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I am 67. I retired in 2012 because the "boy wonder" Bobby Jindal was our governor in Louisiana and privatized most of the state hospitals. Those of us that had been working for the state hospitals could either go to work for the new owners at reduced pay, downgrades in supervisory roles, etc., or retire. I keep my license active, because I still can't stop feeling like I need to get to work. I started my first job as a cook at 14 and have always had at least 1 job and sometimes as many as 3 at a time. Over my 25 years as an RN, I was divorced (collateral damage of working and going to nursing school) and lived alone so work was my "social life", (Maybe a symptom of having PTSD from Vietnam). I don't really trust most people enough to want them in my private space. I worked all the overtime I could get until they changed overtime pay to K-time. Then I worked at another hospital on my off weekend. Then I added a third job training nurses for a company that makes medical products. Since I retired, I built a shed, a deck with a roof on it, and I am almost done with a 20 x24' carport. I did all those things by myself because I can't bring myself to ask for help (another symptom). I guess what I am getting to is I have to feel like I can go back to work if I want to. Kind of like an itch you cannot reach to scratch. I do Tai Chi, work out at a gym and ride a Harley. I feel like if I stop moving I won't ever want to start again. So keeping my license current keeps me feeling like not working is a choice and I can always change my mind. That is the most insight I have expressed to anyone in the last 50 years. Anonymity is refreshing.

The job market for nurses is getting ridiculous. Personality tests, credit checks, wasn't getting through nursing school hard enough? Now they are going to check my Visa card use to see if I can take care of my patients. The personality tests make me want to scream. They ask the same question 5 times, with slight variations each time to verify if really does bother me to have someone interrupt me when I am in the middle of caring for a patient. Do I say yes it bothers me slightly, moderately, intensely, moves me to uncontrollable rage? I have been a nurse for 20 years and just retired from the state. I find this process tedious and irrelevant. When did they turn over the HR departments to ex CIA interragators? AAARRGGGHHHHH. OK, I feel better now.

You can work as an RN with a felony conviction. It depends on what you were convicted of. I know anything involving violence, and I believe narcotic sales and a few other things. You have to check the nurse practice act of the state you are in. Anyone can rehabilitate themselves if they want it bad enough. Some states ask for proof of rehabilitation. Most jobs ask and add the disclaimer of "This may not keep you from being hired." I think Australia keeps you out if you have a felony conviction as well as Canada. Ironic since Australia was originally a penal colony. At one time you got sent there for being a criminal, now if you have a past crime your not welcome.

Usually juvenile records are sealed. I think I would check that before I brought up information that wasn't absolutely required

See if you can talk to someone in HR, or your DON and do it as a group. You can get significant discounts. We have one starting in Louisiana where I work and they knocked 2000 off to make it 6500. They came out and made a presentation and needed a certain number of people to sign up.

