clemoi

Are you thinking that an ADN isn't intense?? Plan that any nursing program-especially a shorter, more condensed version- will be very intense.

Right on! If you can't get out of bed and support yourself, I'll get you a walker. If you can't do it with a walker, I'll get you a bedpan. No one is falling on my back!

I say be compassionate and encouraging while providing the education. I don't see where guilt should come into play in the nurse-patient relationship. I do think that providing the education in a straightforward and objective way is appropriate and required. We wouldn't tip toe around telling a high-risk sexually promiscuous patient to wear a condom, so why wouldn't we warn a high-risk diabetic or cardiac patient about necessary diet changes. It's all health promotion, prevention, intervention, treatment, etc. That's our whole purpose as nurses. '

I'm a nursing student and I work on a med/surg floor. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to watch an organ harvest happen at work one night. I think if you bring it down to basics, a dilemma for the nurse is the delicate situation of respecting the situation as a death of a family member, allowing the family to stay with the body and grieve their loss while behind the scenes you are preparing paperwork and dealing with the time-sensitive matter of an organ harvest. Also, it may fall on the nurse to ask the family or even the patient for the organ donation wishes. This can be a difficult conversation for someone with a terminal illness or for a family member who isn't ready to let go. When I stood in on the organ harvest, he mentioned the most difficult situations were donations from bodies of children. Imagine that dilemma for a nurse facilitating the organ donation in such a situation. As far as allocating, there are transplant nurses who deal specifically with case management of organ donation. They deal with patients from the beginning, coordinating all the testing and determination of qualification for getting on the list to receive organs. A friend who does this kind of job once told me that she gets very close to her patients and said that it is either very exciting and rewarding when a situation works out and the patient receives a successful organ transplant or it can be very sad when things don't work out. I can imagine a number of scenarios where decisions made by the RN would have life changing effects for the patient.

I wish my hospital had an L&D floor. We are all adult care. The company has a few hospitals in my city so I can stay with the company and transfer to another hospital but right now there are no positions open. I'm hoping to get an externship in OB and I'm working on getting all my letters of recommendation. I'm torn because I love my hospital and I know they will want me to work there but I really want to be in OB and I don't want to waste time in med/surg when I already know where I want to be. It's a contradiction to what most people say, "get your med surg experience before you specialize." Idk if that's best if your specialty isn't adult care...

Call before another applicant gets the chance, ask for a tour of the facility, ask about volunteer opportunities while they make their decisions. Let them know this is the position you really want, not just one of many you sent out into the world. Employers are always skeptical of applicant's true intentions so I say let it be known that this is your position! Good luck :)

So more than half of my mentors, teachers and friends are telling me to start in Med/Surg (which is where I work now as a tech while I finish school), because it's good experience. However, a handful of trusted advice is coming in that I should go right into my specialty, OB, which I think I am leaning towards because I am never going to get experience with OB situations on med/surg, it's such a unique patient population. Reading some threads, I am now seeing that it might even work against someone going into Pedi or OB to begin their career in adult care. Those of you who work in OB, do you have any insight from the inside? Anything you can offer is appreciated!

I don't see why nurses think its an issue of being lazy or mothers not wanting to be with their babies, so i appreciate your non-judgmental attitude. I've had three babies and am a very involved mother. I nursed all of them and was always happy when the nurses brought them to me at night. However, with my first baby I had a very scary experience. I was alone and feeding the baby and fell asleep. When I woke up, he was no longer laying on me, he was next to me on the bed, what if i had rolled over or pushed him off the bed? The thought still terrifies me. After that, if I didn't feel capable of being awake and alert enough to keep them safe I sent them to the nursery. Women are exhausted after labor and overwhelmed with their swiftly changing lives and bodies. Not to mention the pain medication they are given. I say if a mom says she is too tired to room in, get the baby out of there for safety's sake!

Listen, we need nurses who love nursing and who want to be there for people in their sickest and darkest hours! If you have the drive and compassion to be a nurse, to make someone feel comfortable when their grossest of the gross is leaking all over their bed and YOU have to clean it up, who cares what or how you choose to represent yourself artistically or socially. Your true caring and compassionate self will shine through any body, art, or whatever expression. Your patients will be looking in your eyes for acceptance, not looking at your body art trying to decide if you are worthy of caring for them. If you are a true nurse, that will shine bigger and brighter than your appearance. As for ANY peer, leader or manager that wouldn't hire you for that, GOOD. You don't want to work for someone that judgmental anyway, because there will for sure be issues later on about every other thing you are or are not or whatever the belief is at the moment LOL. Please, judgmental small minded people, take my little, tasteful and deeply meaningful thumb tattoo as a sign that I am an open minded, free thinking and accepting person and if that doesn't work for your company please don't hire me. Also, try not to look past my thumb tattoo at my 3.96 GPA, the fact that I hold office in my student government, that I'm a member of several nursing organizations, that I have a comprehensive history of successful corporate experience. I hope to goodness someone that would judge someone else like that doesn't end up as my boss....eeek scary.

I have a tattoo on my thumb that i cover with a simple silver ring, but you can still see it. During my first nursing class i wore bandaids over it to cover it but they came off every five minutes when i washed my hands and i realized it was more hazardous (carrying germs) than anything. I stopped covering it and since then not one instructor, nurse, manager, or patient has said anything about it. I worried about it for awhile but now I realize that i am always clean, unwrinkled, put together and professional. that's what really counts. hope that helps :)

The best thing to study on your own is reactions to disease process and how to respond. What would you do for a patient experiencing X,Y,Z? That's the main point of nursing school and the information is out there and available. Look up common diseases, research how to approach and deal with them, and if you want to complicate things, think about how to approach a patient with more than one (ex. diabetes and heart failure combined). Good luck :)

1/2 Faith in yourself 1/4 Courage to discover what you really want 1/8 Love for what you're doing 1/16 Support of those who love you 1/16 Knowing you'll adapt to whatever life leads you through. Good luck :)

Bedside report seems to work really well in the clinical sites I've seen it used. I'm a PCA on a large med/surg floor and the nurses don't do bedside report but I think it would help. I think it's important for a PCA to get report from a PCA because the information they report is different than a nursing report. Also, if the PCA has 20+ patients then they would have to get report from all the different nurses rather than the one PCA he/she is taking over for. I can tell you that at work, I write all my important information on the rounding sheet hanging in the patient's room. That way the nurse never has to call or find me when he/she needs a BP reading or glucose level, it's always written inside the room.

I am a PCA and a student nurse, and I've read all of the replies to this question. I'm wondering why not just be straight with her? "I'm getting the impression by the way you are coming across when you ask me these questions that you think I'm not acting in the best interest of the patient." or "I don't mind answering your questions but I feel like you are accusing me of something." Isn't it easier to just be straight and honest with people?

Any interview is simply an opportunity to sell yourself. If you are a good nurse, you need to say so! Have examples of what makes you a good nurse, think of some situations where you really demonstrated your skill and practice talking about them, have some solid examples that you are comfortable discussing and use them in your interviews. Practice deep breathing before you go in, you are a nurse, you know what to do :)