RN34TX

I get where you might interpret my comment that way, but that's not what I meant. I meant to say choosing someone for a leadership position based on clinical skills and experience alone without considering other factors. I did not mean to say ignore their clinical experience and pick someone who wrote a great thesis. When I was 35 I had a 28 year old manager and I really didn't think she was mature enough for the manager role either. Some 28 year olds might be but she was not. We all know nurses who are experts in their specialty and can run circles around the others but might have difficulty in getting along with others, working together as a team, bullying behavior, etc. I agree that the chosen charge nurse or manager should have top notch clinical skills but we as a profession have traditionally chosen people for leadership roles based on skills and experience alone and that's what needs to change. Almost all of my previous managers and some permanent charge nurses that I've worked with in my career were great nurses but lacked people and leadership skills. Leadership roles go beyond nursing skills and abilities. Nurses at the bedside are leaders and this is where leadership development begins. Your staff nurses who are good at dealing with difficult patients, family members, and colleagues and who consistently set a good example to their peers are the ones you need to encourage to pursue charge and leadership roles, not the nurse who can take the sickest patient on 5 drips but maybe complains constantly and puts down her colleagues, aggressive personality, and has poor stress management and coping skills. Or this great nurse could be the exact opposite. Great nurse but when you put her in a leadership role she ignores bad behavior and problems on the unit because she doesn't want to deal with conflict or doesn't know how and lacks the skills. This is who we have traditionally placed into these roles looking solely at their clinical abilities and not their leadership capabilities and this is how institutions end up with bullying and ineffective nurse managers and charge nurses. Since most people leave their jobs because of their boss, institutions are starting to pay attention to this and it is being studied.

I would find the highly patronizing comments about not getting a charge position because I'm so good as a staff nurse to be extremely offensive and a cop out for not giving me your real reasons for not choosing me. Having said that, I have also seen someone become my permanent charge nurse simply because she felt entitled because she put in her time and was the most experienced. Current research/literature now demonstrates that choosing someone for leadership positions based on clinical skills and experience has been a tradition in nursing that needs to change. Leadership positions are no longer for people to settle into and slow down as one ages and prepares for retirement. We need people with ambition and get up and go. It it was extremely frustrating to have both a charge nurse and a manager who were desperately hanging onto their positions showing up for work every day sighing, rolling their eyes, and acting like they were so stressed out all the time while counting the days until they could retire. I am now the manager and I chose a charge nurse with pep and get up and go because I feel there is no longer any room for people in leadership positions who can barely get out of bed let alone lead a team. This is might not describe the OP at all and she might not have been chosen based on purely political reasons hence my comments about her managers patronizing remarks. I say to the OP if you have the ambition for this type of position then you need to leave and go for a leadership position in another unit or facility. Your manager does not appreciate your leadership capabilities. I know several people who left hospitals after 10 or 20 years to get an opportunity at an outside hospital for a leadership position to show what they are capable of.

MBARNBSN made some very good points about the possibilities of your situation. They could just be blowing smoke dangling a carrot in front of you to see how much you will do with an empty promise of a manager position. With respect to your questions, My background before becoming a manager was that of a staff and charge nurse, nothing more. My salary change was a $15,000 a year increase. I went into management because my manager was leaving and she wanted to groom me as her replacement and I was deathly afraid of who was going to become my boss if I didn't step up and take the position myself. Prior to this I had no desire to be a manager or supervisor of any kind. Like MBARNBSN said, sometimes the manager has no say so as to who will be replacing him/her and some of my colleagues stated the same thing but they could not have been farther from the truth in my case. My manager's opinion on who should replace her weighed very heavily as it should. What at I learned from that experience is this: If you apply for a manager position and they call and tell you that they are only doing interviews on one particular day only and you need to be there that day or forget it, it means that they already have someone in mind and that the other candidates are being interviewed just to show that they are making an effort to consider other applicants but they already know who they want. The benefits include generally working hours that are not a set schedule as long as you are there during the majority of the business day (I can go into work at 6:30 am or 9:30 am for instance) and if I want to take a day or week off I just take it. I don't have to worry about what other nurses might have put in time off requests for the same time. I also have more authority now to do things that I couldn't do alone as a staff nurse such as stepping in and taking action against workplace bullying/incivility. The cons are that your work is never done and you could easily work from 6am to 10pm every day and still not get caught up with all that administration as well as your staff expects of you. When you work staff, you clock out for the day and it all becomes someone else's problem until you return the next day with a new assignment. I lay awake at night sometimes worrying about things and I know I shouldn't. Didn't do that as a staff nurse except when a particular patient went bad or something. When you you try to stay in the trenches and help out your staff when they are short, your manager work sits undone while you work as a staff nurse taking care of patients. Those are some of the cons.

