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I'll leave the discussions about whether the BSN improves one's abilities as a nurse for others. Let me just talk about the job market. There is currently a push to go to all-BSN by (I believe) 2015 in several states. In the northeast, I know that New Jersey and New York are talking about it. So, if this legislation comes to pass (a big if) then entire states would be closed off to you without a BSN. In addition to legislative and/or BON initiatives, there is the magnet issue. Rightly or wrongly, many hospitals have come to the conclusion that their chances of achieving magnet designation are improved by having an all-BSN staff. In Philly, for example, several of the large systems will no longer hire ASNs, primarily because of the magnet issue. Some are telling their current ASNs that they have a fixed amount of time to earn a BSN in order to keep their jobs. Magnet is something the hospital can market, and marketing means money, and if you get between a hospital and its money you will get steamrolled. Now they can get away with all of this during the recession, because so many nurses have delayed retirement, or picked up more hours because of a spouse's employment difficulties. When the job market picks up, and those spouses get rehired, so those nurses decide they can go back to part time hours, those hospitals are going to be staring into the face of another nursing shortage. It will be made all the worse by the fact that entire class years of nursing school graduates have given up finding work and left nursing. Whether the hospitals will still be able to insist on all-BSN hiring at that point is arguable. Presumably, the big, well regarded systems will still be able to do so, but the smaller community hospitals might not be able to pull it off. So what it boils down to is this: there is no place on earth that will hire an ASN but not hire a BSN, but there are quite a few places that will hire a BSN but not hire an ASN. So just from a job availability perspective there's value in the BSN. How much value probably varies a lot by geographic area (in a lot of the northeast not having a BSN can be a real liability, while in Texas that may or may not be the case.) So whether or not the BSN makes you a better nurse, it makes you a more employable nurse. And that's a big deal right now, when even the BSN graduates are having trouble finding work.

Maybe when you said "for years" she thought you said "four years" and now she's mad because you hid two years experience from her. :) Either that, or she just needs to get the stick out of her butt and get over herself.

And when the pool dries up, because nobody wants to put up with being treated that way, the "oi, thingy" nurses will be the ones whining loudest about not having enough staff.

Sometimes, those questions aren't to bust your buns. Sometimes the ICU nurse is trying to see if there's a reason that something wasn't done, e.g. "he needs a CTA but he's allergic to IV dye, so he's going to need to be prepped first." Sometimes it is just whining, but not always.

Please tell me you work on a pediatric unit :)

This has been such a great thread - you hardly notice the poor grammar at all! :) To the poster whose review included the comment "doesn't polish her shoe laces" that seems to me more like the sort of insult that's really a compliment. ("He sings too loud in church" is how my father puts it for people who are genuinely wonderful.) Your manager may have been thinking "I've got to put SOMETHING in here if it kills me."

Take her list, blow your nose in it, smile sweetly and say "thank you."

Although tasering sounds barbaric, is it actually worse then the alternatives? If a patient is out of control, the most likely alternative to tasering is a big hairy furball of a scrum - five staff members or so trying to get restraints on an out of control patient. Not only is the risk to staff exponentially higher, there is also a higher risk to the patient himself. Tasers weren't invented and popularized because it's fun to watch someone twitch. It's because they are generally safer and more effective than alternatives. Also, I am completely unsurprised that a patient with B/L PEs would be so out of control. Even mild hypoxia can have profound behavioral effects. Nothing puts the body into full-bore fight-or-flight mode like the brain thinking that it's dying.

My sister got a traditional ASN. Two years, two semesters per year, 14 weeks per semester, 16 hours clinical per week. I got an accelerated BSN. One year, four quarters, 12 weeks per quarter, 24 hours clinical per week. I actually had more clinical hours than most traditional programs. What I didn't have was summer off, or a long Christmas break. We got one week off between quarters - that's the big difference between the accelerated programs and the traditional programs. I had to leave class on Friday, drive 300 miles, get married on Saturday, drive 300 miles on Sunday, and start final exams on Monday. These programs aren't pared down versions of the traditional nursing programs. The only things pared down were time off (and my honeymoon.)

One possible reason for not using the word no would only apply to written charting, and that is the fact that "no" is such a small word. When you have people whose handwriting looks like they use their elbows to write, "absence of" gives you more of a fighting chance than "no." We've all had those "what does this say" chart parties. "Hey, Lisa! Does this say 'no BM' or '10 BM' ?"

Cargo pants are good - they're basically khakis that have pockets mid-thigh in addition to the standard two front, two back. Some places would consider them too casual, though.

The way the NCLEX works, 265 questions is no more likely to pass or fail than any other number of questions. If the test stops after 85 questions, it means that the test only needed that many questions to determine if you passed or failed. Basically, you either did really really well or really really badly. If it asked you 265 questions, it means that it had to ask all of its questions, because you were right on the borderline. You might have just barely passed, or you might have just barely failed. But still, even if you failed, it's a whole lot better to fail at 265 than to fail at 100. If you get to 265 questions, it means that (at worst) you were very very close to passing. And hey - you have just as much chance that you passed. If you REALLY screwed up, the test would have shut down a lot sooner.

I work in a neuro ICU - when people ask me health questions, I just tell them "let me drill a hole in your skull and stick a tube in your brain - then I'll be able to tell you exactly what's wrong." Oddly enough, I haven't had any takers yet.

The Lehigh Valley Health System has job postings for GNs. That's in Allentown, about an hour north of the city. Also, think about government jobs - not just the military. The VA always seems to be hiring. The process takes a while, but it's an option.

You really really don't want to be caught lying about this. Such minor drug use is not going to be an issue, but if during some security clearance investigation they find out you lied about it, you will be bounced out of the service in a heartbeat. I had a history of teenage marijuana use, and I admitted it. I was still able to get into and graduate from the Naval Academy, get into submarines, and receive a top secret security clearance. Your usage history is well within the "experimentation" limits. It's not even going to raise an eyebrow.