avionics

I am in an RN program right now and the majority of the class have never actually used their CNA. It was mandatory for us to have either taken the CNA training within five years of starting RN school or be actively working as a CNA somewhere. You will hear many people say CNA experience is a great thing to have when you go looking for that RN job, and that may be true, but what is likely more important is what personal contacts you have that may help you get that RN job. Who you know makes a great deal of difference in a tight job market. As for the usefulness of CNA experience compared to inexperienced RN students, well, some of both are idiots and some of both will be great nurses... CNA work will likely help you get more comfortable around patients, acclimate you to feces, and let some managers know your name in whatever facility you work (assuming you are good, dependable, etc...) Don't let people tell you that lots of CNA experience will make interviewers assume you would be a great nurse though. The skills are different, as are the jobs. Some are much better at one than the other. Good luck. You're gonna need it. P.S. There is no nursing shortage...but the best will likely find jobs anyway.

I will be plenty happy to finish school and be referred to as "the RN that caught the F--k up". Which beats the all too common new grad alternative of "that RN F----d up..." Both have RN in the title which, considering how hard I am working to get those initials, I am fine with.

While I admit this is a ridiculous job posting, most likely a joke, I don't think discriminating against someone for their physical condition is illegal outside of an actual recognized disability. I know a facility could get into serious trouble for using ethnicity, age, recognized disability or gender as hiring criteria, but I don't think there are any actual laws regarding physical conditioning or obesity as a hiring factor. Thus we may not like it but there is little we can actually do about it other than not work there. I still fear this may become a real requirement in the near future with the focus employers are starting to put on their group insurance rates. I think it likely that it is already a hidden factor in many interviewer's minds but there is currently no real defense against it. Much like smoking, obesity will likely soon be an acknowledged factor rather than just an unspoken one in hiring decisions. Please don't flame me for stating the obvious unless you read the entire post. I am not agreeing with it, just pointing out that it is likely to be a future issue we should be ready for.

4.0 and it was pretty much required at my CC. Their application points system just gives points for grades in specific courses you took to put you on an acceptance list for the nursing program (ADN). The amount of applicants combined with their application points decides what GPA cutoff they use for that year. This year most of us have 4.0 because it seems everyone and their mother applied to the program... By the way, isn't this OP the same one that asked about IQ and nursing school earlier? I could be mistaken but this seems very similar to that...

I am nervous too. Starting tomorrow with an orientation day before the ADN core nursing stuff starts. I think everyone in this position will be terrified but others have done it and so can we. Anything with so many unknowns is scary so don't feel alone.

I got to see a strange side of this as well, about twelve years ago my mother had to get an emergency hysterectomy done. She had been an LPN for many years and really knew her stuff, medically speaking, and usually got along with nurses well; so it shocked me that when I visited, I walked in on her verbally tearing apart and threatening one of the nurses, then kicked the nurse out of her room. I felt terrible over this, but my mother was too PO'ed to explain it to me even. I went to another nearby RN to apologize and get what happened and the other RN couldn't stop laughing about it. She said my mother was right and the other nurse was the most "incompetent and ornery bi*** that ever worked in a hospital" and needed to get straightened out like that when she screwed up. I was kinda shocked... When I picked up my mother she was getting pats on the backs and congratulations from all the staff who had heard about it. :yeah::yeah:Aparently this particular nurse was not well liked to say the least... (Later mom explained that she flipped out when the nurse tried to give her another patient's meds by accident. When my 45 y/o otherwise healthy mother questioned the sudden new drugs which included blood thinners and heart meds...the nurse just told mom to "just be quiet and take your pills", she blew up and wouldn't let that nurse in her room again.)

