let wiping butts discourage you! Best of luck!

Well, I was looking around on this website a few days ago, and saw a couple people had mentioned on different threads that their school had gone to requiring CNA before entrance to the nursing program, so I wonder if that's something that's going to become more common? I'm not too worried about it, I'm in it for the experience, not for the point lol, but seeing other people say the same thing combined with my instructor having said ATC may be going towards the same thing just made me wonder if it really is going to happen. Kinda strange, but I guess that could be a way to weed out the people who don't belong in the nursing program in the first place?

I wanted to add a little update to my last post: If you look at the ATC nursing application, on the last page of it, you have the spreadsheet with the possible points you can earn from the classes you take, etc. If you look at the very bottom, it shows that you get a point for being a CNA. So it actually Does help you now on your application. Just figured I would clear that up for whoever it was that originally had asked :).

I don't know which advisors said it; I had never heard it prior to the course, and it's not the reason I'm taking it, but another of the students in the class said she was told that by her nursing advisor. I have no idea who her advisor is, and mine (which is also a nursing advisor, not an allied health one) had never mentioned anything about it when I talked to her about registering for the CNA class. The other girl who mentioned it was talking about her allied health advisor, I believe. The instructor (Hightower) also said the same thing, but again, no idea if it's something being thrown around, if it's something they're implementing, or what. Just what we were told. The instructor had also mentioned that some colleges were going to that system. Once again, don't know if that's true or not, and I don't know why they would do it since you have to take fund. of nursing anyway, just repeating what we were told. As for the point for taking the class, we were also told that by the instructor. Like I said, I don't know what's true or not, just what we were told by our instructor, so it may be worth looking into. It doesn't really affect me one way or the other since I'm in the class just for the experience while I work on getting the rest of my courses out of the way. If it gets me a point, yay for me, if not, oh well lol, no tears shed on my part :)

I'm in the CNA course right now, and what they actually told us is that within the next year they're actually going to start requiring the CNA class before you can into the RN program. That's what the prof. teaching the class said and that's also what a couple of the nursing program advisors have said. Now whether or not that will be within the next year or if it's just something that's on the table, I'm not sure. We were also advised that it Does give you a point on your application for the RN program. I was told the same thing. So not sure if you're right or I'm right...but it's worth checking into...and since it's based on a point system every little bit helps :).

If you're a lover of online forums and support groups, Sparkpeople.com is a great place for people trying to lose weight. They have lots of groups you can join (nursing ones as well :) ) as well as people in your area so you can get yourself a support buddy. It has calorie trackers, weight trackers, lots of yummy recipes, and lots of good articles. Good luck! :)