Intern67

brrrrrringggg.... "Sacred Smattering of Hope Psychiatric Facility, this is Nurse Ratched, how may I help you?" "My husband, Mr. Wonderful, is a nurse there and we have a family emergency, could you please get a hold of him?" "Absolutely, Mrs. Wonderful, we will find him and if he is unavailable, we will have him call you right away." Something like that, I suppose.

No one is cut off from all communication from family. Your friend can give his famliy the facility's phone number and they can call in an emergency.

I certainly had no intention of discouraging her, and you clearly have no idea what my intentions are. In reality (in person, not online) I have tutored and advised more nursing, pre-nursing, and other students in many areas - including math, chemistry, anatomy, physiology, and english - than you will ever know. I tried to be pleasant about it, I wasn't demanding perfect english, and soon enough the OP will be asked to communicate more competently. Regarding her original questions, there are also a bunch of sticky threads on the student forums she can peruse.

Since everyone and their sister has a camera phone, many that can, in fact, record videos, please take some pics and videos of the death angel and get an interview with him or her if you can. That would be so great. My favorite ghost story was told to me just this week. I have a friend who just graduated and started her first RN job working nights at an LTC. She has related quite a few ghost stories to me in the past and sure enough, just a week after she started her new job, she told me: "This place is haunted." I do a lot of hospice work and have been around dying people in hospice centers, nursing homes, and private homes at all hours of the morning, day and night. You'd think with the sheer volume of ghosts around and their unending proclivities for mischief making I would see SOMETHING. But nooooooooo..... Ghosts are jerks; they keep freezing me out and appearing for everyone else. Happy ghost hunting.

I would respectfully ask that you re-write your post and remove all the text-speak and inventive punctuation. It would make it much easier to address your perfectly valid concerns and questions. Smiley faces are ok. ;-P

Keep thoughts like above in the forefront and do your best to avoid dwelling on negativity. It will help.

Refresher BLS courses often last around 2 hours.

Sounds like heaven. You can decide for your own damn self if nursing is for you or not. Get started already!

I thought the exact same thing as a new CNA. Turns out I was one of the few aides making sure people were shaved, had their teeth brushed, were wearing their glasses hearing aids, had (their own) clean clothes on, was using proper transfer procedures, had proper perineal care, emptied foley bags, took out trash, replaced soiled linen, ensured needed supplies were available..... Keep doing your best, you will speed up. I sure learned a lot there and gained experience that allowed me to find a much better job, but boy do I not miss working at that horrible nursing home.

Some instructors get more nervous and high strung than students at clinical. Sometimes it is their superiors filling their heads with thoughts of "If one of your students screws up, YOU will lose your license, your job and we will lose a valuable clinical site!!" I've noticed that nursing school instructors, especially new ones, may be great nurses, but they aren't so hot at teaching yet. That coupled with the consequences of a misstep weighing heavily on their minds makes them act a little scooters at times. The best thing you can do is what you appear to be doing here. Admit your mistake, admit the reason why (brainfart), explain what you did wrong, what you would do to correct it and how you will avoid making the same mistake. I would definitely discourage you from trying to negotiate "how bad" or serious a mistake it was with your instructor. She really doesn't want to hear it. If she fails you, you can have that fun discussion with the dean. How many points you lose depends on how far from the ledge your wigged out instructor has traveled.

I'm not aware of any nurses who went 12-4 last year (while throwing 33 TDs and 7 picks) and went to the NFC Championship.

Even sadder for you apparently. I've never used "girls" demeaning term. "Guys" and "boys" is also used, even though we are adults and no one seems to get their undies in a bunch over it. The males in my nursing school class are not only called "men" or "male" and we definitely are not sad about it. The "calms" controversy is actually a bit hilarious. By the way, the first person I ever heard use the phrase, "Jam out with your calm out" was a female nursing school classmate. I actually can't wait to tell her about this. All that being said, the jambalaya comment was crude, but the subsequent drama over it is priceless.

