rzyzzy

I don’t pretend to have the answers for this, but the headline kinda tweaks me the wrong way, and I’d like to provide a little context to the “value” of at least some of these “$450,000” homes. In 2009-2011, my ex and I were living in Phoenix, and looking for an “affordable” house. Rent on our 2400 sq foot, nearly new North Scottsdale home was $1,150. We were looking for a purchase with a monthly nut under $1k, hopefully including property taxes and insurance. We paid $169k for a 1600 sq/ft home in north Phoenix in a “meh” neighborhood. You can hear the gunshots at night there, but we never found any brass, so - pretty safe but not a super pretty neighborhood.. no community pool or fancy parks.. Prices kept falling, so I got my real-estate license and scored a couple 1100 sq/ft rentals at around $70k each.. got my little bro a place, and a Winter place for the parents as well.. I think the parent’s place might have been $80k.. they were all three-bedrooms, two baths, garage and a decent yard.. They rented at the time for about $1k a month. we cashed out and sold everything a few years ago, at the insane price of around $200k-ish (each) for all the rentals, the parent’s place and little bro’s place. It was a crazy and historic time, but it wasn’t that long ago. Wages there haven’t ballooned accordingly, and I truly don’t know how anyone there can manage the payments at the current levels. Now those same ~$70k-ish properties are on Zillow and Redfin for around $440-$470k. My former “expensive” primary home Zillows for nearly $600k. My old homes were definitely “working class” homes, the kitchen cabinets were basically thin cardboard & when I had to make repairs that involved pulling drywall, I often found slurpee-cups and taco-bell wrappers inside the walls. The water-supply pipes from the road to the house blew up on almost all of those homes because the plastic pipes aged-out, and I even had copper pipes break under the concrete slabs a couple times.. so these were low-quality houses at the ends of their useful life. Six inches of insulation in the attic, single-pane windows that barely opened.. sliding doors with worn-out rollers, too old to get parts for.. Any one of those repairs could easily send a buyer who was tapped-out from the down-payment into a serious financial crisis. Im not bragging here, just hoping to provide a little “reality check” for anyone considering stretching themselves hard to buy something that expensive. The closest nursing example might be if you’re giving an unfamiliar drug, and the dose on the order requires two syringes to give.. maybe the decimal point is in in the wrong place? A good time to pump the brakes and double check the order, the usual dosage, etc. Id suggest checking the “order” (or in this case, the historical value of property in your area), because the current prices are not in line with anything anyone else has ever had to deal with before. If there’s anything you can do to wait, I’d try that. I don’t know the future, but I know history, and unsustainable growth has always led to crashes. Even if a “crash” isn’t possible.. it’s possible, simply because what we have now isn’t sustainable.

