pitaya

There are pros and cons to each, but honestly, I echo what someone above me said about it depending on co-workers as one of the factors. In fact, I think co-workers can make a huge difference. The med-surg unit at my hospital has a HORRIBLE reputation because the nurses are not helpful or friendly. The telemetry unit on the other hand, has a great reputation because the nurses are just the opposite...helpful and friendly!

Wow. I could have written this. I actually agree with everything you wrote in that paragraph. I work in a hospital and I hate it, but I keep telling myself that it is preparation for my dream public health job!!!

I applied there as a back-up plan in case I didn't get into my dream hospital, which was not in Colorado. I was worried because my application inadvertently got sent to the wrong place, but they still called me for an interview! I wish I could have accepted the interview (just wanted to see if I could get into a nationally competitive hospital), but I had already started the job at my dream hospital, so it worked out for me. Anyway, out of the people in my nursing class who applied to this hospital, the only ones who got interviews were those of us who had a 4.0 GPA. And the people who accepted the interviews got hired. So it definitely seems like GPA was the main factor they used to weed out people. My school was not in the Denver area, we didn't do clinicals at that hospital, and those I know who applied did not have any Denver-area connections. Hope this helps!

I did this same thing (minus hitting somebody in the face)!!! My preceptor had just told me to put air in vials before drawing it up so I thought that applied to all vials. Nope, didn't work with the morphine and the little tiny med room stunk like morphine all afternoon.

I'm on a med-surg tele floor and honestly, we get patients with everything in the book. People who need to be on tele tend to have other things wrong with them. I've had ortho patients, lots of vascular patients, dialysis patients, random hepatitis, etc. etc., you name it, we got it. Also, we get regular med-surg overflow patients so oftentimes I have patients who aren't on tele at all! I really feel like I work on a general med-surg floor.

From this post, it's clear to me your heart wants L&D. Do it. :)

I would go with all nights. Also, is the pay better on nights? If so, then for me it would be a no-brainer. :) I work nights and I LOVE it. I was on days for my training and I hated it. Too many people, too much to do, too much stress, and 15% less pay. No way. A couple of my family members work some nights, some days, and really have a crazy schedule (they're not in healthcare, though). I was talking to them about how lucky I feel that I only work nights when they never know when they have to work and you know what they told me? They said they felt sorry for ME because with their job, at least some of it is days instead of nights all the time and therefore their sleeping schedule isn't as screwed up as mine! LOL So I guess for some people the day/night thing works better.

Nights are GREAT! More money, less craziness. What more could I ask for? For me, somehow waking up at 5 pm is not half as bad as waking up at 5 am! I could never be to work early on a day shift, but coming in early on a night shift is no problemo even though I sleep less.

Similarly, I haven't been able to get any IV starts since I started working. I got them in nursing school with different teachers instructing me and in different facilities, but now since I've started trying as a graduate nurse, I can't get any!!! What's wrong? I would like to know how to get over this, too. LOL Good luck with your foleys!!!

I feel the same way!!! I'm still in training but my preceptors seem to think that if they showed me how to do it once (without even letting me do it hands-on), then I will remember how to do it correctly. If I ask a question, they say something like, "I already showed you this" or "Didn't you learn this in nursing school?" But I really need to do something by myself around 5 times in order to be able to do it on my own without supervision. Maybe I am just not a quick learner, but it's very frustrating to me.

I work nights on tele and it is wayyyy easier than days. :) LOL I would be a lot more nervous about working days, haha, well, at least on my floor the days are crazier. Congrats!

Today's shift just made me feel incredibly incompetent. I have been a licensed nurse and working for three months now but every day I feel like the biggest bumbling idiot. I want to cry. And I do not wanna go back tomorrow for more feelings of humiliation and stupidity. I wish being an RN made me feel good about myself but lately all I feel is dread!!! Thanks for reading. I have no one else to cry to!!

Thanks for the reply!! You're right, lots of the doctors and patients have accents as well but it seems different since they are not my primary teacher. I feel like a jerk even complaining about it, but I have just never had such a hard time learning before and it is frustrating as I constantly have to find better ways to express myself or ask lots of questions because I didnt understand the first time. But I guess it all is part of the learning experience...today was a good day so hopefully it will get easier! The funny part is that I want to be a nurse in Latin America eventually...my Spanish is weak so I think I would have had a heck of a time learning in Spanish if learning in English is already this difficult for me.

