QuarterLife88

Hi all! So this past Saturday I took my boards through AANP. I took the AGNP exam. It honestly wasn't too bad. I had three hours of allotted time once the test began, but I finished in just under two hours. I flagged/marked about 23 questions in total to review before I submitted. REVIEW For review I started with Fitzgerald's online review, but only made it about half way through. It's a lot of videos to watch and she doesn't cover everything in them, and you have to watch them all in order - no skipping around to just your weak areas. Towards the end as my exam date approached, I just didn't have the time or patience to keep watching them, and felt a lot of her information was somewhat confusing. She does give good tips on how to pass the exam though, and reasons people fail. Use Liek! Honestly I could have probably studied exclusively from Leik in hindsight. Everything that was on my exam, she talked about in her book and more. The book gets to the point and has great exam and clinical highlights that you need to know to pass. Read Leik twice cover to cover and you will be good. I took notes as I read through each section and did about half the questions from the book/app. I studied for about 2-4 hours/day for about 5 weeks. Some days I didn't study at all due to work/life. Not going to lie, I didn't do as many practice questions as some others. I thought it more important to focus on the content than spend days doing thousands of questions. I did take the two PSI retired exams though and got 76% on the first one and 93% on the second one. I took these both two days before my exam. I felt like most of my exam was assessment and geriatrics. Same diseases, just applied to the elderly. I don't think I had but one adolescent question. No pics or select all that apply. Those probably appear on the ANCC though. About two weeks prior to my exam I signed up for board vitals and did some of their questions. They are much harder than the exam and wayyyy more detailed, long-winded. The exam is much more general. Board vitals has great rationales though. I never took a break during the exam, I just went straight through. The beginning of the exam seemed slightly more difficult than the middle and end. Halfway through I just kind of knew I was going to pass. There's a survery at the end before the computer shuts off. The proctor then prints you off a sheet that lets you know if you preliminary passed or not passed. All in all, not too bad. Use LEIK. I'm glad to be done and can't wait to begin my job search!?

No. But mostly because I have worked too long as a floor nurse. The amount of customer service and the general chaotic environment has burnt me to a crisp and caused a depression. I would have not chosen nursing if I knew it would be like this. There are other jobs I could have done with a comparable pay and less of a headache and constant stress for twelve hours. I feel like I'm taking years off my life everyday that I'm at work. I cannot wait until the day I never have to administer another pain medication, turn someone, take them to the bathroom for the 500th time that shift, or deal with bad IVs especially when an urgent medication needs to be given. And don't even get me started on the manipulative, needy, unappreciative patients. UGH.

I applied to the Adult Primary NP, but I got in! Received the email today!

What are they doing? Nothing. Most experienced staff leave for greener pastures or retire. Management gives no cares to the happiness of nursing staff long-term.

No, no confirmation email, but I scheduled mine for the morning with the link they sent me. Good luck to you. I'm going for the adult primary NP.

I just received an invitation to interview. Hopefully I'll get in.

I hate precepting and I refuse to do it anymore after having done it on a continuous loop. In fact, I flat out told management that. I do not feel it is my job to educate new nurses, and quite frankly, I do not care. I am there to take care of my patients, and I do a good job at that. I do not owe anyone anything else. After burning out to epic proportions this past year, "it's all about me" has taken on a whole new meaning for me.

Yes, the pay is not enough to motivate me, it's one extra dollar for extra stress. It's not fair to me, or my orientee to have a preceptor whose head is not in the game at the moment. I am not a teacher by nature as it is, I'm also introverted, and I cannot stand having someone glued to my side all shift explaining every single thing I am doing. I do my job because it's expected of me, and I will do it well, but I need a break.