It is not just nursing that is so anal about drug testing employees. I spent ten years in aviation and all the places I worked we were part of an FAA random drug testing program. Sounds good on the surface, however I was the only one picked for the "random" drug tests constantly because I was the only one in the hangar who everyone was sure would be clean. That gets the confidence down a bit. We were too busy once when my name popped up "randomly" so the CEO told me to put it off awhile while I finished the plane first. Turned into a 2 day delay since they wouldn't let me go spend the 3 hours it usually took waiting at the certified collection clinic to pee in the cup... Then we got to meet a couple of the FAA Drug Testing experts who made it a very strong point to speak to me in an office for an hour with the CEO while they threatened us. It was surreal to get anti-drug lectures from the FAA delivered to the only 2 Tea-totalers in the building, while almost all the mechanics in the hangar were either hung over, high, or still slightly drunk from the night before... Yeah, I can't wait to get into nursing...It does at least involve dealing with a higher form of life, coworker wise.

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I am an AHA BLS instructor and I most likely would not make you take more than the renewal course. I doubt my TC higher ups would either in their classes. The non-renewal course would simply not offer you anything you would not get in the renewal class at your level. Its not like you haven't had it and as long as you are not an idiot, many instructors will do that. The instructors I have been lucky enough to work with believe like me, that the goal is to ensure you know what to do rather than waste your time punitively. If you are training through a large ambulance company with strictly scheduled classes, they may not want to bother checking on the idiot factor and just limit you to the full course, but I suppose that would be the nature of any large, inflexible, company mindset... To be honest its not like there is a big difference between the original class and the renewal class anyway, it is the same skillset, just one sets it up a bit more... P.S. I know some folks like the online class then the skills test alone, but I would advise you to only do this if you are actually certain of your cpr skills. You would not believe how much of a pain that can be to get someone paying you to monitor a quick skills check and learning they are terrible. Then do you send them home to practice more like you are supposed to? Or do you mess up your schedule and spend hours teaching them how to do it right when they haven't paid for that and it cuts into others' time... Never an easy situation, so some instructors are not happy to do skills tests sometimes. Just understand the situation that puts them in realistically. Skills fade if you don't practice and it is hard to fail someone who needs that cert for their work.

We use craigslist all the time and I have never had an issue with it, but we are very cautious about meeting anyone in a parking lot with cash...I wouldn't even consider doing that without an armed, experienced, trustworthy buddy in the car next to me observing. (Not my first go-round). The core of any good Nigerian scam is to get someone to send you real money for a bogus money order. The instant give away is when they offer to mail you a check (usually huge), with the condition that you wire money somewhere (usually to their buddy). They get your real money, while their bogus check bounces in your account. This reply has that giant red flag in spades...even if you ignore the grammar and other red flags entirely... They do another version of this one if you are selling something online. We had one such genius try to offer my wife a few thousand dollars extra for an old couch if we were willing to wire some of the extra cash back to him, to pay to ship the couch to Africa...not a joke, that was really funny... We all know how Africa has a terrible old couch shortage and must import them from America. The sad part is how many people actually still fall for this crap.

That would seem kind of ridiculous, canning you before you have a chance, after they have spent time and money on your training, for some SNAFU completely outside of your control. If you have anyone with a brain in HR that comprehends this situation, hopefully they can amend your agreement rather than tear it up. Don't panic until the bad things happen. Best thing is to make sure the problem is solved so it doesn't repeat, then make sure everyone you contracted with really grasps the situation. All you can do at that point is pray they have a brain and are reasonable... There is frustration, but certainly not shame in the situation. If they wanted you once, they will want you again. If the worst case happens, it won't be permanent, just a delay... Good luck Brother Murse...

