Nurseboy1

I work 12 hour nights, and I don't rotate. I don't sleep on my shifts, I sleep during the day.

You may think I'm bitter but I assure you that is not the case. The benefit of taking the longer path is getting broad experience and exposure to many different things. I'm well aware of Vanderbuilt's program, it was a program I considered applying to and ultimately did not. A compressed program doesn't necessarily produce quality graduates. It has taken me well more than a decade to reach the point I am at in my career. But I can assure you that my years of critical care practice as a nurse has only enhanced my advanced practice career. Years of physical assessments, titrating vasoactive medications and seeing their effects, being part of many resuscitations and codes, interacting with all members of the healthcare team, and helping perform thousands of emergent and non-emergent procedures. I don't see how that gets replicated in a truncated timeline and still produce graduates that are able to come out of a program with a strong baseline foundation and ability to practice on an advanced level

I'm curious how you meet all the requirements to take the NCLEX after just a year. If you haven't graduated from an accredited program or completed the necessary clinical hours. Much less had the time to rotate through the different areas to get exposure to them. I'm not at all a fan of these programs, they churn out NP grads that are not well rounded and make the rest of us look bad. It's lazy and shortcut. If you want to be a NP then you should do the work that the rest of us did to get there.

As a practicing ACNP, I can tell you finding a NP position without any nursing experience will be difficult. You may want to consider a program that will allow you to become a nurse first and get some experience prior to starting the NP portion of the program.

I took the exam a year ago. If you took the review and studied your plan you should do well. Best of luck

Bipap for pneumonia? Sounds like the patient needed to be intubated

I thoroughly like being a NP and would not change my career pathway. I have a good scope of practice and wide prescriptive authority. The hospital I work for compensates very well, and covers the costs of my malpractice insurance. They also provide a yearly stipend for educational needs. But the catch with that is its in a rural area and I had to be willing to relocate to get what I wanted. Bottom line, do what will make you happy. Graduate school is hard and will consume a large amount of your life. I would suggest shadowing with a NP in the area that you want to work in and see if you like their role.

I primarily have responsibility for all the patients on our census. The nurses call me first with issues or needs for order clarifications. If I'm tied up with one patient and another patient needs help then the attending steps in. If I need help my attending is right there for me. If we need consults, I put the order in and call the consulting doc and go over the patient situation with them.

I'm an ACNP in the ICU at my hospital. I work primarily at night. Our practice model is that it is me and my attending for the whole unit. Generally I do most everything for the patients. If an admission comes I see them and take a history, I do the H&P, write the admission orders, if they need any procedures like central lines or a-lines I do them. My attending will see the patient and then we review my plan and make any modifications if the attending wants them. My colleagues on the dayshift are the primary responsible ones for their patients. They present the patient on rounds, write the daily ICU note, do the orders and they also do the procedures that are needed. I often go to the intermediate unit to do critical care consults for patients that are decompensating. I usually am the one doing any procedures. My attending is required to be in the room for high risk procedures such as intubations, PAC placement, or TVP placement but they aren't right at my side telling me how do to them or anything. I'm credentialed in central lines and A-lines and I do those without the doc in the room. So at least in my unit I have a lot of autonomy. If I think the patient needs something I do it. I keep my attending in the loop as far as patient condition changes, they are ultimately responsible, but I'm far from a glorified RN.

ACNPs in my area have a pretty decent job outlook. However most hospitals around here are not going to hire a FNP into the ICU, so if ICU is what you want then you need to do an ACNP program. My salary is significantly higher than it was as a bedside nurse, however I was willing to relocate to another area in my state to get it. Its all about what you want, I wanted to work in critical care so I went to the program that would provide me the education and training and I was willing to relocate to get the practice environment that I wanted. You have to be willing to make some compromises sometimes in order to get what you want.

Lol its north of 100K

I work in an teaching hospital, however the ICU that I work in is exclusively run by intensivists and NP/PAs we don't have residents in our unit.

Working with cardiac patients, I routinely place central lines on patients that have received loading doses of plavix, aspirin, brilenta, or are on infusions of heparin, integrilin or aggrastat. I even place them on patients who have received thrombolytics for STEMI prior to cath. For me site selection is key, IJ or Femoral, somewhere I can compress the vein if necessary. I avoid subclavian veins in these patients.

I am an ACNP in the ICU, I'm very hands on with the patients. I can intubate, place central lines, swans, A-lines, do bronchoscopy, chest tubes, LPs. And my salary is nothing to sneeze at. Just pointing out that there are places where NPs can have a pretty wide practice

Then only 9 more years to go before I can join the COB society ADN-2004 BSN- 2006 MSN- 2014 Aspiring member of the COB society