If your only interest in CO is as a travel nurse, then don't forget that CO is a compact state as is MS. So if you get licensed in MS, you can take travel assignments in CO without having to get a CO license.

OK I think I get where we agree and differ. I think we have two separate situations here. Allow me to me clarify. Yes, CEO and COO positions can be held by someone who happens to be a nurse but it's not generally a requirement so often it's business people with MBA's and MHA's hold these positions. So a nurse with a BSN and either MBA or MHA can and do hold these positions. Agreed. I did not mean to say that nurses with MBA's are going away. That's not what I believe at all. However, for people who are up and coming and wanting to enter into nursing management and nursing administration and move up the nursing chain, yes, positions for nurse managers and nursing directors who do not have an advanced degree in nursing are starting to fade away. My own facility today has nurse managers with only BSN's and no graduate degree and some have MBA's, MHA's, MSN's, or DNP's. I even know one director who only has a BSN. But she has had that job for a long time. No one at my facility is getting a director position these days without an advanced degree and soon this advanced degree will need to be in nursing. Same thing is coming for nurse managers. These degrees might be fine for today but people who are looking at breaking into nursing management and nursing administration (not hospital overall operations and administration) need to look to the future and not just what's going on today because many of these people with other degrees have held these positions for a while. You need to find out what it takes to get a position today and what is trending at other hospitals in the future, not just look at what degrees are currently held by people in their current positions. I lived through LPN's being pushed out of acute care and now the push for more BSN's at the bedside. I can see the writing on the wall and if someone is looking at breaking into nursing management as a new person with no management experience, I urge people to look at the current professional literature out there and where things are heading in the future, not just where things are today at your hospital in your local area because things change and your local area might be behind the times, not ahead.

I see the nurse educator certificate offered as part of some MSN programs. Are they worth getting? Do they have any value in the academic or staff development world? I have no experience with teaching or formal education roles in hospitals so I was wondering if they hold any value for people who hire people into those roles if I decide later that I want to pursue an educator position. Just wondering if it's worth the extra time and money vs. just getting an MSN in a non-education specialty. To clarify, I'm talking about a graduate level certificate in nursing education, not the certification exam itself to become a CNE (certified nurse educator).

Although I like and agree with your post, keep in mind that nurses with BSN's are doing the job now with no masters period so to say that an MSN or MBA alone aren't sufficient to perform the job is a bit misleading. They learned on the job with no accounting or advanced nursing knowledge. This is is more about what employers are wanting or demanding. Just like ADN's can do the job just fine but now employers are wanting BSN's for staff positions. Since I wanted an MBA but my employer and everyone else was saying MSN, a dual degree was originally the answer for me as well. But I just can't justify the time and cost of 63-72 credits for the MSN/MBA for a nurse manager position vs. 36 credits for the MSN alone. I might become a director one day at best but not a CNO. Many CEO's, CNO's, and COO's that I've seen have one masters degree and a few have a doctorate so I thought the dual masters degree was expensive and overkill for me personally. Besides, my thought was instead of a second masters degree I might as well put the time and money into a DNP in nursing leadership/administration. But everyone has different goals, needs, and aspirations. But you are right, the MSN/MBA or MSN/MHA provides for the best edge on the competition and most rounded education.

I will very respectfully disagree. I wanted an MBA and not another nursing degree but that is not where this profession or health organizations are headed. I too see nurse managers with MBA's and MHA's at my facility but this is fading away and my own facility is starting to require MSN's for these positions. I was once an LPN working in acute care med/surg but that has all but disappeared from healthcare. Things change. Large renowned university teaching hospitals are the most likely facilities to already have this in place, not small rural hospitals. Magnet and other driving forces are pushing this initiative. I'm not saying that I agree with these initiatives because I would much rather have gone the MBA or MHA route, but the fact remains that many if not most major hospitals want nursing leaders to have advanced degrees in nursing. An MSN prepared manager can go work in a hospital with a group of mixed bag of credentials where managers have different degrees. The MBA or MHA prepared manager might not be able to attain a nursing leadership position at certain hospitals and this is only going to increase over time. I've never heard of a facilty that gives preference or requires an MBA or MHA over an MSN but I know plenty of facilities that prefer if not require the MSN for nursing leadership positions.

