aclays

I've been learning from Daytonite for years after her passing and only just discovered why she seemed to have disappeared from allnurses. RIP Daytonite, I appreciate your hard work for students and the profession of nursing!

so far skyscape is the number one free app I've found for looking up drugs and procedures. I've used medscape, webmd, epocrates and a couple others. None of them compare.

Every place will be different. I always took my backpack to every clinical, and would leave my valuables in it. Sometimes I'd leave my backpack in the staff room, sometimes right next next to the charge nurse depending on which rotation I was in. Just be ready to be adaptable, and don't leave anything too valuable behind just in case!

My wife and I got into nursing school during the same semester, so we've gone through our clinicals and classes together. It's been a pretty great experience, she's a very dependable study partner!

Sorry to hear you had such a bad experience. We have had the opposite experience for our rotations which may or may not be due to the fact that it's a teaching hospital. All of the nurses, docs etc expect to have students around and so far everybody I've met has been more than accommodating. We go in the day before to pick our own patients and gather information on them (when our rotation takes us somewhere like the medical or surgical floors, obviously we can't do write-ups the day before in ER or OR rotations) and then do a write-up that night on the patho, procedures and all medications that are used. This means that we usually know more about our patient than our nurse, and so far I haven't had a nurse that has had an obvious problem with having a student. More nurses than not have been happy to have us around because it means we can answer the call lights for those needy patients while they were getting their charting done. That means they have more time to spend teaching us how to perform those foleys, enemas etc. I find it interesting that so many nurses here have complaints about students not wanting to do procedures because they've already done it once, or because it's 'icky'. As students, we get a free pass when we make mistakes (unless it's a major one), and this is the time to practice practice practice! It doesn't matter if you've performed a procedure once, the more you practice it the faster you'll get, which is essential once you're thrown to the wolves as a new grad and starting to figure out just how much you really don't know! I completely understand a nurse getting frustrated with a student taking 3x as long for something they see as mundane, but students shouldn't give them any other reason to be frustrated. We're there to learn, and need to take advantage of every learning experience that we can, even if that experience is just honing our skills!

My experience was that the math was exactly the same, they'd just changed the numbers. I got 100% on the math and I owe it entirely to the ATI study guide.

While I don't know anything about the PAX review book, I do have experience with the official TEAS Study Guide that I purchased from Barnes and Noble for about $30. I studied the guide an hour or so a day for two weeks and got a 99th percentile score on the exam due to the study guide and two paper practice tests included in the book. There was not a single question on the TEAS that I didn't feel the guide prepared me for. You can probably find a cheaper version of the guide on ebay if you really need to cut costs and are not in an extreme hurry. Good luck!

Study harder on the material in that book. I spent a week focusing on that ATI TEAS V study guide and got a 99th percentile score. I didn't see a single thing on the test that wasn't covered in the study guide somewhere.

My school only had about 120 applicants for 70 spots, but I was apparently on the bottom of the acceptance list with a 3.6 GPA (on ~10 core classes that they use for acceptance, my overall GPA was a 3.1 as well) and a 99th percentile TEAS score. The school is Idaho State University if anybody happens to be interested.

I spent 4 days poring over the official ati study guide, took both of the practice tests that came in the back of the book, and then just went for it. I ended up with a 99th percentile score. I didn't see a single question that wasn't covered in the book. Granted it's a lot of reading to do, but the resources you need to ace this exam are there, and it's a lot cheaper at B&N than at the official website! http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Study-Manual-for-the-Test-of-Essential-Academic-Skills-Version-V/Assessment-Technologies-Institute/e/9781933107981

I don't mind being deployed to Afghanistan a couple times, but I want to know if I can guarantee it will be as a nurse and not as a soldier. If the government pays for me to get a BSN they'll want me to use it, right? According to the recruiter I wouldn't have any problem getting into a unit in our region if that's what you're referring to with the limited slots, apparently he was told to find a nursing student and so far hadn't had any luck? According to a friend of mine that's about to retire, mostly we'll be moving around to different bases around the USA, possibly a few out of the country. These should all be accompanied tours unless I end up in a more dangerous area, and my wife and I are just fine with that.