Never heard of one either. Good luck, let us know how it goes!

Is anyone else out there being trained by a nurse whose thick accent and grasp of the English language make learning difficult? I am a new grad RN on an intermediate care unit and I have always been one for diversity and both nurses who are training me are excellent, but there are a lot of communication barriers between us. For example, I will say one thing and my preceptor interprets it as another and vice versa. I feel like this might not be such an issue if I caught on quicker, or if I had already been a nurse and was just transferring to a new unit, but I am admittedly a slow learner and I really need things spelled out for me. With so many communication issues between myself and my preceptors, I feel like I don't get the instruction or explanations that I need to really learn things right. As a new grad, I am struggling with being a new nurse in a hospital I never did clinicals in and the communication barriers just make it so much harder. I probably should have said something about this issue right away, but we're a month into my training now and the clinical lead also has an accent and is from another country and I don't want anyone to take anything the wrong way if I request an American preceptor without an accent. Anyway, just wanted to vent about it and see if anyone else faced any similar obstacles. I still have 4 weeks left of training and I thought it would be getting better by now and I would understand my preceptor more with time, but every day just leaves me more and more frustrated!

Check the hospital websites you're interested in EVERY DAY. I applied for new grad programs and my top hospital only had the applications up for one week online, so I had to be persistent in my checking or else I would have missed it.

Thank you and good luck to you!!! You can do it!!!!

Finished nursing school with a bang...4.0!!! I still can't believe it. Passed NCLEX a month after school ended and got hired at a magnet hospital, my dream hospital. I am still in orientation, but I get my first paycheck tomorrow...so excited!!!

Iammaj28, did you get your results?

Hey! My school paid for Kaplan, so I did Kaplan, but I felt like it wasn't enough of a content review for me, so I also bought Hurst! Kaplan goes over test-taking strategies and they have a decision tree for answering questions that some students find helpful, but I thought the decision tree was the same type of strategies that I already use in my head, just more clearly defined. I personally did not find the Kaplan course very helpful to me. The Kaplan course with a live instructor just went over the strategies and then it was 4 days of going over question after question out loud with the whole class using the decision tree. I was annoyed because I would rather have gone over content, but Kaplan makes it clear that it is not a content-based course and that strategies are better to pass NCLEX, but I really really wanted a content review. That being said, the Kaplan Qbank and Qtrainer questions online are extremely helpful!!! The NCLEX questions are so much like the Kaplan questions and the Kaplan questions are way harder than any other questions I ran across in other NCLEX study sources. I would recommend going over all of the Kaplan Qbank and Qtrainer questions before taking the NCLEX. As for Hurst, wow, I loved the online videos! The instructor, Marlene, was very entertaining (and that just couldn't be said for the online Kaplan instructors) and it was awesome to go over just the necessary content in a short amount of time. This was an awesome refresher. I had originally intended to read the whole Saunders book and/or the whole Kaplan course book, but I was so burnt out on reading, that I decided videos would be the way to go. I ended up hardly reading anything and only had time to go over the Hurst videos once, but I still passed! Also, I had done almost 5,000 questions total by the time I took the NCLEX. Like I said before, though, the Kaplan questions were the best. The other questions were too easy. I passed the NCLEX with 75 questions. About 15 of them were select-all-that-apply. I felt like the content wasn't anything that I had studied, but by being able to get passing scores on Kaplan, I figured I could get a passing score on NCLEX. And I did and I have a job now, so it all worked out. :) I'm currently selling all my NCLEX books and such on half.com...haha....so excited to get rid of them!

Thank you!!! I really didn't believe that the PVT would be accurate for me. haha But it was, so hurray!!! I felt like I didn't know any of the questions I was asked, but just sit there and think your way through it and you will get more right than you know. :) I used the white board I was given to rationalize my way through some questions. Good luck! You can't know it all, but you do know a lot so just go out there and use that knowledge!!!

It's official...I passed!!!!

Well, I tried it again and I got the good pop-up!!! Hoping it really means I passed. :)

Thanks, Meredith, I tried it again and got the same thing, but I only finished one hour ago so maybe I should wait a few more hours. I'm just so antsy!

So I just got home from taking the NCLEX. It shut off at 75 questions. But when I did the Pearsonvue Trick, it says, "Our records indicate that you already exist in our system." Isn't the good pop-up supposed to say to contact the state board of nursing? I am so scared.