Now that's one of the best rants that I've read in years. I'd like to add when I'm posting about something that happened during a shift and a student or newbie breaks in with "Oh my is this what I have to look forward to as a nurse? Did I make the wrong career choice, etc. etc." I always want to say that this isn't about you and heaven forbid you picked the wrong major in college. This is about me and what happened during my shift last night and I'm simply venting or maybe reaching out to others who may have experienced similar situations at work. Of course I never say that but I really wish they'd just start their own thread about how they are fretting about their career choices because they are so shocked about what really happens during a nurse's shift. People today have a lot more information available at their fingertips to make career decisions than when I was deciding to become a nurse so I don't get it.

Those are discriminatory and most likely illegal hiring practices in your state. I'm not saying that those things don't go on in the real world every day, but that DON is an idiot for flat out admitting to engaging in those hiring practices to you as an employee. He/she probably doesn't have enough experience to know to at least keep those discriminatory hiring practices under his/her hat and is asking for a lawsuit and demise of their career. Oh well, that DON probably deserves it out of pure idiocy if nothing else. Survival of the fittest in nursing.

There are many layers to what's being discussed here. It's not just one factor or simply comparing full-time females to males. Not always, but men tend to go where the money is. This is evident in the fact that you see very few male nurses working in outpatient settings compared to inpatient. Yes I've seen it, but it's by far the exception to see a man who works PRN or part-time because his income is considered supplemental while his female spouse works as the full-time breadwinner. And yes, this is probably because men are still expected to be the breadwinner and women are still expected to compromise their careers to tend to child responsibilities. However, this behavior carries on long after the kids are out of the house. I've worked with many women in the 45 plus club who are still part-time or PRN with no kids at home and they are not in school while their spouses are still the full-time breadwinner. But 45 or older men who are PRN or part-time? I've never seen it unless he has other jobs or school. But getting back to the original topic, yes it is discriminatory to hire men over women. But anyone who thinks that laws truely protect certain groups is living in a fantasy world. I know many female nurse managers who prefer to hire men over women if all other qualifications are equal. I know many female nurses who want to see more men hired into their units. I've heard many complaints from female nurses that women are too gossipy, catty, etc. etc. and that they prefer to work with men instead of other women. My personal opinion is that this might be true to some degree but I've worked in male dominated environments where this behavior had existed with men as well, but I do think it's less dramatic and prevalent. To the OP, my experience and opinion is that yes it's true to an extent. Everyone has personal and family situations to tend to from time to time, but nurse managers are looking for people who aren't going to be "the one" who "always" is expected to go get the kids from school/daycare and needs to leave or miss work because of sick kids or aging parents. I know one couple who are both nurses who actually do share taking turns calling in when kids are sick and share school and daycare issues. But all of the other female nurses I work with that are not single parents, are always the one who need to miss work while their male spouses somehow "can't" ever miss work and be there for the kids.

Agreed. I don't pay much attention to those types of remarks either because you can slam the program all you want, but my track record, evaluations, and work history speak for themselves and can't be disputed. Regardless of how I feel about the CPNE itself, I'm living proof that the program does work and the states that look down on it don't deserve my talent so it's their loss. The lawsuit to me is another symptom of our sue-happy culture that encourages the shucking of personal responsibility and that everything that goes wrong in one's life is always someone else's fault.

I'm an EC grad of 2003 and have mixed feelings on the matter. I joined AllNurses a few months after graduating and felt like I was the only one who "passed" who didn't sing the praises of EC. It seemed in those days that if you dared to speak out against EC that you were labeled as bitter or sour grapes for not passing. I even expressed my concerns about the exam after I took and passed it on EC's own "Electronic Peer Network" as it was called back then and was immediately shot down by EC staff. But I did pass (the first time around) and more than 10 years later will still state that yes, it is most definitely a very subjective exam and was not consistent across the board in its testing practices. I believe that any traditional nursing program has potential for favoritism and subjectivity and any school can have the potential for having students who have futures that are at the mercy of unethical and biased instructors. I am very thankful for the opportunity to have had EC as an option and have enjoyed a very successful nursing career since graduating. But I sometimes think that fellow graduates will defend the program to the end because they are afraid that negative remarks about the school will be a reflection on them as RN's who graduated from that program. Having said that, when I enrolled in 1999 it was most definitely clear in the nursing catalog and student handbook exactly what was expected of me and the CPNE pass rate was 57% at that time and it was clearly stated.