I am always thankful to my instructor from my first semester in nursing school. She was a Lt. Colonel in the reserves and had many years of civilian and military experience as a nurse. She would always say "first I will teach you how to do this to pass nursing school, then I will teach you how to keep your job and sanity in the real world." I hear this mantra in my head daily as I do my job. The biggest problem in nursing is that we do not charge for our service. We are included in the room charge like the housekeeper, the sheets, the wall suction, etc. So every bean counter out there figures the way to cut costs is increase the nursing work load and decrease the assitance they have to accomplish their work. Radiologists, respiratory therapist, etc. all charge for their service, hence they are money makers for the hospital. Nurses do not charge, so they are expenses, not money makers. The problems in nursing require nurses to have a voice in their career, we have none. The ANA is a farce. The state boards are police forces against nurses and their function is to find scapegoats for any problems, not protect nurses. Please never believe any state board is your friend or in any way on our side, they are there to represent the patient not the nurse. Many experienced nurses are angry about the constant changes and the way non practicing nurses are constantly coming up with new paperwork, or new requrements for us to make us more cleint friendly. (as long as it does not effect the bottom line profit margin for the hospital) New nurses are trained by nurses that get them as an added work load and so they start out being a burden on the experienced nurse and don't get nurtured, they get to be the sounding board for the anger of the experienced nurse trainging them. The "experienced" nurse training you may be a dolt, whose only redeaming factor is that she has been able to keep her job despite his/her incompetence. They will then pass on their poor attitude and poor work ethic. So in a nutshell, it is a buyer beware situation. You come into the field expecting to help people and sometimes you actually get that chance. Most of the time, paperwork is more important than patient care, you are poorly trained and get thrown to the dogs far too soon to be ready for the workload. You will be expected to be faultless and to be responsible for everyone working "under your license" most of whom will have no appreciation for that relationship. You will get written up for the mistakes of the CNA, the LPN, etc., because you are the RN and you should have caught those errors. I have been an RN for 20 years and it gets worse every year. I love being a nurse and I hate seeing where we are headed and how we are treated. I hate that we pass on our anger to new nurses, but I know it is inevitable that we do. I believe nurses have to organize, stick toghether and vote as a group for legislation to make changes in our field. New nurses need qualified preceptors and adequate training, we need satisfactory nurse to patient ratios, quality equipment to do the job, and time to assess our patients. We need time to read the chart and know what we are treating and why. NO ONE IS GOING TO GIVE US THESE THINGS VOLUNTARILY BECAUSE WE ARE EXPENSES, WE DO NOT BRING MONEY INTO THE HOSPITAL. NURSES NEED TO UNITE, CHANGE THIS TREND, FIGHT FOR WHAT WE SHOULD BE AND QUIT ACCEPTING WHAT THEY PUT ON YOUR PLATE. This message will fall on many deaf ears, everyone wants things to be better, nobody wants to fight to get it that way. When nurses went on strikes to improve things, other sleazy nurse crossed their picket lines for a few extra bucks and helped the bean counters maintain the status quo. They all justified what they did by saying they were concerned about patient care, well they can pucker up and kiss my gluteus maximus, they did it for greed. Every day we accept the current conditions it will get worse. Unite and stand up for recognition and quality in nursing while we can.

I am not a smoker. I tried it once when I was 11 and didn't like it. I never smoked again. It is legal to smoke, although banned in many places and the number of places is growing. It is a choice that falls under the heading of things I defended when I was in the service. Like the freedom for all of us to post our opinions here. As long as you do it where it does not effect me, it's your lungs, have at it. Employers are now checking things like your Facebook Page to determine your personality before hiring. Where does it stop? I find it scary to think that we are being put under this type of microscopic examination for JOB. I like nursing, I have been doing it for 16 years, but it is a job. I do not believe in "callings" unless your schizoprhenic, or one of your teeth is a real blue tooth. If you come to work and do your job, treat your patients like you would want to be treated and you smoke in the area they have banned you to go, that should be it. I think employers are getting way too much power over our personal lives. Same goes for the state boards and the government (not sure if there is a distinction there). I just read an article about a teacher that lost her job because she had a picture on her Facebook of her on vacation with a beer in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. Nothing to indicate either one was hers, she was just holding them and smiling (why would she be smiling unless she was guilty of something, right?) I don't want to be stuck in a room with someone smoking, I also don't like to watch sports on tv, so I have a choice. My local state board just put out a letter suggesting that all nurses taking any mood altering medications should be required to inform their employer. They are referring to narcotics and benzos, but shouldn't that also include antidepressants, insulin, over the counter cold and flu meds. I hate working with those nurses that come to work still impaired from that Nyquil they took the night before for the flu. (that part was a joke, for the benefit of the humor deficient). Again where does it all end? Losing your right to earn a living for doing something that is still legal, like smoking tobacco or having a picture of you taken out of context, or taking a lortab after you get off a 12 shift because you need a knee replacement. The cigarette and the lortab would still be in your system the next day even if you did not use them at work. The picture could be from 2 years ago. If George Orwell thought the hypothetical 1984 was going to be scary imagine what he would think about the reality of 2011. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Arthur C. Clarke

Like all fields of nursing, you don't have to be certified to do the job. You can get the job as a nurse in a hyperbaric unit without the certification. If you want to work hyperbarics, learn wound care. It is a big part of the job and if you have that background it will help get you in the door of a hyperbaric unit. I started out as a commercial diver before becoming a nurse. So it was an easy transition. .

