zzrider

I guess it depends on how heavy your rinseback is. The prime is easy to figure out - just look at your bag when you're done priming the lines. How much did you use (minus the little bit that ends up in the bucket)? I find it hard to believe that the lines hold more than 300 ml, so 500 must include a pretty heavy rinse back. When I was trained, I was told 300ml for the prime/rinseback.

I'm going to offer a somewhat different, more positive perspective on acutes. First off, I'm a new nurse, and acutes is my first and only nursing job. I'm not young and starry-eyed though: this is a second career for me, having come from a long corporate background that was 1,000x worse than what I've seen from my Big 2 employer. I absolutely love acutes, and really can't imagine doing any other sort of nursing work. Yep, the days can be long. I left the house at 5 am this morning and got home at 11 pm (and I've had longer). I'm on the schedule tomorrow as well, but my manager put me on standby because she knows I was out late tonight and can cover the census in other ways. This happens regularly. I don't get the sense at all that our management views us as expendable pieces of machinery. They really seem to do everything they can to make the workload tolerable and safe, within the confines of still needing to get the work done. Management is effusively appreciative when someone steps up to go above and beyond. The nephrologists in our group also seem to be considerate of the nurses, and they don't order nighttime stats and bring in the on-call person unless genuinely necessary. I don't see the long hours as much of a problem. Yes, we are treating fragile, acutely ill patients and have to be on our game. But really, acutes is about the easiest nursing job anyone could ever ask for - only one patient at a time (sometimes a tandem in the HD room), and there is very little in the way of physical demands. If you're organized and your patient is stable, you spend much of your time just sitting there logging q15min assessments. Regarding the oft-heard grouse, "the big two only care about the money"... well, yeah. Don't you care about your paycheck? I sure do. I'm not highly inclined to volunteer to go in on a day off and work for free - is anybody? Of course the corporations are concerned about the money - it has to come from somewhere, and in these days of Medicare reimbursement cuts, that's becoming increasingly difficult. It's a problem that's easy to complain about, but there is no easy fix. Maybe I just got lucky and I work in an atypical group. Whatever the case, I love it!

My apologies for misinterpreting your response. My post was addressing the perception of health care as a right and how this perception is what is largely behind the drive for universal single-payer coverage. Since you took issue with my post, I thought you were drawing a parallel between police and fire services and healthcare in the context of assumed basic rights. Since we're on the same page regarding these sorts of things NOT being rights, that simplifies the discussion. If you're just illustrating one possible view of healthcare as being analogous to unionized monopolistic municipal services (which is what police and fire departments are), then your not "wrong" insofar as you are entitled to that opinion. But for my part, no thanks. I want no part of such a system.

Not true. You do not have a RIGHT to police or fire protection. The Supreme Court found in Warren Vs. District of Columbia that the police do NOT have a DUTY to protect you, thus, you do not have an automatic "right" to their labor.

The observation that "Every other developed country in the world pays between about 5 and 12% of GDP on healthcare, we spend about 18%." is utterly meaningless in the context of Obamacare or single payer for a number of reasons: 1) Other countries aren't the US, do not have our population with our rather complicated demographics and enculturated health care problems. You can't point to a small European country and compare it to the US. Besides, with the exception of Germany, Europe is in far worse economic condition than the US thanks to their socialist welfare states, their health care systems being a prime contributor. 2) There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Obamacare will do anything at all to reduce our healthcare expenditures. In fact, we have a perfect example of exactly the opposite experience to draw from: Massachusetts, whose universal plan was pretty much the template for Obamacare. Seven years after its implementation, MA still has the highest per-capita health care expenditures in the country. And yes, I also vehemently oppose any form of government-run single payer system as well. Single payer system are based on the feel-good notion that health care is a basic human right. I dispute this with a simple observation: at the end of the day, health care is a collection of goods and services, that's it. Important goods and services, but goods and services nonetheless. Goods and services are the product of human labor (our labor). How you can you define goods and services - the labor of humans - as a RIGHT than can be claimed by others? People love the idea of government run healthcare because it creates a fog in the payment mechanism between the patient and payer, and you all just assume you'll get paid because government has the power to take money from others. So whose right is more important? The person who wants to claim your services as their birthright, or you, for wanting to be paid for your labor?

I just got my acceptance letter from the RN program of choice yesterday. When I start in the fall, I'll be 46.This is a second career for me (was a software developer previously). I eased in to health care by working as an EMT and in a hospital ER for the past couple years. I'm thrilled beyond words to be starting nursing school soon. :)

Heck, I'm just an EMT who works as a tech in a hospital ER, and half the time the patients think I'm the doctor.

Indeed, I am so happy I chose to go the EMT route as an entry point to health care. I love working on an ambulance. I'm just doing typical private EMS BLS ambulance transport type stuff, but that's fine with me. The pay is absurd; you'd make more as a waiter, but that wouldn't help you get a job as a nurse later. Being an EMT also got me in as a Tech in a local hospital ER, which I love even more. I'd sell my soul for a job as an E.R Nurse. The EMT experience and training is already helping me tremendously in my pre-nursing prereqs, and even more importantly, it is gaining me contacts and exposure in hospital settings which I hope will help me land my first RN job (I won't lie - I'm very anxious about that). The other good thing about EMT work is flexibility of work schedule, which makes it easier to accomodate work and school at the same time. For my full-time ambulance job, I work 24 and 16 hours shifts, which gets me 40 hours/week in just two days. And my ER job is per deim, so I pick up whatever I can accommodate there.

Half the RNs in the ER I work at are men, and both the ICU and ACU floors have RNs that are men as well. I'm far more worried about my job prospects as a future new grad nurse than I am the about the masculinity of the title.

I too came from a prior cubicle-bound life, and will be starting nursing school next fall at the age of 46. Working full time for the past year as an EMT has helped correct the atrophy of my past 20 years. Start eating better. Figure out what your BMI is supposed to be and get there. Join a gym and do a mixture of cardio/lifting/pilates/yoga. Learn proper lifting technique and take care of your back.

You definitely aren't alone! I'm 45 and currently taking my last prereq (A&P II); intend to start a ADN program next fall. I come from a completely different background as well - have an engineering B.S. and worked 20 years in software development. Hated every minute of it (except cashing the paychecks). When the high-tech burnout hit me, I decided to get my feet wet in health care slowly - I took an EMT class and have been working full-time for an ambulance service for over a year now while taking my nursing prereqs. I'm also working as an ER Tech and unit secretary in a community hospital. I love it, and this low-level exposure to various healthcare settings has helped solidify my commitment to becoming an RN. If you have no real work exposure to what it's really like in a health care facility, you might want to try this route before making the commitment to nursing school. It's definitely not for everyone. I must admit I am quite anxious about job prospects once I finish school. Everything I hear and read is doom and gloom for new grad RNs. I hoping that my "maturity" will be seen in a positive light, and that "paying my dues" with my current EMT/ER Tech work experience will help give me a competitive edge over other new grads. We'll see. Good luck!

You're only 37 - you're only too old to go back to school if you let yourself think you are too old. I've got 6 years on you and I'm just now going back to school myself, and I'm undertaking a radical career change. I've got 20 years in IT, looking at changing to health care now. I'm currently taking an EMT-B course to get my foot in the door of healthcare, as well as working on the prereq classes for a nursing program. I love being back in school again.