I'd hold firm on your intentions to quit as soon as feasible- the BON is a thermonuclear option for an employer- if they're threatening it for anything that isn't obviously related to actual incompetence or something that endangers a patient, they either don't understand the board's purpose, or they're actually using the power of government to jerk your chain. Neither situation is in your benefit. I'd go one step further and say that quitting a bad situation without notice or under "bad" circumstances is a thousand times better than the risk of facing the board under dubious or even fully-explainable circumstances. the BON in most circumstances is a hammer, and they have one purpose- squashing anything that gets in front of them. You can't "win" anything by going before the board. They're not going to ever sanction whomever makes the report, a dismissed case still shows on your "permanent record", and can be used to support disciplinary action years from now for honest mistakes you haven't even made yet. I went before my board as a "baby nurse" with only a few months on the job, on trumped-up, BS charges that the board dismissed before I even got to the hearing. 8 months of literally worrying myself to sleep, lost my job, couldn't apply for a new one, because the board conveniently put my license in RED letters "under investigation for patient abuse" on the state website.. I "won", and got a very rare dismissal before the hearing, but the allegations are still on file, they can still be brought up if I ever get accused of anything in the future.. and my "win" cost me probably $15k in lost wages, a few thousand dollars for the attorney.. (which was a bargain btw.. ), and so much stress and fear and shame that I could absolutely understand someone in a similar situation eating a bullet. Since then, I've been a prolific "quitter". When an employer gives me bad vibes, I'm gone. I quit one job on the second day.. several jobs after a week or two. I interview my employers way harder than I ever did before becoming a nurse. There are a lot of really awful employers out there, and like three good ones. The good ones know how awful other employers can be, and they've always understood leaving the bad places. It isn't a bit unusual to have other nurses pipe in and mention that they themselves or nurses they know or respect have left those same employers. There's never been a better time to quit someplace that is awful in my time as a nurse. If I'd have stayed at my first longer-term job (that wasn't dangerous to my license, but sucked for staffing and overload issues) - I'd be making a little more than 1/2 my current rate. "Loyalty" could have cost me a lot of money, and I'd be working somewhere that wasn't as good as where I landed.. If you're still in contact with your nursing classmates, chat them up - find out who's happy and maybe get them a referral bonus for helping you get an interview at someplace good. Two years experience anywhere should be plenty to jump into someplace good. Without a reference from an employer, you ought to have some other nurses who would tell the truth about how good of a nurse you really are.. Many reference checks today are nearly completely automated- since my past included a period of self-employment, one of the reference-bots asked me for a reference for myself ?.. "Umm, yeah, I'm awesome, thanks for asking!”..

If you value your license, you'll say nothing- especially in writing, without an attorney's guidance. Anything you say or write at this point will be used against you. You can't write anything down that'll make them just go "oh, sorry, carry on". You can only give them ammunition to support your suspension/termination- or to feed to the board, to support action against your license.

The simple answer is you probably can’t buy a $400k house on a single nursing salary, without a significant down payment. the next (unasked) question is why are capital gains (money earned by anything except from the sweat of your brow) taxed at a much lower rate than wages? The favorable tax treatment of investment income over wage income is what turns the stock market (and the housing market) into a slot machine for the extremely wealthy.

I disagree wholeheartedly and emphatically with this theory. State boards always have the option to do an “emergency” license suspension if the allegations are both serious and there’s any hint that there is truth behind them. Further, the problem with false/retaliatory/exploitive employer complaints against nurses is widespread and substantial enough that my own board of nursing has a laundry list of employer complaints on their complaint website that they won’t even acknowledge- things like, “a nurse isn’t “abandoning” patients if they refuse extra shifts”, etc. There’s plenty of information out there that both patients and employers are quite happy to supply complaints of “abuse” and “neglect” as retaliation- absent a finding by a board that a complaint is substantiated, the license is active and valid. Indeed, like any other state license, the state describes its license as a “privilege” - one that has been both earned and paid for. The license is, in effect, your “property” until the state takes it away through proper legal process. Retaliation by a later employer for unsubstantiated complaints that happened under the supervision of another employer would likely be found to be both illegal and unethical.

Actual answer, based on experience? I had a board complaint filed by an employer that “fired” me years ago. My attorney advised me not to disclose the pending complaint to potential employers, and to actively seek and take whatever position I could find. The meeting with the board investigator was seven months after my “termination”, and the complaint was determined by the board to be “unsubstantiated”. Further, the board investigator literally told me “you were thrown under the bus” by management. There was no record of any discipline by my employer in my employment file, even though I was clearly told that I had been terminated by that employer. my advice? File for unemployment, actively seek work, and let your attorney handle the complaint with the board, no matter how intimidating the charges are. If the charges are substantiated and upheld by the board, deal with it then. The board always has the option of seeking an immediate suspension of your license to practice if they believe that the allegations are both serious and likely to be upheld. Absent that, your license is “unencumbered,” and you have a legal right to work within it.