You did what you could and doing those things will help keep your patients safe and make you a better nurse. A lot of fearful hand-wringing and endless obsessing over it will not help keep your patients safe or make you a better nurse. You choose.

I dunno, sounds like he got a little good out of it pretty early on.

I chose to go into nursing because of the infinite number of jobs, the fantastic pay, the glamor of the profession, and the great liklihood of having sex in the supply room with a cute coworker.

The study guide for my Fundamentals book (Perry and Potter) is useless. The study guide for my Med Surg book (Lewis) is worth its weight in gold.

I've never had a chaperone as a CNA, Home Health Aide, or Student Nurse at clinical, nor have I ever seen a male nurse who had a chaperone. Now, patients and families are free to choose to have female or male only caregivers, but that is different.

Young man, the best advice anyone could give to you would be to, um, keep quiet. If you put your foot in your mouth early in nursing school, you will have a very long and difficult time ahead of you. As you take your prereqs, you will find a lot of opportunity to be around a lot of women as peers and as instructors. Keep your mouth shut, your ears open, pay attention and you will learn how to navigate this new situation. Or don't - your classmates (male and female) will let you know when you step in it and you will learn one way or another. I'm a straight male in nursing school and have zero problem spending a lot of time with my female classmates. Just like I have had zero problems working as a CNA and Home Health Aide as one of the few guys around. I have learned a lot from my female classmates, coworkers and superiors and have developed some amazing friendships. Those girls in my class (yes I call them girls, even the ones over 50) are my colleagues and my peers. We have gone through some scary stuff together and it brought us closer. We look out for each other; they are my support system and I am part of theirs. I cannot wait for this year to start so we can continue this trip into the nursing profession. Good luck!

This sounds a lot more like one single ignorant person than "ppl."

" No matter the career, good solid experience in fieldwork is a requirement for success whether you plan to get advanced degrees or not. Those who disdain the very work they need to advance are setting themselves up for misery. They won't enjoy the trip and when they get their coveted degree they won't be anywhere near as proficient or satisfied as those who applied themselves. People will notice this. I have classmates who refuse to get any healthcare experience while they are in nursing school. These are the same people who scream, "No one will hire me!" when they graduate with no experience, no contacts, and no network. You get out of a profession what you put into it.

If you have a 4.0 GPA what the heck are you caterwauling about? Who do you think fails and passes exit exams anyway? (Hint: The 4.0 students do just fine.) As I said, nursing school is a whole series of exit exams - and yes, if you fail one or two along the way you get to remediate. A stellar student such as yourself should have no problem, exit exam or no.

I'm aware of that; I was pointing out that the stress starts *long* before that - in sort of a funny kind of... Nevermind.

The formula method works fine for very simple and straightforward problems. However, once you get into flow rates, surface area/body weight, stuff like that, there will not be an easy to use formula handy. Learn dimensional analysis and it will be your friend for a long time.

I understand you are venting, but try to take a deep breath and think about what you are posting. You sound hysterical.

Don't worry about the median. Get a 4.0 and you will have no problems. If you cannot get a 4.0, get as close to that as you can - what I mean is do the best you can. "Normal" students can afford to slack off, slide in with a B in A&P, cut a few Sociology classes, mail it in on a Psych assignment or two, or not really proofread their Comp papers. Guess what kid - you cannot. You want to go in to nursing so you have to crush in every class. Now you'll hear the stories from those who got in with lower GPAs. That's fine and all. But here's the thing, do you want to have to apply to multiple programs, hoping against hope that you somehow "made the median" and got lucky to get in, or do you want to stroll up, lay your thing down and walk into the program? If getting stellar grades doesn't sound like what you want to do right now, then wait. Go to work, hang out with friends, get drunk, dance, howl at the moon. When you are finished with all that, nursing school will still be there. The good news is if you put the effort in, you can do it. Don't worry about what the median or average might be - do the very best you can and if you don't get in, you can say, "Well, I sure as heck gave it my best shot." I've seen a lot of students fail to achieve their goals simply because they didn't try hard enough (heck I have been that student). Don't be one of those. Good luck!