heart1st

The story itself seems beyond miraculous. http://international-childrens-medical-foundation.com/Tony/ I am trying to learn more about the sponsoring organization. The thing that sounds especially weird is this: the doctors worked on my heart as it lay on a table But what do I know? Just sounds like it would be a bit hard on the great vessels! Can folks tell me if this ever happens... and you can comment on all the other medical weirdnesses that are in the story as well. The organization sounds...well...what can one say with stories like this? Thanks very much, heart1st

KarenAR, how'd you get out so fast. I'm sooooo jealous..... :) heart

how comfortable some of the patients in the LTC facility were where we did our first term clinicals. Whenever someone was going to do a procedure, our instructor would gather a few students around to watch the student who was doing the procedure (actually, to watch the procedure being done.) It was amazing to me when one student was going to cath this guy (75+), and we were all standing around--for some reason we were waiting for something, I forget what, and the client was laying there, chatting with 4 or 5 women with his equipment clearly exposed---just as if it was just another day (which it was, for him.) It was a bit surreal. As far as negative memberes--yup, they do happen. I didn't know they could do that. I was putting a new condom cath on a client and saw what looked like a 1-2" stub coming out of his perineum. I thought perhaps he hadn't been circumcised (in fact, the male nursing instructor in the room with me asked him; and he wasn't). I just kept pushing back the skin, trying to find the meatus. Finally, it all popped out, 4-5 inches or so and looked like your normal circumcised equipment. I don't know how it manages to do that--was sort of like a jack-in-the-box! :) Other students in our class experienced the same thing with other clients. heart

I was in IT, too, 20+ years. My degree is a B.S. in Microbiology. I started in the RN program this past Spring. :) I LOVE it. heart

I am taking a phlebotomy program in my school that is under the "medical assistant" umbrella. One of my instructors indicated that dr's like MAs a lot better in that a) they are trained to do the clerical ("front office") as well as back office skills; and b) they make a lot less. A physician at my Church who retired recently from Kaiser indicated that the trend is for Dr's offices to hire MAs and not RNs, since MAs can do just about everything an RN can (except IVs). His wife is the only RN in the pediatrician's office she works in. I'm surprised that someone said they work in the dr's office (clinic) at Kaiser; the Kaiser in my area it's almost all MAs. heart, EMT, SN (RN: March 2006)

I'm surprised more folks haven't been shocked by the decrease in pay that the British Columbia government imposed upon the LPNs. A 15% decrease in pay? And more hours? Wow! I haven't been so shocked as when I discovered several years ago when the state of California had reduced the disability payments by $100 A WEEK (something which has since been rectified; but who knows with Arnie at the helm. This was like from $350/wk to $250/wk.) In California, the RNs are unionized in what seems to me to be a quasi-professional quasi-union organization, the california nurses' assocation. I'm not sure of what pay rates in other parts of California are, but I know in the SF Bay Area, starting pay is supposed to be $60-$70K/yr. I haven't personally run into the $70K, though I do know a hospital in Monterey was at a school I was going to last spring and indicated that they started grad nurses out at $30/hr. The RN info meeting indicated RNs in Spring 2003 said something like RNs start out making $32/hr. I will say this: I spent 20 years in Silicon Valley doing software-related work. Within the last couple of years I interviewed for a job at Paypal which paid $70K/yr--no overtime--and they made sure I understood there would be weekend work (not every weekend, but some). $70K/yr and no overtime and most likely well over 40 hrs a week? I'll take nursing, thank you. (I'm more interested in health care, anyway.) As far as health care professionals with lots of responsibility who don't make much money: look at EMTs and Paramedics (those that work for a private ambulance company. Big city fire department EMT and paramedics can be a pretty sweet deal--though there's a lot of information about decrease in lifespan due to stress among FD and EMS personnel.) heart, EMT, Student RN (March 2006)

There are a variety of "exchange" and "live in country" programs. I would choose to go through one through a college or a university rather than one that is a profit-making venture. If you want to spend a few months in beautiful Monterey California, it is boasting itself as the "language learning capital of the world."--so there may be some intensive courses you can take there. heart