Is there really that much difference between going to class online, being in the back of a classroom that has 200 students? The professor won't remember you either way. At least online you can get your questions answered and probably get more out of the lecture when you can pause it to go to the bathroom. The degrees like Phoenix have come a long way. From my experience, you can bounce into advance practice just as easy with an online BSN as a traditional. I have lots of friends that started online way back with places like University of Alabama and have had no problem. It beats driving round trip 200 miles every weekend for 18 months. I haven't seen anyone get a raise yet with getting a BSN regardless of where they got it.

I have read these comments and heard these comments so many times. I find it humorous. I have an ADN. I woked for 10 years in a level 1 trauma center. I can tell you that if a person didn't tell you what degree they had you could never figure it out by their performance. Diploma, ADN, BSN, MSN, they may have educational differences, but it is their experience on the job that counts. I know nurses that excelled in school and couldn't handle the job. As far as being treated as professionals it works out to money. Drs. charge for their service and hence bring money into the hospital. The same holds true for Social Workers, Respiratory, Radiology, etc. Nurses are considered an expense by hospital administators. We are included in the room charge just like the sheets, blankets, IV poles, etc. When you have to cut costs you don't take from the money makers, you take from the expenditures (nurses). We can't buy cheaper blankets, but we can raise the nurse/patient ratio and cut costs. We can lay off a janitor and make the nurses mop between patients. We can do away with the night time pharmacist and have the nurses get their own meds. And we always do it, we may complain about it all night, but we mop, we clean, we get meds. Find a job no one else will do and assign it to the nursing staff and it always gets done. Justified by "well someone has to do it and it is in the patient's best interest." It has nothing to do with education. Ask a social worker to mop the floors, or take out the garbage. Ask a psychologist to clean up a patient they are assessing that just had a BM. I have been called to PT so many times to "clean up this gentleman and bring him back please, he's had an accident." Get a clue nurses. We do not as a profession have any type of cohesiveness. You can't get 2 nurses to stand up for the color of a uniform let alone to stand together and demand safe ratios, hours, adequate back up staff. Drs. stick together, back each other up, demand respect and get it. Nurses spend their spare time writing each other up for petty infractions that are essentially meaningless in actual patient care outcome. Why would anyone consider this the behavior of a professional? Want to be treated as a professional, act like you are one. Nurses need to join together, unity is power. No one hears my voice, everyone hears our voices.

Now, adding to the problem is the state is planning to close Charity and University Hospitals. We took care of the vast majority of the uninsured patients in the area. It is estimated that there are 60-75000 more uninsured since the storm and the loss of jobs. Where are those people going to go? Not to mention all the nurses and support people that worked in those facilities. The governor mandated disaster pay for the state workers until 11/6/05, then they are putting us on unpaid furlough. Since we are on furlough we can't get unemployment. We can't claim seniority for another state facility. We will be on unpaid furlough from 11/7 to 01/06/2006. Then they will start the layoff process. I have done some volunteer work, but will soon have to move on, I guess. With no plans to rebuild Charity or University, I will have to move closer to one of the other Charity hospitals or move out of the state system. And God help the folks with no insurance, cause they will have no place to go. We have been the dumping ground for all the indigent patients for the entire southern half of the state. All the private hospitals use the "you can get that surgery here, but you will need 5000.00 cash, or you can go to Charity and get it done for free" line to get folks to request transfers. That option will no longer exist. They have lost their homes, jobs, and now their only option for healthcare. We are seeing them in a tent now, but I don't know how long they will allow us to do that. It is going to be an interesting time over the next year to see where the city and it's heart takes it. I keep hearing the phrase "don't let the city that care forgot, become the city that forgot to care" I hope our legislators have that same sentiment. Before the storm our ER's saw about 300 patients a day and we were their primary care. Without Charity, our patients will not make it. We weren't pretty, but we saved lives and kept folks healthy that had no alternative.

