JomoNurse

That's awesome!!! Congratulations on your 1st day! Today you're just getting started, and in no time at all you'll be weeks away from graduation so you'll have a totally new and different kind of excitement. Enjoy your schooling while you can (hard to do, I know), but it really is a fun time to learn and grow with your classmates. Again, congratulations!!!

Is this post for real? Go work at Walmart if you're willing to work for minimum wage. Hardly any stress. I don't think you are sane if this post is for real (I am not joking). I don't quite get why a New Graduate Nurse would be working as a FREE nurse intern. Just don't work and take the time off. Enjoy it while it lasts. Think of it as a vacation until you can find a job. BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, don't work for free! That's I N S A N E, people! Insane!

I REALLY recommend to everyone that wants to be an RN to take the JC route. It's insanely cheap. Universities are a waste of money if all you want to do is be an RN.

I typed a long responses and at the last second I accidentally clicked the refresh button. Doh! Basically it said two things 1) You did the right thing, and don't sweat it and, 2) The surgeon should not have been paged for the desats. The surgeon ONLY is to be called for items related to the surgery directly (UNLESS your facility or doctor specifies otherwise), and the medical doctor is to manage the patient's other medical problems and/or complications. I learned (aka yelled at) which doctor to call early on in my career as a nurse. I also find that surgeons are clueless with medical management anyways. They really are limited to the surgery part only. I called the surgeon once to report a critically low blood sugar and he ripped me a new @$$hole. Nowadays the surgeons at my work literally write "Do NOT call me for medical management, please call the hospitalist" (they write it exactly like that, word for word!)

Sorry, but I don't believe a word an active drug addict says. If you want to believe them, then fine, you go do that and see how fast they screw you over. I also love the "I hope youre never MY nurse" responses. Pathetic. Maybe in your land of faires and unicorns a drug addict is trustworthy, but not in my world. I side on the side of the nurse UNLESS it is proven otherwise. This particular case seems so easy: an active druggie exhibiting bizarre behavior. The patient lied. It's as clear as my butt is fat.

Sorry OP, I didn't mean YOU made her take a drug test. My point was it was insulting that she was made to take a drug test, after a druggie said she hadn't gotten her fix.

Oh, sorry! I didn't mean my post to be directed at any specific person. It was meant as a general statement. I understand a LOT of people will disagree with it, but trust me, you will agree with it as you age. School consumes a lot of one's time and it's impossible to be there for a young child as much as one should while in school. There's evidence galore on this topic online if someone reading this is doubting it. And to curiousme... how you say that I 'am basically saying she's a bad mom"? What the heck? That's not what I said. Don't make things up. Having been there, I know how much of your time nursing school takes away. First, there's the physical time it takes with having you show up to class and clinical, and second) all the time you put into reading/studying. There's just no way to do both ADEQUATELY at the same time. Sure, people do both all of the time, but one suffers. Everyone reading this knows which one suffers. To those of you reading this that have put school on hold in order to devote your energy towards raising your family, I commend you. I commend you for realizing how much it means to your children, and I commend you for putting YOUR desires and wishes on hold for those precious children you brought into the world. The lifelong memories that you will cherish will be worth more than any degree or paycheck. I just wish more people had the same opinion. Voiceless children suffer and endure the brunt of those who dont.

You are correct. Drug addicts don't always lie. But they DO lie in order to get more drugs when the supply is gone.

Honestly, i'm pretty much positive the patient took all 4 pills, and then when you came back in, said she didn't get the PRNs, and she ultimately got you to give her a double dose of it. The fact that you made the float nurse take a drug test is insulting. To make it worse, she had to take a drug test because a drug addict said so. Drug addicts will tell you ANYTHING to get more than what they can have, and in thise case, the patient won. I can't believe anyone, including the Nurse Manager of all people, would think that the patient had any credibility at all. Giving a scheduled narc and a prn narc at the same time to a drug addict isn't going to do much, unless the doses of each were insanely high. So the part of giving them together really isn't of concern. It WOULD be a concern if you giving them to an 80 year old nun that has chocolate milk in her system as the most toxic substance. And who cares that a drug addict knows exactly what pills she gets - the woman is a drug addict and drug addicts will LIE and get anyone in trouble in order to get their fix.