I'm confused. You are studying for both certification exams? In any case I mostly used the purple Perianesthesia certification review questions book more than anything and passed CPAN the first time around in 2011. I used the green Core Curriculum for reference and that was it. I attended a CPAN review class offered by ASPAN and found it not very helpful, too general, and that it way oversimplified the actual exam. Several colleagues of mine took it during the same testing window and most of us studied the purple questions book more than anything and all of us passed.

Not sure about the 70's and 80's, but I started as a CNA in LTC in 1994 and yes the sense of entitlement was prevalent then too. I have some good memories of some very genuine and appreciative families to be fair, but the bad memories are still very vivid and I could only work in LTC or LTAC again if I were on the verge of becoming homeless. Hats off to you nurses and CNA's who work in LTC, either by choice or until you finish school and/or something better comes along.

Because anesthesia handles that in the OR. If a patients pressure falls, it's anesthesia that starts pressers, not the OR circulator. OR is a different skill set and they are not critical care trained nurses. PACU is different because anesthesia is not right with the patient most of the time and this is why PACU nurses need a critical care background and ACLS.

I thought that if I clarified that no one was having an emotional meltdown over it that it might tame some of the heated comments. That was not intended to be a slight to your comment as I wanted honest feedback. I just didn't think that the subject matter would be likely to bring about such responses. I wasn't trying to take a position at all let alone justify it. I was merely describing how I felt after work that night. No different than going out for dinner/drinks after work with colleagues and asking "Hey do you think I overreacted today at work when........." Since the staff at my job is almost all certified I was looking here for input and perspective particularly from non certified RN's although all comments were welcome and wanted. Like many of you, I'm living in a world where moving toward more BSN (and certified) staff is all the rage and I see administration "encouraging" the ADN's to go back to school by citing Aiken's research about bad mortality rates and ADN RN's. It reminds me of people who have an overweight child or spouse who thinks that telling them how fat they are is their way of "encouraging" them to lose weight. Perhaps feeling overly sensitive that day, I might have interpreted our practices of Certified Nurses Day as more "encouragement" from administration.

Thank you all for the very thoughtful comments for me to put things into perspective. I needed to look at it differently I guess. However, a few comments were a little over the top so let me clarify that no one was having an emotional meltdown over it by any means. In fact I got no reaction whatsoever by the non certified nurses. My thread was more about how I was feeling after my shift last night, not how they reacted. Every nurse deals with far bigger issues on their units than the topic of this thread, it was just an uneasy feeling I had after work last night. To further clarify, my unit is almost all certified, more than 90%. Only a few of us are not certified so that contributed to my feeling that they were singled out and excluded. Of those not certified, only one that I know of has never attempted it. The others have attempted it and been unsuccessful, some multiple times so it's not as if they are not trying to get there. As far as Nurses Week goes, I totally agree. My hospital does the same thing. It's not about the nurses at all when ancillary, housekeeping, etc. are all lined up for the same free meals, cake, prizes, etc. that were supposed to be in celebration of Nurses Week. Thanks again for helping me put things into perspective.

Today I was in charge of handing out ribbons and trinkets to all of our certified nurses on the unit for Certified Nurses Day. It felt awkward to "skip over" RN's who were not specialty certified so I tried to do it as discreetly as possible. An I overreacting thinking that how our hospital handles Certified Nurses Day is exclusionary and in poor taste? Even if well meaning? What do other hospitals do for Certified Nurses Day?

From the description it looks like you need to be working as an LPN when you apply. As far as IL is concerned, you will need to get licensed in another state and work as an RN for two years there before you can endorse into IL as an RN.

The first comment from the nurse educator who cautioned against making any changes in the number of new grads they churn out every year was most interesting to me. Of course she doesn't want any changes. The more new grads that get churned out, the more job security she has. Also, what is so hard about looking at the number of people applying for RN licensure to figure out who is actually entering the nursing workforce vs. grouping together everyone graduating from a nursing program? Of course the numbers get blurred when you group together people who are already RN's going back to school for higher degrees. That's basic research and statistics taught in a basic BSN program.