I have had similar issues in the past. People do not like discussing past conversations with someone who can quote verbatim the entire conversation. They usually get angry and storm off. It seems to me that most people subtlely tweak their memory of what they believe they said in a conversation to make themselves seem more intelligent after the fact. They then get really angry when you stumble across some article a month or week later that completely disproves what they said. The hard part is to remember that most folks just won't remember the conversation at all. Sad. I spend as much time reminding folks about a conversation a year ago that I just found something interesting to add to it, than relating the exciting new information. It makes it hard to relate to most people as well. Any reference I make to anything I have seen or heard is sure to not be caught by others so everyone misses my jokes entirely. It feels like I spend my whole life explaining things to people who were there when they happened. It can be enough to drive you mad sometimes. I have tons of childhood memories of significant events that my parents don't even remember and sometimes deny ever happened, until I produce proof or an obscure picture of some type. AAAArrrrgggg.... stupidity is truly a blessing. I do not have full recall, but rather have uncontrolled recall of random conversations, specific incidents, and the written word for some strange reason. I used to read a 500 page novel in one night before being able to fall asleep. I had no choice as reading and getting absorbed into a story was the only way to quiet the tumbling thoughts enough so that I could sleep at all. The real problem was that even years later a random page turns up in my head from a novel I read as a child and I can read nearly every word, sometimes even page number, and instantly recall the entire story/side events/details of the book, even if I can not recall the entire thing word for word. Re-reading a book I have read as a kid is also difficult because even if I am certain I didn't read that one yet, after one page into it, frequently it all comes back in a wild flood of memory. It is not useful in my personal experience. Some things stick and I cannot get rid of them, while at the same time I can study some things for hours and just cant force them to stick at all... Not to mention remembering in stark detail every bad thing that has ever happened in your life. Every mistake, every embarrassment, every injustice, every single stupid hurtful thing you said as a child to someone else...or was said to you. You do not want it. Not if you understand it as something you cannot control. There is no off button. Just my experience anyway. Do not worry I am not as depressed or manic as this post makes me sound, but it is frustration at an epic level that leads me to strange behavior at times, which results in people thinking I am strange. Such is my life.

I think fear is the result of intelligence, imagination, and the unknown combining in new and horrible ways. Sometimes its more of one than the others...It is important to analyze which of these is most likely the cause so that we may know if we should listen to our fears or discount them. I am scared as well, because I know anything in the medical field is no joke, with real consequences for our mistakes, plus having a position of responsibility that few people outside of the medical field can truly comprehend. So anybody new to this field that is without some fear-I would not trust. In my experience those that are truly fearless are likely just too ignorant to fully grasp the situation... The attribute of courage is found in how we work through our fears, rather than in the absence of fear. Courage, like fear, can be built over time by practicing it until it becomes second nature. The trick is to build the right one of them up as either one definitely grows if you let it.

I was pretty little but I still remember the horrible level of confusion having a little information can lead to. My mother was an LPN and was normally very upfront about things, however got mad when she thought I was being vulgar. I was still very young, (kindergartenish?) and had seen and heard enough to know the names of basic female anatomy yet still wasn't sure exactly which "passage" babies came out of. When I asked my mother if the baby comes out the butt or the lady parts she freaked out and said "babies come from a hole between the mother's legs!" I asked a few more times and she kept answering with that same panicked reply but yelled a bit louder each time till I went away with that answer. I spent a long time wondering just how many more holes girls had down there that I hadn't accounted for... It confused me so much when I had thought I had a pretty good grasp on the issue, that I can still recall it, and my confusion for long afterward, clearly. Looking back now I can understand why my friends and I freaked her out sometimes, we had much more in common with the kids on South Park than any innocent sweet children.

My previous wife grew up in Mexico and when she got flustered or tired her english slipped a bit. So it was unwise of her best friend to lie and tell her husband she was out with my wife (really with a boyfriend/coworker tho) while hubby was stationed in another state. Hubby calls my wife in the middle of the night to check the story and she replies "I am in bed sleeping with my husband(me)" Then he asks where his wife is and she panics and realizes she was gonna cover for her girlfriend and says "I forgot she is here too, right next to us sleeping too." She then panics and hangs up on him. It took him a year or so till he could look at me again. Eventually he figured it out and I was off the hook, but it was hard to know what to say for awhile for both of us...