MMayo

I had similar issues to consider myself. I think of it this way, the NCLex passing rate is a grade for the school. For some reason, the Nclex is reality. I am not sure of what reality, but I have realize that others will "judge" you based on what school you went to in the beginning. My advice is rank the schools based on their NCLEX and their availability to you. Transportation is an important reality in completing nursing school. You can be smart as hell on the test, but if you can't make it to the clinical rotations, then you are going nowhere.

If academia and research are your interest in your future, then GPa will have some bearing on your future plans. I have other plans which have no need for my GPA outside of school. I am not much of a theory guy, so I will stay at the bedside until I can't lift a patient anymore. Good luck to you.

Once you are in the real world of nursing, GPA has no meaning. What did you learn in Nursing School as theory and practice and can you apply that knowledge appropriately, perhaps even save a life today. I know several highly ranked graduates from nursing school, meaing is the top 10% of the class and one was the class valedictorian and every one of them is misserable. The theory of nursing educaiton is not necessarily the reality of nursing, it is an ideal for performance. there are lots of intervening conditons as well as distractions during nursing care. Stop worrying about your GPA, focus on the learning and practice of the profession. My GPA is nobodys business.

Are you sure that you don't live in Austin Texas? anyways, i work at a profit LTAC hospital that over pays compared to the local market. here in austin, nurses are stuck between two giant hospital systems that compete to no pay. Despite all the problems that my workplace has and no matter how disgruntled one can be at management, no one can afford to leave. i feel for you on the pay issue.

This thread is a response to another thread entitled: "how much heart break can outake in one week." I have a great of empathy for you , cherrybreeze. You thread discussion has opened up a old wound that I need to vent about. I would say that that is a bad week for regular acute care hosptials. i could go on and rant about how much harder I have in my patient care, but I won't. I am a CNA and nursing school applicant that works in a long term acute care facility for several years. I care for medically complex patients with chronic issues that are managed and rarely recovered. Drug seekers and medically induced addictions among the patient population are abound. Though we are not a hospice, the suffering at the end of life is more common than not. One to two patients die a week, planned or not with comfort measures. Another strange feature about my work enviroment is the staff. I work with hard boiled, veteran nurses. It is hard to find a nurse with less than five years experience at my facility. And new nurses rarely last beyond one year at my facility. The staff around me don't even blink when there is a code. The code is just another procedure with protocals to be followed according to ACLS. I recognize that I have become desensitized to the pain and sufferings and I hope that I am not become as insensitive as some of my coworkers are. I recognized that I have become desentized to pain and suffering reactions of my patients when I was attending a microbiology class. During the lab, the professor showed a film about an Ebola outbreak in Africa. The hospital scenes and the condition of the patients should have been horrifying to me. But they weren't. The students around me, some of who are healtcare practioners, were stressed by viewing the film. I was busy in my head assesing the patients conditons in their quick viewings throughout the film. I talked with my coworkers about the experience and they all replied that i have become a seasoned practioner, ready and willing to do the horrible job at hand. The Micro professor was trying to give a superficial lessen in suffering of patients, a simple demonstration in reality we all must face as healthcare workers. The experience taught me about my character change and my attitude in reflection about nursing. I know that I am past the thrill and excitement of nursing. I have been wondering if I am of the edge of burn out when I am just starting RN nursing school. I still care about my nursing care, though I ration my caring alot more than I use to. I m assuming the inital stages of inexperience and ignorance about nursing has past me.

You are having the anxieties about being new with an demanding job and greater responssibilities. the advice alrady given is good. telemetry class just puts the scare into you that anything other that normal sinus rhtym is bad and that teaching build anxiety. Your are experiencing the anceint phenomeon of "Killing the messenger of bad news." a monitor tech in essence is a reporter of bad news. The nurses don't want to hear about more problems with their patients. Nurses face the same challenge with physicians. I have similar problems with the staff nurses as well. Some nurses are only worried about four critical rhythms: VTAC, VFIB, Asystole, and 2nd/3rd Blocks. Realize that not all clincial staff are trained or adequately experience in heart arrythmias. Nursing school does not do the subject justice. I have some good paramedics acting as my mentors. I have two years experience as a monitor tech and I overeacted as you are in the beginning. You are not doing anything wrong, but you don't have that feel for what is more appropriate in priorities. This EKG intution will come in time. Read about EKg materials and talk with the more resonsible nurses for input about getting experience. To deal with the accountability issue, document your interactions with nurses: room #, patient name, time, nurses name, nurses verbal response & reaction, callback time. Treat each call even for the same patient and event until you get results. Don't give any of them slack, so document eveything. You are not responsible for the critical clinical decisions, the nurses are. Avoid the unit clerks, they are just another variable in communication that you need to cut out. Talk only with the primary care nurse about first time rhythm chanages. Get as much information about patietnts and their conditions. For instance, Cardiac patients typically recieve cardiac meds q4 or q6 hours. About an hour before for med is given, you will more likely see arrythmias typical for that patient. This arrhythmia is a norm for the paitent without treament. It is a conditon that the cardiac conditon that needs treatment. Don't ignore this change, but be aware of its cause. If the rhythm continues well past the cardiac med time, then push the effort and talk with the charge nurse. My biggest problem is infomratin or the lack of. Many nurses rely on me to push the panic button at appropriate times when I do not information to work with. For intance, a patient is continually noisy or is experiencing some short runs of VTAC. Guess what the patient is not in their room and is at physical therapy. Get as much information as possible about your patient and the then the 2+2 will start to occur.

don't let the nursing school proaganda fool you, this is not a two year education program. Even the ADN (associates) will take you much longer than you realize. I have a Bachelor's degree as well and I had to take the science prerequisites for my nursing school. With the prerequisite sequence for classes and competing for class space, i have been in school already two years and I just applied for nursing school. Now i have nine months to a 15 months to wait to start nursing classes. Remember, you are in competition. At my school, the competition is really chanllenging that a grade of 'C' is an really as useful as an 'F'. I have known relatively smart students to retake some classes up to three times to get a grade of 'B'. While I am waiting for nursing school to call, I plan to take other coursework to round out my 'science' praparation.

