abismojo

People that work in the hospital come in all shapes and sizes. When it comes to hair, tatoos, and piercings, each hospital is different. While being in school and being employed by the hospital are two different things, they both require that we care about the patients. A patient might be hesitant at first for a 6'3 guy that ways 250 coming in with a huge tribal tatoo down their arm about to give them an IM, but once they meet the person inside they will not care. When I told a friend's family about becoming a nurse, they relayed a story to me about just such a guy nurse they had when their son was sick and in the hospital, and they said he was the gentlest nurse that really seemed to care about their son and said he taught them more about their sons condition that anyone. The school just wants us to look clean and neat, but after that, the hospitals are more open minded.

All-in-ONE Care planning resource. by MOSBY It breaks down the type of patient, and lists several disease processes and what to look out for.

With my first degree I had a 3.3. For all of the prequisites - A&P 1 and 2, micro, chem, stat I had a 4.0. So these are the GPA's I applied for the acclerated program with. They focused on the 4.0 mainly and saw my desire to become a nurse. The application process wasn't one of my favorites, as all they looked at were transcripts. The program I am in received 300 applications and accepted 45 students. The program also has a scholarship option with a local hospital that offers to pay your tuition, buy your books, and give you 500 bucks a month in exchange for 3 years of employment with that hospital. To recieve this funding, we had to interview with the hospital and sign a contract if the interview went well.

This topic was of no concern at our school, when we got into lab we were all excited about inspecting variations in each other. If someone had an abnormality, which someone in the class will, everyone will want to listen, touch or look at it. Things such as a sinus arythmia, or split s2 were common, but people wanted to listen. No one seemed too shy about taking off a shirt (guys) and lifting their shirt (girls) to allow others to listen to the heart, lungs, bowel sounds, etc...... But as someone mentioned before, you have to get over that shyness because you are about to get real personal with a lot of patients and they do not want a nervous person performing their assessments. I would suggest pairing with a girl and a guy. You do have to take cultural considerations into account as well, as some middle eastern culture do not allow men to touch the women, and a female nursing student might not appreciate a guy trying to listen to their heart.

Thats a great question, and applies to more than EKG's, but also to catheters, bed baths, etc... Obviously, only uncovering what you need to for each lead is appropriate, and asking them to lift their chest it totally exceptable. As mentioned before, if you need to lift their chest use the dorsal portion of your hand. They best way to get through this awkward portion with a patient is to be light about it, but not too jokingly. They are just as nervous and how you carry yourself will alter their feelings, so be confident, professional, and do start saying a lot of "oops, sorry" and control your facial movements. Make sure you eyes are looking at what your doing, and just tell them what your doing and why. They are more concerned about being in the hospital to begin with than having some guy moving their chest.

I think the amount of free time is dependent on your life ouside of class and the length of the program. 13 months is very short and you have a test 3/4 days a week, so all you do is take tests for the first 10 weeks, the second ten weeks for us is 2 days clinicals for 12 hours each day and 2 days class from 8-4 with one have a test every week and the other having a lot of homework. Then the rest of the weeks progress as 2 days clinicals and 2 days class. Clinicals are no joke and you will probably have the infamous care plans in which you will write nursing diagnoses, interventions, rationales, goals and outcomes, and this can take a lot of time. A good book for care plans is called "All in one" they sale it at borders, amazon, barnes and nobles. I bought a pda for nursing, well an Ipod Itouch actually, you really only need an 8GB, and you can download resources from skyscape.com and epocrates. There are also free applications at the appstore for medical purposes, and it is very helpful in clinicals when looking up disease etiology, lab values, drugs, etc........of course several people still use the internet and bring their books to help them alone. The only problem I found with the itouch, is navigating through the menus to find just what you are looking for. Other great resources can usually be found at your hospitals bookstore, especially if it is a teaching hospital. I am not talking about the giftshop, but a bookstore. They have quick references such as "RN notes", "RN PDQ" these were all helpful for my classmates. The itouch had the RN notes through the appstore, and was very helpful to review 10 seconds before i gave a patient a foley catheter, but the PDA is obviously no substitute for reading your book and practicing the skills involved in nursing in lab.

I bought the Sketchers work shoes; they are very durable and lightweight, with a non-slip sole, which is crucial. They run around 45 bucks, so well worth the money. I am assuming you have to wear the awesome all white shoes? These only have the small S insignia that is grey, but not a concern for the instructors. If you do not have to wear all white, a nice lightweight shoe for walking or running will do just fine such as the aforementioned Nike shocks or Saucony triumphs. Another commenter mentioned earlier about support hose. It isn't a bad idea to start protection your legs now from incompetent veins, which could end your career. Leg exercise are preventative, but if you do not like the idea of support hose, you can do what I do and where circulatory socks that marathon runners and Ironman competitors wear.

Accelerated options are just what it says, accelerated! I just started a 13 month program in winston salem, nc and it moves al ong very quickly. We attend class tuesday to friday from 8-5 with an hour for lunch, which is usually spent reading. the classes entail an extreme amount of reading and there is not enough classroom time to cover all of the material that is subject for testing, so we have to be diligent "Adult learners" and learn a lot on our own. In a typical week we will read 5 or 6 chapters per class and have at least one test per class. At some parts of the first classes we would have 3 tests in a row and class time afterwards for each class to learn new material. Within the four days of class you have labs mixed in where you practice all of your skills. Some pointers: stay organized, you do not have enough time to reorganize come to class with lot of questions stay ahead of the reading, get the syllabus early and start now if you can, seriously. don't waste class time complaining to the teacher about how fast things move, it's accelerated be prepared to make a B in a class if you are a typical straight A person, our school uses a 7 point scale and does not curve anything. there is just not enough time to read and remember everything. really learn the assessment material, you will use this non stop in your clinicals. We started the program in january and have completed 5 classes and have just finished our first round at the hospital. This is where you start putting things together, get to know your nurse and na's and ask questions. Since we just started clinicals, we will have two days a week in the hospital from 6am-6pm, and then two days of week for class on tuesday and wednesday from 8-5. most people in the program do not work, some have kids, so it all comes down to time management. You will have some people in your class that are NA's, and they are very good resources for skills such as catheters, toileting, bed making, enemas, so get them to work with you. I can let you know more as i go along, but it is definately tough but doable. The people that just finished the program before us had a 97.8 pass rate on the NCLEX, so that says something. Start an email chain with your class and invite everyone to work together on study guides, enabling objectives, and resources. At first this seems crazy, but everyone will start working together because there is just too much to take in and whatever can be split up among the class helps out a lot. If you have any particular questions, just let me know.