rob5252

ps can't we be friends? - oh and 'good one' kay :)

Hey OG the welsh - we are, as i speak with my charlotte church lilt, a lovely 'race' of people. i just don't choose to live there. it's too bloody cold and wet. and can be terribly unsophisticated :) - the village where i grew up has a pub and post office/grocers. and a lot of sheep. and farmers. and very little else :) hence my jetting off to warmer climes. so why aren't you staying, OG?

well matey, your unsophisticated mouth proves my point exactly. cardiff born and bred here with a sense of humour to boot. sorry OG to disappoint you. and what's with that name? :)

Hi Suzanne I had chicken pox as a kid, and have some test results to suggest that i have immunity. however, recently i had a blood test which suggests that i don't have immunity anymore (??) - unsure why. what are the implications of this? i can't get an immunisation for this as one doesn't exist. will this pose a problem? it may have been a rogue blood test...

are you kidding!? the thing to learn about the nhs is that they are so understaffed that if you have any vague nursing skills (bedbath; ability to wear a tunic; a pulse) they'll hire you!! my advice is to contact the charge nurses on your chosen units and enquire about current vacancies (believe me, you'll have no worries). tell them when you're planning to emmigrate and what skills/experience you have. failing being able to contact anyone, send your CV (resume) to the personnel/human resources departments together with a covering letter. it won't harm you to send a copy to the charge nurse of A&E. if you have the skills and you look good on paper, i can't see why they won't snap your hand off. and why wales? you do know that it's cold, wet and terribly unsophisticated. the only decent thing is charlotte church (and that's scraping the barrel). contact me if you have any questions. where in states are you? am heading to LA (just waiting for my embassy interview and medical).

Hi. I work as an enteral feeding nurse specialist in the UK. It has recently become UK law that NGT placement can only be verified by either x-ray or pH testing. Because x-ray is obviously not possible each time to check the possition, we recommend that you obtain an aspirate, which measures pH 0 - 5.5. The reason for this is that bronchial secretions have been known to measure 6.0. The problem arises if the patient is receiving PPI therapy or antacid medication, which renders the test possibly obsolete. If you would care to check out current UK legislation, search for the MHRA on line, which sets our directives. Good luck.

hello it can take a long time. i passed my nclex for california in april. eventhough i have a license in theory, in practice i don't. You need to verify your nclex result (along with your all other educational certificates and english language test) at the visascreen people in philadelphia - cgfns - (who, by the way, are very difficult to deal with - they requested my academic breakdown results twice for no apparent reason - not even they knew - so it held up my visascreen application! and as for phone skills - well - don't even go there!!!). i have just received my visascreen certificate after 6 months and am now waiting for my intereview at the embassy (again, this has taken three months and still no date). after you have had your embassy interview (and subsequent medical! - more $$$$$$!!!!!!), and, providing you get your visa - i have been told that only then will you be able to apply for your social security number and THEN you can get your licence. The confusion arises when you apply for your visascreen. They ask you if you have a US nursing licence. Theoretically, you have passed your NCLEX then you do, but because of the SSN you don't. So tick "No" (as I was told by them) and on some forms there is a box to tick for passing the NCLEX and on some there aren't. Tick it if there is. Send off your license verification visascreen form to New Jersey or California (or wherever you have passed the exam) along with more $$$$$!!!!! (i just laugh now when they say pay another $400 for this or that, otherwise i'd cry) and once they return that to CGFNS, it satisfies your US licensure visascreen needs. I'm sorry if that's conveluted - it's the worst, most frustrating and greedy beaurocratic system i've ever had the misfortune of dealing with. hopefully it will all be worth it! good luck!

wow, so that told me! when people say that americans have no sense of irony, i always leap to 'your' defence. after all, my other and better half purports to have been born and educated on your fair shores (though has lived here in the uk for ten years) and has an unparalleled sense of humour. uk nurses, too, work in very difficult situations and get by on heavy doses of humour. so relax and don't take everything quite so literally and so seriously! we should have all told that poor nursing student that nursing's a breeze and watch with a wry smile as she's expected (with horror) to clean up faecal vomit on her first shift. i love a good baptism of fire! good luck!