I'm a nurse that works on a very busy and fast paced floor in a hospital. I'm a good employee, know my stuff and have been employed there for several years. This has caused management to give me more responsibility than some of my other co-workers such as training new hires and being charge nurse on the unit. I have been training new hires non-stop for over a year now and I am mentally fried to a crisp. I'm also in school to further my education so my work and home life stress have doubled recently. I jut started training another person without so much as two week break in between the previous one and my head is not in it. I want to ask my manager for a break from it and to switch my orientee to a different nurse while it's still early on because she's not going to get a good orientation from someone who is over it (obviously I won't say it like that, but that's the general idea). Is this a good idea? I don't think it's fair for managers to lump 90% of the work onto 10% of their employees. I should have acted like a bad worker, then I'd have less work to do like some of my slacker employees.

On my unit it's usually around 6-8 months, mostly out of necessity, and this is an occurrence on night shift. Day shift is full of experienced nurses so who's ever in charge will have a couple of years under their belt already. I work in a hospital on a med-surg unit. Don't expect prior training in order to be charge either.

Thank you for all of the feedback. I wanted to clarify that on my unit, only a small handful of us are "gifted" with tasks such as precepting and charge, and quite a few who have been there for years manage to skate by and not do their fair share every shift. So no, it is not all being spread around equally, and I'm doing a lot more work on average than some of my coworkers are. I would just like a break once in a while is all.

I'm definitely asking for a break after this current run. I'm not the only one on my floor that does it, but there are only a small handful of us, and my manager hires many people at once. as I said in my OP, I would appreciate it if some others that have been there just as long as I have would be volun-told to do it at least a few times. There would be less burn out on nursing units if jobs like charge nurse, and preceptor were rotated.

*WARNING* NOT A PLEASANT POST AHEAD. I've searched, and most of the topics on this discussion are from new grads bemoaning their preceptors and not much about how hard it is to have to mentor new grads, sometimes for months at a time, almost seemingly non stop as the unit goes through staff like regular people go through underwear in a week. Quite frankly, it's hard as heck to mentor and try and teach someone completely from scratch while still being expected to manage the team. You're forced to slow down from your normal pace, stop and explain every thing you usually do as second nature, and worst of all, deal with the swinging moods of your preceptee day after day. No I do not know everything, and I'm sick of the disrespect I can feel oozing from your pores. I am burned out. I want to work alone. I hate that my manager has volunteered me to precept. I have NEVER asked to. I'm assuming most nurses want to precept and ask to do so. Maybe I'm wrong on that part. The few shifts these days I work myself are a godsend. I know a lot love it, but it's not for me. I wish others on my unit were forced to take on a little more responsibility from time to time. /end rant

The time management comes with experience. Are you going to nights after your orientation is over? The slow pace of nights might help to hone your time skills better. It's normal to be slower when you're new and learning. Cluster your care. Do your assessments, vitals, ask about toileting needs, and pain while you are in the room. Chart as you go. If you have portable computers, chart the assessments while you're in the room or shortly after you've seen every one -- don't save them for the afternoon. Especially on day shift, there is too much going on with admissions, discharges, new orders, patients off the floor for tests, etc. that you could easily fall behind. Good luck.

I just recently switched to day shift after having spent almost 3 years on night shift. As was customary, when I was hired in as a new nurse, I did my orientation on day shift, and then was transferred to nights. At the time of my hire, nights had a pretty good mix of nurses with experience and new nurses with under a year of experience. Over the years more and more senior nurses moved to days, while new nurses went to nights. Three years later, the balance on my unit on nights with experienced nurses v. new nurses is very unequal. Although I am no longer on night shift, I do wonder now how safe it is to have a unit staffed with entirely either new nurses, or nurses who may have some experience, but completely new to the unit. This seems to be a common practice in hospitals in general, but why? I know that seniority allows nurses who have worked at a place of employment longer the first choice for days, so I understand why nights is overrun with new nurses, but it's not a safe practice at all. We now have nurses with less than six months experience about to be trained for charge duty. The blind leading the blind. This also causes increased stress in these nurses, and the turnover rate increases and the cycle starts all over again.