Irishobrn

I got my BSN at Aspen and had no trouble with getting into an FNP program. I'm currently attending Simmons College for that. But there were several other online schools I looked at the were fine with my Aspen degree, it's CCNE which is what most are looking for. Also Aspen doesn't care what your goal is beyond them...they were very helpful in getting any information I needed and academic references for my application as well. The program is great, and the instructors are helpful.

I had no problem begin accepted into ALL the MSN programs I applied to with my Aspen Degree. CCNE accreditation is all that is needed. If you are interested in a specific program you can always talk to an admission advisor at the school you are interested in prior to enrolling to be sure the degree will be accepted. The Nurse Practitioner program I chose is in MA and I had no problems.

I didn't do my MSN at Aspen, they do not have a NP program. But I enjoyed the RN to BSN program, found it not difficult and I did the program full time while working full time. There are no hidden costs, the tuition is as stated with the addition of books, proctored exam fee, graduation fee and a technology fee. My cost for the BSN total through graduation was $10,100. Most of my books came used from Half.com except for one new book. I highly recommend this school. If were interested in anything other than NP I would have done my MSN there as well. Professor Gayol is the bomb, had him for two courses last year. In addition I had no problem being accepted to all the MSN programs I applied to with my Aspen degree, they are CCNE accredited and their courses are what are expected as prerequisites for a MSN program.

They have fixed shift schedules. They recently introduced weekend alternatives three 10's but get paid for 40...and other part time 8 and 10 hr shift schedules. You get to pick your first schedule from what's available then if you want to change you have to bid based on seniority. Eventually everyone generally gets what they want, but it could take a year or so. Lot's of people are hired into day shift along with evenings and nights but currently the most needs are on evenings or split morning and then evening. Personally I wouldn't do a split shift...but there are people who like that. I do every other weekend, but they also have every weekend schedules and now the new weekend alternative schedules. Currently I work part time but I was there for two years before I dropped hours.

I just finished the RN to BSN last month, degree conferred on 06/06/2016. They are CCNE accredited but not regionally accredited. For nursing the CCNE is more important, none of the MSN programs I applied to cared about the regional accreditation but all required the CCNE. I completed the program in one year taking two classes every 10 weeks. I found it easy. I bought my textbooks, mostly used on half.com and they were not expensive. They say you need 17-20 hrs per week for each class but I only spent that much time on 2 classes, so I found it to be very manageable with working full time and kids. Other than one community project it is all online, no group work. I originally chose them because many of the other programs that I could have finished in that time frame wanted me to retake statistics because I had taken it more than 5 years ago, and no way was I going to do that again...so Aspen was a good fit for my time table, cost of attendance and transfer credits. The instructors I experienced were all really reasonable and understanding if you needed an extension as well as quick to answer questions. The registrar is super fast at filling requests and the dean regularly answers questions and posts in the student discussion board. Each week you have to post to the class discussions and respond to two students as well as complete a weekly assignment for each class usually a paper, sometimes something different, but papers are expected to be approximately 1500 words. The first class you take is a writing class, I highly recommend taking the research class second because it is very helpful in instructing you in how to locate research and utilize it for you papers. I got A's in all my classes but I have strong writing skills, as far as I know most people do not struggle in this program to get B's, even if they are not naturally strong writers. On to my FNP next!

Accepted in the Sept 2016 cohort am wondering if anyone else will be beginning then and if there are any updates from students currently attending.

Axis Point Health is a good company to work for. Fixed schedules so not a lot of flexibility, other than that it's good. You are not micro managed, but you are accountable for meeting standards. Currently hiring in compact states.