Google "learning Spanish". Better yet, use the advanced search in google and restrict the sites to those that end in ".edu." The web is full of language resources. The community college I attend has a Spanish-intensive (1 year in 6 weeks) course this summer that I'm planning on taking. I bought the Rosetta Stone for Russian, but wasn't that happy with it. Russian has a strong grammatical underpinning, and it is a lot easier, I think, to learn the grammatical rules along with learning how to say sentences--otherwise you are learning how to "say" things without understanding why they are said differently in different contexts (when you combine both gender and grammatical endings, it can be pretty complex to tease out.) I learned some vocabulary, but I discovered some of what I consider to be the most basic grammar not covered within "volume I". The "self-study" courses I've liked the best have been the Barron's, because they are the ones that have emphasized the phonetic differences, and bring to awareness the kinds of sounds that are in a particular language but are not in English. If I recall correctly, the Spanish course emphasizes some of the different sounds found in Spanish but not in English. But...it's been a while...so there are probably language learner discussion boards that might have better advice. Have fun! heart

I, for one, find Spanish a beautiful language. They have many "soft" sounds that give it almost a gentleness that is not found in English. One of my natively-speaking Spanish friends tells us her name, and it is far more beautiful in Spanish than how we say it in English. Some of these soft sounds are the rolled 'r', the way that "d" is pronounced, which is much more like a very hard "th" (or is it soft? What linguists call hard I always seem to think are soft, and vice versa). In learning a language, one of the things that I think is the most fun (and the least taught) is the "music" of that language. In a French tape course I looked at, they talked about how the French break their syllables in a different place than we do. The French break syllables, if I recall correctly, on consonants, where we break syllables in English on vowels. The difference can be heard in this way: Say: Mississippi. You say "Mi-si-si-pi" in English. But, if you speak with a French accent, you say "Mis-sis-sip-i"; you can hear the "French accent" when you say it this way. heart

I love languages. Love them. Even though I only speak "American." I've taken classes in Spanish, German, Hebrew and Russian. My neighborhood is one of the most ethnically diverse zipcodes in San Jose, California -- which is no slouch when it comes to cultural diversity. My next door neighbors are Vietnamese, as are the owners of the 7-11 I frequent. I have several neighbors who are (what's the pc term?) Hispanic. I grew up in So Cal and only remember 1 Hispanic in my elementry school (in the 50s). Now, I go into local stores and frequently the clerks are unable to speak English. Would I like it to be different? Well--I think that the fact that most Americans can only speak one language where most of the world speaks at least two is a bit embarrassing, and makes us less culturally sensitive. Let's face it, whether we like it or not, the influx of Spanish-only speaking folks is not going to subside any time soon, so, uinless you are going to be politically active and fight against it that way, why waste time being upset? In my nursing class of 29 we are extremely ethnically and culturally diverse. I've been learning from many my classmates how to say hello in other languages. I love it! heart

I love languages. Love them. Even though I only speak "American." I've taken classes in Spanish, German, Hebrew and Russian. My neighborhood is one of the most ethnically diverse zipcodes in San Jose, California -- which is no slouch when it comes to cultural diversity. My next door neighbors are Vietnamese, as are the owners of the 7-11 I frequent. I have several neighbors who are (what's the pc term?) Hispanic. I grew up in So Cal and only remember 1 Hispanic in my elementry school (in the 50s). Now, I go into local stores and frequently the clerks are unable to speak English. Would I like it to be different? Well--I think that the fact that most Americans can only speak one language where most of the world speaks at least two is a bit embarrassing, and makes us less culturally sensitive. Let's face it, whether we like it or not, the influx of Spanish-only speaking folks is not going to subside any time soon, so, uinless you are going to be politically active and fight against it that way, why waste time being upset? In my nursing class of 29 we are extremely ethnically and culturally diverse. I've been learning from many my classmates how to say hello in other languages. I love it! heart

Chevelle, What nursing program only meets every other weekend? Is it an RN program? heart