good for you and i hope that you do! i thought that nursing in the uk was bad, but the americans sound just as crazy if not worse. i wonder how much of this altruism is related to nurses frightened of what the others will think of them and how it will affect their careers. i, for one, am a firm believer that if you cannot look after yourself then what good are you to care for others. working without a break is irresponsible, does indeed enduce burn out and unnecessary sickness and shame on the ward managers for not enforcing staff well being with structured breaks. i know that when i get to nurse in your country, i will be taking what is entitled to me as i know that i get tired and short tempered when not fully fully reposed. and that's not fair on the patients or me!

don't worry... i remember listening out for squeeks and hisses and just getting ear ache from the pressure exerted by the ear pieces themselves. then, out of the blue, eureka, i heard what i was supposed to! practice and practice. but do not despair and worry about it as you will get there! it may help to palpate brachial/ulnar blood vessels at the same time as listening, or watching the sphig guage pulsating as you slowly deflate the cuff. you will then get a better idea of what to listen out while simultaneously feeling/seeing the measurement in progress. try it out. and good luck - not that you'll need it.

i don't get up each morning to nurse the sick and needy out of the goodness of my own heart. mother theresa i am not. i get up, like everybody else, because i have bills to pay and a dog to feed. you guys make it sound like you are going for your sainthood. remember that at the end of the day, nursing is still a job and a profession. and you don't need to have hegiographic tendencies to be a good nurse. so what if someone wants to go into surgery so they don't have to deal with patients who are awake? be realistic please! besides, it leaves more spaces for the rest of you "saints" to mop a fevered brow, clean up poop and take the abuse from the lovely lady in bed 3 with senile dementia. so instead on wishing that these "bad" and "naughty" nurses would hurry up and burn out, take yourselves back off to the wards and get on with being good nurses instead of judging and condemning the ones without your altruistic romantic notions. jeez, if it were left up to you guys, you'd tell your bosses not to worry about a pay rise as you do it out of love. get real, please!

is this a serious question? what do you think that nurses do? mop a fevered brow? wear a little white hat with a red cross and read bedtime stories waiting in vain for Dr Death to ask for your hand in marriage? you've been reading too many romance novels, my dear. to be a good nurse, you take a holistic view of your patient and your patient's physical-and-psychosocial needs. you need to know everything that is going on with your patient from how many spoon fulls of soup they eat at lunch, to the colour and consistency of their poo (and if that means a rumage in a commode potty, then that's what it takes) to knowing the health of their budgie (if little tweetie-pie ain't happy, then chances are your patient isn't either, you'd be surprised how that affects their well-being!). i suggest you put away your toy-stethoscope, get yourself down to the local general hospital and volunteer your services tout de suite. get sitting with patients, talk to them, offer to help out at meal times, smell the smells, and see the sights. watch what those nurses do (and the abuse that they take), see how Dr Death talks to nurse Betty (he ain't that hot anyway). and then make up your mind about nursing. or not as the case may be.

This doesn't work for those abroad - I am still not on the California website despite passing the NCLEX in March '05. To be a registered, licensed nurse you need a social security number. And the snail pace at which your beaurocratic backward country operates - well, you may be waiting for years to come!! I had to wait 6 weeks for my results to filter through to the UK. Sometimes I ask myself whether it's all worth the stress and expense! Exasperatedly yours :)

working in london, most hospitals are staffed by a very diverse multi-ethnic mix of nurses from far-off lands. unfortunately (for them) nurses' names can cause amusement for hospital staff. i remember once working with a nurse called candida and on another occasion a nurse called malena. i was just hoping that during handover there were no patients with thrush and bloody stools... that would have been too much... very sweet girls though.

i took my exam here in london yesterday (monday 4th april) - for california state board of nursing - apparently pearson vue say that Ca do not participate in the quick results scheme so i may have to wait forever!!! like you, the questions became harder and harder, although i thought that they were hard from the start!! i feel a sense of doom (although relief that's it's finally over!!!)n. i'm very convinced that i failed as i hadn't the faintest idea either what they were going on about, so i made a whole load of guesses. whether they were eductaed or not, i'm not too sure. does anyone know how to get the Ca results earlier? mine will be dispatched to the UK via an agency, so my wait may be potentially decades!!! help! by the way, did you pass?????