It is due to conditioning and our culture, to value physicians, not education. Yes the public is confused and in the dark about what educational requirements are involved in different levels of nursing. Those same people are no more savvy in knowing what is involved in becoming a physician than they are with nursing. They just know that it takes " a lot of schooling" which means that they are conditioned to respect physicians without question, not really understand and appreciate what they do and/or how they are trained. No different than being conditioned as a child to think of a nurse as a female. Conditioning period. I find it so interesting how nursing is compared with the teaching profession over and over on this website on multiple topics. Another under-valued and under-respected profession that continues to expect more and more from it's members but fails to compensate them for their efforts. My employer has a clinical ladder system that now requires a BSN at a certain level and an MSN at another level that until recently had no such requirements. They made no provisions for compensation for tuition reimbursement nor did they raise the pay grade for these new requirements. They want BSN and MSN prepared nurses for the same pay they offered 5 years ago to ADN prepared nurses. They want to upgrade the profession, but at our blood, sweat, tears, and expense. They want to do it where we as RN's dig ourselves into deep student debt and get the same reward offered to nurses at an ADN level 5 years ago. Nurses who continue to advocate for higher educational standards are educating themselves right out of a job. I'm not going back to school to still be paid as a bedside care nurse for an additional $1.00/hr with a $20,000 student loan debt.

Folks come on!! You are quoting me on something I wrote over 6 years ago in 2004!! Surely there is a statute of limitations somewhere in cyberspace that allows for years of experience and/or maturity. And how many of you who quoted me were even nurses in 2004? Anyway, all kidding aside, yes after 6 more years of experience I would rephrase and change some of what I wrote if this were a new thread today. Today I would change the part where I stated that "But that's not really being a nurse now, is it?" part because nursing is much more than bedside direct care. I'll give ya that. And to the poster way back when who corrected me on clinical nurse specialists being involved in direct patient care, yes, I was wrong for that comment as well. But nowhere did I state that nurses with higher educations aren't nurses. I was referring to their specific job titles and duties, not level of education. Sorry if I was not clear on that. I disagree with the poster who stated that I painted all nurses with the same brush. I stated "Those who "love what they do" as you put it never seem to be direct patient care staff or floor nurses." I stated "seem to be" and I never stated "all" nurses in any way. This was based on my own informal findings in the workplace, and by the way, in 2011, I still find it to be true. Not all, but yes, the vast majority of med/surg floor nurses that I interact with today in 2011 are still unhappy with their jobs, based solely on informal conversations with present and former co-workers in my current and previous employers. Today I work in the Recovery Room which of course is a direct patient care position. The vast majority of staff in my unit are happy with their jobs overall and seem to love what they do. In 2004 when I wrote the original post, I was working in the ICU where I saw a lot of burnout and unhappy nurses, second only to the burnout and frustration I saw working med/surg in the years before that. I don't blame either group for their frustration given the working conditions in those areas.

If your only goal is to be a CRNA period then I agree with the above replies. But many people choose career paths without thinking about things like getting older and wanting a change and/or moving up. A CRNA program that awards a doctorate degree vs. a masters degree is not simply a matter of picking the cheapest program. When asking for advice as a young pre-nursing student, the best question that people asked me was "where do you want to be in 10-15 years?" I did not know nor care at that point in my life so that's how I ended up doing the long route in nursing (LPN to RN to BSN now masters at 40). Really think about what you want and do not simply choose the cheapest degree or shortest program. There really is more to nursing and your professional life than what license you will have after school is over.

But it all depends on what you value. The biggest mistakes people make (especially young 20-somethings) are when they fixate on either their wage, cost of living, or quality of life. All 3 need to be considered, not just one factor alone. I have no idea where you live or how old you are so this is just an example: You have one person who brags about how high his/her wage is in comparison to the rest of the country and he/she enjoys all of the amenities involved with living in an exciting place like San Francisco. Their wages might be high but they live in an apartment or condo that others would not consider as a suitable home. You have another who brags about their fabulous home or apartment and how many bells and whistles it has, yet they live in the boring suburbs of some rustbelt city in the cold midwest or northeast. The San Francisco type person would never trade their tiny studio apartment for a home with a yard or a bigger apartment with hot tubs and work out rooms because they don't want their life to be about going to yet another chain restaurant or mall, in addition to scraping ice off their windshield every morning before going to work. They may want to hang out in cool clubs or go to plays or hit the latest new restaurant that just opened down the street. The person in the rustbelt suburbs may value and want other things in life, like good schools for their kids, a nice yard, a home with new appliances and pretty hardwood floors, etc. Your best place to live is not necessarily where you grew up, nor is it the city that pays the highest wages, but a carefully thought out plan of what you value in life. Your wage might be high in one city but not give you what you want in life, or it may be lower in another city yet meet your needs much better than the higher paying town.