I started nursing at the tender age of 36 and have worked as a CNA with a passion for 6 years. i am now 41 and have just applied to nursing school after completing pre-requisites. Overall average for all nurses is 45 maybe a little more. Nursing is a career group that is aging fast along with the population. My opinion is that being young in nursing is a handicap. You want to be respectful to your elders as patients and nursing peers, but you have got to stand up for yourself and push for doing the MD orders as well as acting on your professional judgement. You have to overcome idea that everyone has an opnion, some are appropriate and some are not. some opinions are just self serving and some are more objectified. Dealing with the problem of patient care will come with age. In school, i have been the old man on the block. At work, I am in the typical age range. I don work with a few men, most age from mid thirities to early fifities. My expectations for nursing school is that I will be the old man of the class.

here are some simple suggestions for an old student. first take small frequent breaks. psyc studies indicate that you attention span is tyically 30 mins. go back to studying a refocus on a different subject. second, remove distractions or don't study in areas/spacces with distractions, such as your computer or tv. third, excercise, yoga, and mediatation are promote similar physiological response to calm down. you choose the activity. fourth, go find some distraction from studies in a timely fashion. be human and senseible. finally a book that i recommend is: becoming a master student tenth edition by [color=#003399]david ellis. good luck

In my humble opinion, your psyc teacher needs to project more control over the attention of the class. Many of obnoxious students seek out attention for their own self interest and enhancement. In my younger days during my first education, I found teachers that took offense to being asked questions or be interrupted and let you know about it. I have learned to be more self directed in nursing studies and not to ask too many public quesitons until I have a feel for the teacher.

Don't get me about what I am about to say about nursing, I love it with a passion! That said, there is a darker side to nursing that specifically applies to men. First sterotype is that men are physically stronger, so get use to being a fork lift of humanity. Second, alpha male crap still takes place, the language just gets more profesional and medical. third, i am not saying thtat men are smarter than women, I find that physicans of both genders listen more acutely to a man than women. On this point, I know some female nurses as being cracker jack in perfomance as well as professional judgement. Fourth, the spectar of sexual harassment and patient abuse is always lurking around the corner. I do not know one male licensed practioner that has not been accused at some point, including nurses, respiratory therapist, physical therapy, radiologists and all the aides. Just keep it simple and expain everything that you do. As a side note, realize that some people just want attention at all costs, even if it hurts you. You wil experience it and you will have to find your way in dealing with it. The sterotypes, whther true or not, are a bonding factor among male practioners. My overall suggestion is that as soon as you find trouble, alert the nursing chain of coammand and give a full account.

Forget the Cars and the Sports as ice breakers in socializing. Several of the American female nurses I work with are more sport fanatics than most guys i know. Keep this mind for nursing: be professional and keep your personals deiscrete,...everyone will admire a hard working, professional even if they don't identify with you. Among the male nurses, I find that alpha maleness still exists. Doctors will give you less crap or respond to you differently compared to females. Sterotypes about guys as sexaul predators are always present, so keep your care true, simple, and explain everything. If you are in a rough spots, then get backup and witnesses to any incident asap. Keep this in mind: you work in nursing, a woman's world. Women rule the nursing world and you are a minority. If you want to socialize, try parenting angle as most of the female nurses are mothers. I am not a father, though I talk as a parent about my dogs, which is my passion. Most american nurses can Identifiy with the dogs and parenting. the foreign born nurses, there are no hard and fast rules in socializing, except to ask about their culture and some language. Learn about Filipino, Nigerian and Indian cusine if you must start with an angle. Just remember, they don't have to love you, but being respected as a work professional and peer is paramount.

In the central texas area, nursing homes will pay about $8-10, hospitals 10-$14. Of course, the closer to the Austin metro area, the greater the pay. I would focus on smaller hospitals such as Long term Acute Care and Rehab hospitals. Such facilities are low on reputation, hard on work, but high in pay. I diversified my skills so that I am a Monitor Tech (watching EKG), CNa, and some unit clerking and get paid at $12/hr. i know of some of the long experienced veterans being paid as high as $18 with some LVN/med aide skills.

I am a nursing student in the central texas area. San angelo state University, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech are all new programs. I would assume that instructors are in short supply and organization is chaotic. My question to you is what do you want to do with a BSN? If you want to be a hosptial staff nurse, then a AN ADN will serve you best. If you plan on Administrative nursing, infection control, nurse liaison, then the BSN will open those opportunities to you easier. If you are power hunger and want to control the lives of thers as a Director of Nursing or Chief (King/Queen) Nursing Officer or infection control, then you will need the BSN for the MSN.