Hi folks, I'm a first semester BSN student thinking about joining the Army Reserve and ROTC program. The picture painted by my recruiter is enticing, but I'd like some outside input. According to a pamphlet titled "US Army Reserve and ROTC Benefits and Financial" I'll get about 1400 a month from the combination of drill pay, gi bill, rotc kicker, and rotc stipend. Tuition paid, and for an extra year on my contract, 23k of my student loans paid off. This summer I'll need to go to basic training for 10 weeks. According to my recruiter, when I graduate from school I am guaranteed a job as an RN in an army hospital. Does this sound about right? The guaranteed job in the Army Nurse Corps is a determining factor, I have zero interest in being one of the guys with the guns in Afghanistan, the money they offer isn't good enough for that. I'm also interested in opinions on being an RN in the Army Reserve. I've got a wife and son, and my wife is also in the first semester of nursing school with 4 semesters left. We're aware that I may have to do 1-2 unaccompanied tours over the course of 20 years, and that we'll have to move every 3-4 years. Thanks!

There are about 15 guys in our class of 70, most of us are 25-30, but there are a few that are around 20.

My wife and I are both nursing students and have an 18 month old. He's in daycare until 5 and goes to bed around 8:30, we just make sure to spend those few hours with him, and spend the rest of the time studying. Seems to work so far.

No, but the questions on TEAS 5 are identical TYPES as the ones in the official ATI study guide. So basically if you understand the concept to ALL the questions in that study guide, you have no excuse for getting less than a 90%!

http://www.wesnorman.com/ - found this link awhile back while trying to study up. It's got some good information and is worth bookmarking.

Perhaps it depends on the school. It didn't in mine according to the advisor. We ended up with a 15% male class.

Our professors tell us that oxygen is considered a drug because you need a physicians order to give it to a patient. Assuming that is the case nationwide, then the argument is settled. Whether or not it is an actual drug, you are still required to treat it as such.

Ask your advisor how they calculate entrance scores. For my school it was something like 50% comes from your grades, 30% comes from the TEAS, and 20% came from experience / volunteer work. They had a scale where if you'd worked so many number of hours you could earn so many percent. People that had been CNA's or volunteer'd in hospitals filled in that last 20% which helped a lot of they didn't have great GPA or TEAS performance. Some schools may require you to do an interview or write a paper for like 10% of that. You are not required to be a CNA at any nursing school as far as I know, but it will certainly help. The people in my class that were CNA's have a far better understanding of a lot of the clinical stuff we're learning right now because they'd already watched RN's perform a lot of it.

The practice booklet is essential. It comes with two paper practice exams which are also very helpful. I used the study guide straight for about a week and ended up with a 99th percentile score. I can guarantee that without the study guide I would have done very poorly. So if you're wondering whether or not the ~$30 is worth it, don't think any more. Buy it! For those of you that think I'm crazy for quoting a $30 price, be sure to check barnes&noble. I got mine for $28 shipped, the exact study guide that atitesting sells minus the online stuff.

I was accepted into my school Idaho State University with a 3.56 gpa. They said that ~3.4-5 was the lowest that made it in even though they would accept as low as 3.0. There were only about 130 applications for 70 spots, which is pretty nice.

Bumping this thread because i am also interested... :)

I'm having trouble being consistent with the phase 1 systolic pressure. Using the same stethoscope as other students I'm often getting readings that are 6-8 below what they are hearing. I usually hear tiny sounds from myself or the patients slight movements that seem to cover up the faint beats. I can mostly eliminate the sounds by holding only to the rubber tubing and pressing down from there, but I think the lack of pressure may be making the sounds weaker. Any advice or suggestions on how to get more consistent in hearing these? If I've gone down below where I think the reading should be, will it screw things up if I pump up the pressure another 10-15 to double check? Thanks!

Entirely depends on the professor. We had choices of professors that made A&P difficult unnecessarily and professors that made it fairly easy. Our options for microbiology were the same way. One professor used nothing but powerpoints and made it perfectly clear what we needed to study for. The other option was again a professor that supposedly taught a very difficult class. Check out the ratemyprofessors.com and hope that people in your school are web savvy :)