I haven't gotten an offer letter either. I just got a phone call from the manager and she asked if I wanted to take the job or not. After that, I made an appointment with HR and signed all of their paperwork. After that, I showed up to work and started my shift. No formal offer letters. RNs are blue collar, which means we aren't given certain things white collar jobs provide (iin this case, a letter offering employment). That's more for doctors and lawyers and things like that. Perhaps you were given the wrong idea in school. Is this your first nursing job?

If money and job versatility is your motivating factor, then definitely do the RN route. More money and you'll be able to work at almost anywhere all over the country once you get your 1 years of experience on your resume. But if "passion" (ha ha ha) is your motivating factor, then choose the one that you want to do the most. FYI: one big positive aspect for the tech route is that you'll never have to change a poop filled diaper or deal with people with awful BO or nasty stuff like that. The RNs/CNAs get stuck with those people instead.

If you read mine then you will see that I said I went off on a rant. Ok, I'm not replying to you anymore. You seem to be combing through my posts and I don't have the time for that right now. Have a good day.

I really did not intend for it to be that. Please tell me how I could have said what I did, but in a nicer way. Thank you. It just seems like on this board that if you say something that goes against the popular view, then you are disciplined. So again, please tell me how I can express my opinion, as I did above, and do it in a way that's not "cruel and unesecessary" If anything what I said was "cruel", then wow. Sorry you feel that way.

Since you have just stated, yourself, that your 4 and 6 year old are being IGNORED, then maybe it would be best to put your schooling on hold so that you can be there in their most crucial years? They want their mommy so bad. People say well "you're just sacrificing a little for a lot later on". That's the view of a brainwashed liberalists mind. These people think that career is much more important than actually being there (bothing physically and mentally) for your OWN CHILDREN. Your children won't thank you later on in life for ignoring them so you could finish school and get a job and make more per hour than not. When children are little, they want their mother there for them. Trust me, putting off school and raising your children will be well worth it. You can NEVER go back and reraise your children when they are young. You can ALWAYS go back to school. Think about that. The reason mothers of young children have guilt while they are in school is because they inherently know what they are doing is wrong. Young children physically NEED their mothers there for them. Children NEED their mothers. Please don't argue with me on this. Stop fighting it. BE THERE FOR YOUR CHILDREN, FOR THEM. I cringed on the inside when one poster here said her baby played around her while she did school work. That is just so sad to me. Is being a nurse really worth this, people?

Nursing orders (diagnoses) are pointless. Nursing organizations, in an effort to "professionalize" a very bluecollar type of working field, wanted to come up with something unique that they could use and would make them look more important and smart. So here we are, comping up with these stupid dianoses (for ex: ineffective airway clearance related to excessive secretions). I mean COME ON. If the dude has a giant loogy lodged in his throat, get the yonkers and suction it out. See how easy that was? But noooo, these organizations want us to "IQ it up" a bit and relay in an intelligent way. It's dumb and makes nurses look dumb, and it's why we're looked at that way and aren't taken seriously as a whole. ANY person with half a brain can come to the conclusion that if there's spit in a patient's throat, then it probably needs to be suctioned out. But while we're doing it, let's label it as a "nursing intervention" just to make us appear smarter than we really are. Retarded! :0 just a little rant I have, sorry!

The BON would/will probably do nothing about this. You have to look at the entire picture, not just the act. This is how things are reveiwed by the BON. The day shift was virtually over. There was an RN there (which is better than no RN). The patient's were stable. These are all factors the BON will look at, and which will ultimately guide them in their decision NOT to pursue it in any way. It's not TRUE patient abondonment. I'm not saying what they did was warranted. What they did was wrong. I sure as heck would not want to work at a place like that. It does lend to the fact that if they are willing to do something like that, then they are probably shady in other areas as well. I would report it so that there is a record of a prior incidient just in case an incident happens in the future; then you wiill already have a prior concern documented.