I appreciate it. I am one of the lucky ones, really.

I live in Metairie a suburb of New Orleans. I did not do activation team this year for the first time in 10 years and I actually felt very guilty when I saw my friends on TV. I felt like I had let them down. They were stuck in the ER at Charity for a week with no power, a flooded basement (where the morgue and the cafeteria are both located) They were forced to go up to the second floor because of water and armed looters, no AC and record heat. So could I have made it any better, probably not, but at least I would have been there. I watched on TV and kept feeling this desire to try to get to them and do something, anything other than sit there and watch it. The nurses I have seen since they evacuated seem to be handling it OK for now. They may not really have had time to work on it in their heads. We are now under the gun again with Rita. Many of them are now homeless, and even though we are getting emergency pay, the last word was Charity and University (our east and west campuses) are not going to re open. For those of us that have been there for a while, it is a loss of not just the physical property, our entire lives will never be the same. The lifestyle, the friends, the interaction, it is all gone. We will still have the friends, but our relationship will be out of context. The place was a hell hole to work in, but we had a core group that made it home. I think it has yet to sink in for most of us. We have gotten together for dinners, you can see the uncertainty in their eyes. It is like being jerked into another dimension, the people are the same, but the world is different. We are going to be split up and redistributed to other Charity hospitals around the state. Some of us may go to work in Field hospitals in the city, I can only hope that most of us can end up together in whatever they set up. Working in the ER we see lives change in seconds because of accidents, MI's, etc. This was like an MI that was communicable, we all got a dose of it, those that stayed and those that will never get to go back.

I find the 70% thing to be cloudy. Check with ABATE. they track motorcycle injuries. If my son were riding a motorcycle, which I have been succussful so far in preventing, I would want him to wear a helmet and protective clothing. Many of the injuries I have seen that were not serious (low speed) could have been prevented or reduced had the riders worn helmets and leathers. The high speed collisions are beyond those precautions. Again, I don't judge another individuals choice of adrenalin fix. If you can legally climb a mountain, jump out of a perfectly good airplane, or work in an urban trauma center, you are entitled to the death or dismemberment of your choice. I don't dispute the intelligence of the choice, merely the ability to make it without someone one deciding to be my mommy. I have a hard enough time keeping myself out of trouble without feeling the need to decide how the guy next to me should live. There are numerous intelligent individuals doing dangerous things and loving it. I say go for it, run with scissors, just don't cry when someone gets their eye poked out. We have been warned about that since we were toddlers.

I have been an ER nurse in a level 1 trauma center for 10 years. I keep track of motorcycle trauma because I have also been a motorcycle rider for 40 years. I have been in a couple accidents myself, one left me in a wheelchair for 3 months and off work for a year. I was wearing a helmet when my head went through the windshield of the car, it was pulled off when my head came out. My head injury occurred in the ensuing 65 foot trip to a stop on the highway. I was doing the speed limit. A 17 year old ran a stop sign when I was 30 feet from him, with my headlight on to make me visible. (ironic part was I was only home 3 weeks after an injury free 1 1/2 years in Viet Nam) I think the helmet saved my life. I also think from my experiences as a rider and a nurse that I was the exception. I think helmets are good to wear, but they just are not as big a factor as everyone wants to believe. I have seen numerous accidents because the helmet blocked view, or sound. I had one friend crash because a bee got in his helmet. By far, the majority of fatal injuries are multi trauma and many helmets are found on a broken neck or body. I just don't think the government should decide seatbelts, helmuts, etc. If you make the choice to ride without them, just don't whine when things go bad. That is the real issue. "Adults" that want to take the risk, then don't want to accept the result of that gamble. Maybe the government should pass a law requiring us to wear condoms, then we could save all that money spent on caring for aids patients. Better yet, they could mandate sterilization for people known to carry debilitating genetic defects. The amount of money required to care for their offspring is astronomical. I think everyone who so desires should buckle up, or put on their helmet and let everyone else choose their destiny. That is what freedom means.