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Could you possibly arrange a meeting between yourself and this doctor with his medical director and your supervisor present to review his behavior? I would say that his comments need to be addressed directly. See if he would own up to these statements when directly confronted. Clearly some professional boundaries need to be established if you are going to continue to treat his patients. If he refuses a meeting is there an HR department within his practice that you could report him to? If not may be a letter from your lawyer would put his behavior in check as it does sound like slander.

Hi, Just a little advice from someone who has worked med-surg and ICU. You need to get some more experience. I worked med-surg for 4 years before switching to ICU and the experience was a humbling one. There is a lot of information that you have to learn and the ICU is a very different environment from med-surg. You have to re-organize your line of thinking as a nurse. It took me about a year to feel really comfortable in my new job. First decide if you want to travel more or work in ICU. If you go to ICU stay with your med-surg job at least a year so you can build up your time management skills and get some routine procedures down pat. It may not be your dream job but the Med-Surg experience will teach you a lot. When you are use to discharging 3-4 pts in a shift, admitting 1-2 is not a big deal ; )

Nice response BabyLady:up: Professional but firm :) I will have to remember that one!

Hi I worked the floors for 4 years before jumping to the ICU. Just keep in mind the pts are not as sick as the ICU ones. Trust your gut though if you have a feeling that the patient doesn't look right. Deligate to your CAs when you can. Unlike ICU too the response time to a call light can be 5-10 minutes. (Especially if you have 3 call lights going off at once). Hope this helps.

Good idea to get that clarified but that does sound really low! As a rule in Texas, Houston and Dallas Nurses have the best wages. I would expect that an experienced nurse in Houston would make $28-$35 an hour.

As an ICU Nurse who has reviewed all six pages of threads consider this: -Would you be comfortable as a patient if your nurse was texting on her phone while titrating your cardiac or insulin drip? -Would you be comfortable as a family member if you saw your mother's nurse constantly texting on her phone? -Should an ICU nurse feel comfortable letting an unlicensed nursing student watch her patient while she goes to the stock room to text? I don't care how stable the patient is, they are in ICU for a reason. A patient can go south in the blink of an eye. Even when your patients are stable, it is your duty to listen out for alarms, falls, or other possible events in your unit. Why are my fellow nurses upset that the nursing student questioned this behavior? Why do you assume she doesn't have enough experience to "understand" the situation? Would you be so upset if a family member had raised the same concern? She may not be experienced but she sounds like she has a decent work ethic. I would rather have this person take care of me as a GN than the other experienced nurse. She would have at least assessed me by 08:30 and payed attention if my alarm went off. Keep up the good work nursing student! Finally, if you have some personal emergency that requires you to text for 3.5 hours then you need to call in. Otherwise leave the cell phone in your locker. There may be a million reasons or possible scenarios as to why this ICU nurse was texting on her phone. The point is she spent 3.5 hours looking at her cell phone and not the patient! At the end of the day if something happens to your patient nobody will care why you were texting on the phone. Nursing has had to fight long enough to gain respect as a profession. It looks very unprofessional to be constantly talking or texting on your cell phone while on the job.

Hi Newbi7, I am actually a graduate of the program you are considering. I have been a RN for 5 years and have decided not to use my CNS degree due to the experience issues and the job market. My salary is pretty comfortable as a RN and I enjoy my job a lot! I have to agree with the above post. Let me give you some additional information. The program teaches you to be a CNS but there are not very many of those positions available in Austin. Most of the hospitals have gotten rid of CNS nurses in an effort to cut cost. There are however a number of NP jobs out there in local clinics. (Google Austin Advance Practice Nurses. It is a local APN nursing society with job postings) In the AE-CNS program you can take an additional course and get your prescription privaleges. So in a sense you can work like an NP as a CNS. However you run into the problem of experience. If your prescirbing medications you need to be the expert in your area to be safe. A couple of my friends were able to find jobs as a CNS with prescription privaleges straight out of school. The ones who were successful though had mentoring physcians who were willing to work with them as they learned their new role. Most physcians though need an advance practice nurse who can hit the ground running. As nurses we often have to draw on our experience to help us make clinical decisions. (MDs have 4 years of med school + 4 years residency, we get 2 with a masters degree) I would suggest you get your associates degree with ACC which is cheaper. I know there is a wait list for that program but it is a very good nursing program. After that work for a few years as an RN. This will give you some valuable experience and help you decide what area of nursing you want to specialize in. After that take a bridge program for a bachelors degree. You can finish that in a year or less and then go straight on to a NP masters program. Hope this helps.

I am a graduate of that program. The best thing you can do is call the admissions office and talk to an advisor. Despite what the rumor mill said you did not need a perfect GPA or GRE scrore to get in. It can be competative but you do not have to be perfect to get in. If that were the case 95% of my class would not have been there. Have an admissions advisor review your transcripts and go from there.