I live in Orange County, California. A decent, starter home in a decent neighborhood is about $450,000 in Orange County (that's the recession price. At the height of housing bubble the same house was $800,000 to $1,000,000). That's about 2,000 sq. ft. I make $40 per hour. I don't know if any of you are familiar, but Orange County was on Bravo television in the TV series "Desperate Housewives of the OC". My neighborhood is full of multimillion dollar mansions on every corner, so $450,000 really is on the cheap side. This neighborhood is definitely NOT nursing salary friendly!

My family makes fun of me for being a nurse. They don't even know what an RN stands for or does. I was at dinner the other night and my brother said to me "So, wipe any goodlooking a$$ lately?" Unfortunately, nurses will always have to defend themselves!

i'm horrible at starting IVs. I even miss the ones that are painfully obvious and very feelable. My poor patient will be riddled with IV stick marks by the time I get something. I'm not new, either!

if you are capable of getting through medical school then you must do that route. you will kick yourself in the butt if you pick nursing over being an MD. you'll be able to function independently and you will be compensated generously. you'll also have a life time of admiration from others for being something so prestigious as being a doctor. now, back to the capable comment. the reality is *most* people in nursing are not capable of getting through medical school. you must be genuinely smart and motivated. average, motivated people do not make it. unfortunately that is not enough. or maybe it's really foruntate since one day that person could someday be guiding medical care? don't waste your money and time if you don't have the smarts to finish. only you truly know that. There's nothing wrong with being a nurse, but the pay isn't that great and you will never function independently as an RN.

Your post is informative. However, I must disagree on one thing. Putting emphasis on whether or not someone writes Deaf or deaf, and the fact that you and others would consider this "rude" is total nonsense. I took ASL in high school and had and have one deaf friend, and they couldn't give one hoot about something as trivial and silly as something like that. The bigger picture is much more important. While studying Sign Language in high school I soon came to realize that there are MANY deaf people within the community that expect sympathy because of their condition. And if they aren't given sympathy, that's somehow intrepreted as discrimination. Wrong. Let me make it clear by saying Deaf people, and every other person with any type of disability, should be provided whatever it is they need in order to function with other people. I do NOT, however, like the bad, DEMANDING attitudes that some of these people come with their attitudes. I really do not appreciate the litigious undertone your post has, either. Yes, all of those things are true. But when educating society on how to handle the Deaf, I think educators need to educate people on what do to because it's the right MORAL thing to do, and not done because of legal ramifications. It's more welcoming and you aren't instilling fear of Deaf by threatening legal action.

If RN is your goal, then you should really ditch the LVN thing. It will be a waste of your time, your money, and your effort. Just stick to the RN. If you start working as an LVN you'll probably find it even harder to to stop everything and go back to school AGAIN for your RN. No bueno!!!

I do not think that the word disgusted is a correct title for your post. At any rate, $16 an hour is not very much in terms of an hourly salary for a Registered Nurse. I encourage you to keep applying often to hospitals and doing follow-up, which is essential. This basically means to call the place your applied, and speak directly with the Nursing Recruiter and/or managers. Let them know who are you. Let them know how much you want the job. When an opening presents itself, hopefully they will think of you. Really do something about your wage though. I made $35/hr as a new grad a couple years ago and now I am making $40/hr. You are getting ripped off.

Did you TRULY (be honest) report because of that? Usually the other nurse has something personal against the other nurse. I also agree that there had to have been other contributing factors that resulted in her termination.

Now I really mean this in the nicest way possible. Honestly, I do. So here it is: your post sounds whimpy, and if you're post is whimpy, then I can only imagine what it must be like face to face. Stand straight, take a deep breath, and project your voice. And PLEASE, do not kiss up to any MD. You are inviting him or her to "make you feel stupid" when you do, and I am confident you are not. Some nurses really do a lot of brown nosing, which only makes situations worse. I once had to call a Dr. at 1AM and let him know that we (med-surg) nurse were unable to establish an IV (he had many important onces due). He replied back with "Why don't you call a real nurse from the ICU to come and do it?" I responded back with "Ok, I will do that, and next time I will call a good doctor."