The legal jeopardy attached to nursing isn’t a feature that makes anyone safer. In nursing, going against your employer’s wishes will result in termination in nearly every case. Unsafe staffing ratios being the pinnacle of this “professional” double speak. the bottom line that the “professional” camp refuses to see is that the various departments of labor have clearly defined what a “professional” is, and it’s based solely on autonomy and economic power. The ability to say “no” without being walked out of the building and blacklisted. The ability to decide for yourself what gets prioritized, and what doesn’t happen, based on your “professional” judgement.. the vast majority of RN’s only have the autonomy to do the impossible list in whatever order they choose, they don’t have the authority to revise the list based on their “professional” judgement. and this parroting of the “professional” line endangers even the ability to get paid by the hour to complete your impossible mission. “Professionals” , according to the department of labor - are exempt from overtime. Take away the overtime and see how much awesome talent you can attract.

One thing I haven’t heard mentioned - your school gets a report (in general terms) of the areas you failed in. My school encouraged anyone who didn’t pass to contact them, so that report could be reviewed & they could help with a focused study plan. Trying to review everything you learned in school would be an overwhelming task - especially after a failure that might well tweak your psyche.

I don’t doubt it a bit. Congress and the president have the best socialist healthcare available. If you’re willing to lie for no reason at all, lying for sympathy when you’re behind isn’t even a stretch.

I’m with the fake publicity stunt camp - to push the narrative that covid is minor and not a threat. Nothing has been off limits for trump so far. No reason to believe anything he says.

Theres a post above that says $180,000 for an accelerated BSN. I sincerely doubt MSN students are worried about access to the sim lab.

Yeah, well, it’s all loans and gifts anyway, right? pro-tip: if you need a briefcase full of $20’s to pay for one semester of nursing school, you’re probably paying too much to qualify for a job that requires you to deal with bodily fluids on a regular basis.

Getting the first (decent) job as an ADN was hard. With a couple years of experience, the doors opened up for me. I think the biggest thing that opens doors is the attitude that you present - my goal with my first nursing job was to ensure that I had at least a few people who could stand up for me and say “xxxx is a good nurse”. Those people who you ask to stand up for you should have lots of reasons to say and think good things about you, and few reasons to talk down about you. That means smiling and being nice when you’re tired, helping others when it’s not really even your job, coming in to help when you’re needed - even if you don’t have to, and generally being not-a-jerk. Even doing all that, there will be some who won’t like you. They might even actively try to get you fired. Some nurses are political, nasty and downright evil human beings. ADN, BSN, MSN, or DNP, you’ll need to be just greasy-enough that the slime they toss at you won’t stick. As an ADN, I’ve had to flee a couple of toxic work environments, and I don’t honestly believe having a BSN would have made the toxic go away. good luck.

My ADN program was evenly split between LPN’s and Medics “bridging” to RN.. Much respect to the medics - they had an easy time with some of the things the lpn’s struggled with (cardiac rhythms!), and had to fight through the structure of the nursing process - the medics all graduated on time & I’d be quite delighted to have any of them around in any capacity- nurse, medic, or “teller of awesome stories”..

Less anonymous isn’t always a good thing. There was a conversation in the “off topic” lounge recently where a couple of “new” members here were trying to say that those who disagreed with them were “racist”, and were pretty openly threatening to dox them and to attempt to get them fired. I set-up my social media accounts as a requirement of my lpn program. Students were told that certain employers in my city only advertised openings on Twitter. The argument from my college kinda fell apart over time, because that particular employer also only hired those with bachelor’s degrees. I retained facebook throughout my ADN program only because there was a student group that had useful study materials and an opportunity to message my classmates for things that might have been missed during lectures- “is the quiz tomorrow, or Monday?”. After graduating and passing the NCLEX, there was no need for the facebook group & I deleted all my accounts. It’d be nice to have the ability to chat with my old classmates and see how everyone is faring in life, but compared to the risk of those with an agenda and a chip on their shoulder having access to snippets of personal data that could be used against me, the risk is too great.