Kaybee24

Advice my profs gave before we started our clinical, don't take anything negative from patients or nurses personally. Working any job it's hard NOT to take things personal, sometimes people say things to you that just wanna make you say ***** But to get your work done and get the information you need, you have to just say eff it and power through. Be aware of how you feel going into the hospital, like if you're already feeling like it's gonna be a bad day try to put on your nurse face and do the work. Because whether or not everyone is receptive or every condition is optimal to you getting your work done easily, the work has to be done.

In NW houston, I've seen them at a Med Supply store on 1960 and Steepletop near Cyfair Hospital behind Amegy Bank. There's also a scrub shop called Uniform Destination at the Houston Premium Outlet in Cypress maybe give them a ring? Not for sure that they carry them but you could ask. Uniform Destination

We get assigned to a nurse who has about 4 patients, I can pick which patient I want to do my paperwork on. It's nice because I get to chose, I don't have to have the elderly patient on a thousand meds. For my program for our first semester at clinicals, we have weekly paperwork (head to toe, ROS, sociocultural info, labs, stuff like that) we list 5 priority nursing diagnoses and pick one to do a mini care plan on. Later in the semester we pick one patient we had and do a comprehensive care plan. I like it this way, it's pretty manageable.

My school only required the 3 like you mentioned. But it definitely sounds like you have the right plan. Study guides and memorizing conversions will really help you. Only slightly helpful thing I could suggest is earplugs. It's an important test and it is very easy to get distracted by other's noises. I think you are allowed to return to previous questions because that's my usual strategy also. Good luck, you sound very well prepared!

I don't start until next week, but I feel you. It's been nice having a break and I'm kind of dreading having to get back into the swing of things. But I'm hoping that by the time that school really does start I'll just fall back in step. Good luck to you!

Our nursing kit was included in tuition and we had to select our bp cuff and steth on our own. Our kit came with more than enough stuff and I still have plenty of that stuff left over. Came in handy when you wanted to practice at home instead of going to the lab.

The song in that commercial is so bad lol

Study more than you think you need to and resist the urge to put things off. Being organized helps a lot. I'm a hardcore former procrastinator and fortunately got over it before I entered nursing school. I just remember the preparation I do before hand greatly reduces my anxiety and only increases my chances of success. People who are lazy in nursing school are the ones who are the most stressed or get surprised on test day. I wouldn't advise it. It's better to do the work up front and get the grades rather than work up hill the rest of the semester trying to bring your grade up. Nursing school is a challenge but you got in! Now you gotta work to stay there, good luck!

2nd the L.L. Bean it's really nice and comes in more than one color. Pricey but sturdy.

Used and older editions FTW. Buying older editions saves a ridiculous amount of money, Dosages Calculations by Pickar? The bookstore wanted 80 bucks, I bought the 7th edition for 5 dollars including the shipping. Same with my pharm book, it was like 20 bucks including shipping compared to the new edition which was like 80-90 minus shipping. I always debate about whether I buy the older edition, if it's an online class and the professor probably won't be referencing a lot of page numbers I buy the older edition. I bought Professional Nursing: Concepts and Challenges by Chitty new and then I was at Half Price Books and they had an older version for 5 dollars! Also, ebooks are usually half the price of the real thing and are always offered in the newest edition. I did this for my legal and ethics class (Legal and Ethical Issues by Pozgar), you purchase access to the book and create a logon. It was easily navigable and it was available for download or through online access. Ebooks are great because you can search the book to find any phrase and its so much better than using the index. This ebook also allowed you to highlight and make notes. HTH

All the tech suggestions are good I love my laptop and ipod touch. It's nice to have all your email forwarded to a mobile device because you'll never miss an email from your professor. I love my laptop because every class is web-enhanced. MS Onenote is a great little program, keeps me from printing out massive amounts of powerpoint presentations. Epocrates is a great app. More money is a good idea as are a Starbucks gift card if you like coffee. My personal recommendation is one of those big desk calendars. I take all my syllabi and write all the reading assignments down. As well as tests and projects all in red ink. It really helps to see the whole month at once, as well as cross off the reading as I do it. Also maybe a massage here and there if you have the extra dough? It can be really nice after a stressful week, and your shoulders are right beneath your ears Congrats on your admission and good luck!

The first week went well, I think everyone was overwhelmed but by now starting to hit a groove. There's a lot of reading as you can probably guess, but they were nice enough to give us a reading list before class started. If your lucky they'll do this for your class too, the class ahead of us actually suggested this. We're beginning our fourth week and finally have our first exam, fun I think we're finally going to be feeling the pain of NCLEX style questions. Good luck to you!

Wow I really enrolled in the wrong class lol, yes I have Loftin. As far as the book we're using Focus on Nursing Pharmacology ed 5. As far as reading, we're reading two sections of the book a week about 230 pages in all. And yes it's tons of information! As for Dosage calculations there's one chapter in the main text that covers it in the book and another required book called Math for Nurses by Boyer.

Candice I'm in the Kingwood online class too. Yea just a few dosage calulations thought that was strange. Did you get that email about the study group? I haven't gotten a response yet. I did call cyfair to ask about transferability and they said as long as its 1301 its the right class. It's been alot of reading so far with work and this class it seems like all I'm doing is reading in my free time, guess its preparing us for next fall :)

Thanks Cschoppe for all of that wonderful info! And good luck on clinicals! :)