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@Melk62: Congratulations! I definitely know that feeling. I was actually on the alternate list a couple of years ago and got the call saying "would you like to join the spring 2010 cohort?" the day after my birthday. As for networking, the proactive Tgirl set up a group for all ASU nursing students: if you can't find it, shoot me a PM with your name and I'll invite you to the group.

900 dollars is ridiculous. I regret even paying the 400-500 dollars I spent when I started the program. The only benefit to getting the package (which didn't always have all of the books we needed) is the addition of the textbooks online, which were nice for searching and referencing, but not worth the extra money you pay to save a few minutes paging through a textbook that you may or may not actually read. since my first semester, I haven't bought the package and things have gone smashingly. ^highly opinionated. your experiences may vary.

PC and I hit on this question earlier in the topic. for convenience: so, in short: technically no hospital until junior 2, clinicals in junior 1 are pretty basic, and plan for tuesdays to be a 7:30 to 4 ordeal and for thursdays to be the same only a part of the time. it requires a large amount of flexibility :/

Hey SEA3347: don't lose hope! I was an alternate (5.682, cutoff 5.689) along with at least 4 of my other classmates. I got a phone call a few weeks after in the early morning and nearly had some sort of attack with how excited I was. The semester before mine had all of their alternates go in. For now, just go on doing your thing, but don't completely disregard the chance of getting into the program.

good luck everyone!

my advice? enjoy yourself. don't stress about what you will get in the program. you will be taught what you need to know. if i had to say something, though, it would be to take your pathophysiology and physiological mechanisms seriously. when you understand those, you won't have to waste as much time researching it when the time comes. another important thing: if you haven't found a good, consistent form of stress relief, start looking now. having an activity where you can withdraw from life for a few moments and enjoy your time without worry is crucial. i hope that isn't scaring you. it really isn't meant to! i just read back and thought about how negative that sounded haha

sorry for the dismal portrayal sometimes it really is kind of a slap--or many slaps--in the face. don't get me wrong, incoming folks: i've had a blast so far and i've learned a lot more than i could even imagine. i hope you feel the same, if not in junior I, at least by the time you graduate. i'll be honest with you: i'm not into OB at all. i miss peds. i thought i was going to hate it and ended up having the most fabulous experience i've had during the last four years of school. so yes, go little kids and g&d! i hope you're enjoying it! and, by the way, who are you? i wonder if i've ever run into you before and not known it, haha she's right. again. i should have clarified. you could summarize junior 1 clinicals like this: for the first half, you learn how to "communicate". you get communication drilled in to you.for the second half, you start your CNA like skills and medications in a nursing home setting. depending on the way your rotations line up, you may not be able to do skills in a hospital until halfway into junior II. you could possibly have inpatient psych first half, where you listen and listen and listen some more with the occasional talking. p.s. take note of the time of this reply. depending on where you are and where you have to go, look forward to it :) if you're like me and live at night, it might be a rough transition.

For me, clinical started on week 2, with an intro and orientation to our "Well Elder" rotation. I started going there for actual clinical by week 3. Preschool started about week four, and the two ran parallel for a couple of weeks. Long term care/nursing home started around week 8. wow, it's definitely been a while.

this is a fantastic point that you should take away from the many good things pineapplecrush has to say: if you don't get in that first time, don't give up; feel free to despair for a little bit. i almost wanted to just change my major straight away after i got that letter. i know time is of utmost importance, but regardless of when you start, you will find people who are fantastic that will help you get through this whole pile of crap we call nursing school. i applied twice as well and was pretty disappointed that i didn't get to go with the group that I had gone through all of my prerequisites with, but after my first semester with my current cohort, i wouldn't change it for the world. and i'm in class too (yeeaaaah, pregnant women!). you'll find this a common behavior among your peers feel free to ask any questions--you've got a few very informative people around to help you out (who also enjoy it, i think). i'm not in the accelerated group, but we do pretty much the same stuff. d

hey everyone! i'm a senior at the downtown phoenix campus and i wanted to wish you luck with your acceptances into the program. it's a terrible wait they make you guys go through, for sure.

When i was in junior 1 my schedule was much like this: Monday: fundamentals theory lecture 07:30-09:30, skills lecture 09:30-11:30 Tuesday: usually lab from 08:00-15:00; near the end you'll have clinical this day and the times vary wednesday: pharmacology 09:30-12:40, some professional nursing class from 14:00-17:00 thursday: usually clinical, the times vary. sometimes you'll have lab. friday: fundamentals theory lecture 07:30-09:30

The students who got in are expected to reply about if they choose to attend or not by a certain date. I forget how long it is between when you get the letter and the deadline but you'll start hearing from the college a few days after that deadline date all the way up until the first day of classes.

Congratulations to those of you who got in! For those of you on the alternate list, don't lose hope. I was an alternate, along with many of my classmates, when I applied and quite a few of us got placed. I've been told by faculty in the past few years that many of the alternates do get a spot in the class. even with this in mind, you should still prepare for the next semester as if you didn't, just in case. For the first semester, I wouldn't worry too much about re-reading your physiology or pathophysiology texts. As Tara said it's a good base of knowledge, but they definitely run through the basics before getting too far into things. They know that a lot of people have different backgrounds. p.s. the thought of self-directed learning on injections makes me laugh. maybe they'll do SDL for IVs too . really, junior I is a great place to get started and the faculty that run it do a great job at teaching and exposing and adjusting you to things.

don't you love it? it was my favorite and most hated part at the same time. sometimes i'd get lost in finding sources and end up reading journal articles for way too long google scholar is awesome.

haha i'm glad i could help. cookies aren't necessary (but if you can't be stopped, peanut butter are the best ) As tarabara said you can use a notecard. you'll probably find yourself not having to use it, honestly. but some people get a lot of comfort from it just being there. You don't get to decide. You draw which assessments you're going to do so you pretty much have to know both inside and out. definitely focus on the power points and lecture notes. i found that those helped the most.