Our facility is requiring NCC EFM certification as of 12/31/10. All new nurses have 1 year to pass. All providers and nurses needed to get certified. I'm not a new nurse so I just went and took the test and passed...some people took review classes and studied the bood dilligently, but most passed with no problem. Unless you are a really new nurse you probably already know the material and shouldn't have much trouble passing the exam. :)

Scope out all the epiduralized patients on your unit and ask to check them before the doctor or experienced nurse. This will help you get more comfortable and enable you to really be able to feel around without making the patient uncomfortable. We also have these plastic boards on our units for the new nurses to practice on to get a feel for how many centimeters feels like to their hands. Everyone has different size fingers so my two fingers in is 3 cm...but it may be only 2cm for someone with smaller hands. You need to get comfortable with your own touch. It will come to you with practice and experience. :)

Again different providers write the orders differently, and some are more agressive than others with the use of pitocin. But generally they write start at 2mu and increase 1-2 every 20-30minutes until contractions two to three minutes apart or 200 mvu in 10 minutes, up to 30 mu/hr. After 30mu/hr we have to have the doctor write a separate order to go up past that. We have latitude in how we increase or stop infusions, we just have to document why we didn't increase or why we stopped the infusion. During the day there is no problem because providers are awake and around to work with you, at night it can get a bit tricky...when to wake the provider up and such. But all in all everyone is on the same page where I work. I do like that no one starts pit automatically...they will give the patient a few hours to see if they progress with out it first.

I don't work in either of those units, I work in L&D...but have had my share of problems with the NICU. In our hospital it seems they are annoyed each time we call them over...even though the reasons we call them are all defined in the hospital policies. Then when they come they act like primadonna's who must be served. The other day we had 6 nurses total due to call outs...three delivering at the same time and 8 other patients on the board. My patient was delivering with a vacuum assist and had meconium...so NICU was called. The neonatogist and nurse stood there and said the stethoscope was not the one she liked (bell size?) and she wanted another...I'm the only nurse in the room, vacuum handle in hand while doc was applying the cup....so I looked at the NICU nurse and simply said, "oh you can go to the next room and get another one." The next day I came in to an email from my manager about the "incident". I was livid, demanded a meeting with both the nurse who complained, the neonatologist and the director of nursing. Amazingly they decided they misunderstood my comment as being nasty and over reacted...so no meeting would be necessary. These people constantly leave us with retracting babies, blue babies, and babies that we need to repeatedly call them back for over and over again. We can't transfer an unstable baby to Newborn nursery...they are not set up to deal with that, they have 6-8 babies to care for and can not stand over an unstable baby to monitor them. But for some reason they continue to leave before the baby is stable. I have to say some are better than others but overall they are not team players at all! If you figure out how to fix it please let me know too.

Hopital scrubs. But we are allowed to carry in and change into our personal scrubs if we need to. Some of the nurses are very sensitive to the detergents from the hospital scrubs and as long as we don't wear them in/out we can wear our own. Almost everyone wears the hospital ones though...icky green ones.

Where I work: Patient Patient's support person OB House Officer (hospitalist ob to assist with the surgery) Scrub Tech Circulating Nurse (L&D nurse who is primary care nurse for patient) Neonatologist (MD or NP) NICU nurse Anesthesiologist If we are lucky there is a second L&D nurse to assist with the baby once the NICU is done assessing the baby...but most of the time the circulating nurse does that too. For Twins we have two NICU nurses and one other L&D nurse to help with the extra baby.

There are so many reasons to love L&D! There's being an important part of the start or additions to a family. The intimate bonding with your patient. The adrenaline of emergencies that usually turn out all good. There's supporting and grieving with someone who just lost their baby. There's the endless guessing over how big, what time, and what name the baby will have. There the surprised look on the parents who chose not to find out the sex before the birth when they find out if it's a girl or boy. There's the grandparents, the aunts, the uncles and endless posing for pictures. There is so much to love about it. Now as much as I love L&D I know many nurses who have that same love for other specialities and don't care for L&D at all. There is the best part of nursing, finding out where you love to do it and being able to choose. :)

Wow we are totally spoiled where I work. We have delivery carts, monitoring equipment, warmers, and pumps in every room. The only supplies we need to get separately are vacuums, forceps, and telemetry units. Those are located between the rooms so you don't have to go far. I have to say that our manager is very good at manipulating the budget to get us everything we need. Good luck to you all! :)