Our schedules are the same. The health assessment competency you have the same week as injections is HEENT, skin, hair, nails, and neuro. Vitals is done with. The next HA competency after that is thorax, respiratory, cardiovascular, peripheral vascular, musculoskeletal, and abdominal assessment. the times are long because you both have to do the assessments. plus, sometimes different people take longer. oh 310. preschool was a blast. haha. i was dreading it but i ended up enjoying it quite a bit.

ah. forgot to mention that! make sure you know all of the pre and post exam behaviors (and that you do them/verbalize them) for every competency. i guess you know that already, haha. their rationale is that they want to know what you're thinking as you're performing the competency so they like to hear you verbalize everything. there are some times where this isn't needed, though. labs sometimes do feel rushed, sometimes there's only so much you can learn from explanations and it ends up being a lot of the time was spent actually doing things and individually asking for clarification. other times it can be different and you will get very in-depth explanation on things, like focused assessments. today's lab probably felt pretty rushed because they had the three stations divided between 3 hours, which doesn't always happen. certain topics in lab (e.g. patches, eye meds, suppositories) lend themselves more to the short, 50 minute periods than others do. some labs have a lot more time devoted to them, like injections. you get the ENTIRE LAB PERIOD minus one small 50 minute spat in simulation for that day, and it's well deserved. and there are a couple times that you'll feel like you have way too much time, like the day you learn the neuro assessment, because that's ALL you're doing in that three hour period. congratulations on the first competency, only two weeks until your next one oh, and i hope well elder and preschool are going well for you guys, too!

330 is there just to give you a headache. or time to work on your case studies. or something like that. the first and second pharm tests are pretty different if you didn't cover any actual drugs on the first one. good job, guys!

haha i remember that scenario. it was easily the most entertaining. good luck on your pharm test guys!

the ltc project for clinicals is on the patient you are specifically assigned to in LTC. it covers stuff like patient history, medical diagnoses, etiologies of diseases, medications, evaluation of medications, assessments, nursing diagnoses, concept map and analysis. it should be under clinical experiences guides for 320.

excuse me. i was NOT a mess that day. i may have not attended class and completed the project a couple hours after she first said it was due but it was done and it was awesome. and i looked great. glad you joined :)

Honestly, it's a matter of how comfortable with how much you glean from lecture and your own notes. For pharm, I barely read at all. For 310, I read most of the psychosocial/developmental/health promotion stuff, but not so much health assessment. SC/SP = all statements regarding how the patient perceives himself. I don't find a lot of objective data in here. You're trying to answer questions like "How would you describe yourself?" and "What do you like/dislike about yourself?" An example of this would be +(S) Pt states "I am pretty awesome." C/P = all statements regarding the senses and cognitive functioning. So you try to answer questions like "Has your hearing/vision changed?" or "Are you feeling any pain?" (Pain goes here. Definitely.) An example would be +(O) Patient has mini-mental state exam score of 30, indicating no cognitive impairment. and -(S)Patient reports that he can no longer hear in his right ear. HP/HM = all statements regarding their beliefs about health, how they take care of their health(medications? Alternative therapies? Doctors visits?), familial risk factors for disease, and how they take care of themselves in general (for someone at risk for falls, do they keep the room clear? For someone who has a history of MI, do they take their medications on schedule?) An example would be +(O) Pt takes a multivitamin every day. and -(S) Pt reports that she does not perform routine self-breast exams. Also, don't forget to add in how they DON'T take care of themselves. Things like smoking, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, medication regimen noncompliance, and even not wearing a bike helmet fall under this category. For cases you can argue, like the one you specified, its always debatable it doesn't help, I know. But for "pt reports that he is fatigued after mowing the lawn after 15 minutes", I'd categorize that as activity/exercise. For vitals and assessment, it's something you learn more in lab. Basic rules are like this: if it has to do with air, motion, physical movement (like breathing, heartbeat) it's more of an activity/exercise piece. For example: +/-(O) Vitals (27/4) - BP: 120/64; Pulse: 64; RR:14 +(O) Capillary refill +(O) Aortic, Pulmonic, Erb's, Tricuspid, Mitral areas auscultated and have regular rhythm, rate (70 bpm), clear S1/S2 sounds Temperature, skin, hair distribution, things related to nutrition, and things related to growth (height, weight) I believe belong in nutrition/metabolic. For example, I have: +(O) Vitals (27/4) - Temp: 96.9 (oral) +(O) Skin flesh colored, with even pigmentation. Hair distribution even. +(O) Skin warm, dry bilaterally on face, arms, hands, legs, feet, and abdomen. General rule of thumb is that if it's subjective, it's preceded by "patient states" or "patient reports" or "patient denies". Objective data is what is measured by the nurse. I can't remember that specific sheet otherwise I could explain a little more. I hope something in that gigantic wall of text helped

what kind of confusion do you guys have with concept mapping? maybe tarabara or i can clarify.

congratulations on the first week guys! i see you've started the dreaded concept map haha