TheMrsRN

You are right that we have a responsibility to the patient. It is our job to advocate for them. It is not your job to tell a patient what the MD or any other health professional taking care of them should or shouldn't do. Those are things that you address with the other person and if necessary, you address them with administration. Even though you worked night shift, if you were unaware of what the doctor knew or didn't know, you should have contacted the on call doctor about the wound. Had they documented anything about it? What were they writing in the chart every day that they assessed the wound? If you thought the patient needed an intervention, you should have made that happen. You follow the chain of command until you get the results that the patient needs. Does this irritate people? Absolutely, because noone likes being told what to do. However, you are an advocate for the patient. It is your job. The best nurses are often the ones that doctors and other staff don't like, but they are the ones that make sure they advocate for their patients.

"Handle it well?" What exactly do you mean by this? Did I use pregnancy as an excuse to be lazy? No! But I was nauseated 24/7, vomited a few times a day, had pregnancy induced hypertension starting at 7 weeks, low progesterone and had to supplement, and had frequent stabbing pains from ruptured ovarian cysts. I did my absolute best, but you better believe I wasn't able to work as hard and as fast as I did prepregnancy. Have some sensitivity and realize that growing a human inside your body is not easy!

Time management is tough, but practice makes perfect. After I first started out as a RN I would get to work 30 minutes early. I would go over my patients' charts and their meds. I would do this before even taking report. It helped alot.

I would look for a tech position working with other types of patients if you are burnt out with your current patient population. If you are already in the mindset that you need a break before your "whole life becomes nursing," you may want to rethink your career choice. If you haven't even become a nurse and you are burnt out with patient care, you will have a rude awakening ahead of you. But I for sure would not want to get a non nursing job while in school if you have the option to build your resume with a job in healthcare while you finish your degree.

This exactly! If you live close enough to commute to a "big city," you are not in a small city and will still have difficulty finding a job at local hospitals. As far as the cities listed above, those are all still considered the DFW metroplex and new grads here can't find jobs either. With the few and far between internships here, local hospitals look for new grads coming from well known schools in this area and ones that have worked as techs in local hospitals while in school. My hospital just hired the first new grad in a few years and she has been a new grad for over a year. She has been working as a tech since she graduated because she couldn't get an internship. Small towns would be ones where there is only one local hospital for several rural towns in the area. These are the ones hiring.

Who were you supposed to pass meds with? Your preceptor on the unit or your instructor? In all of my clinicals I would pass meds with the preceptor, but I would have one specific day that the instructor would observe me pass meds to check me off. If you were supposed to be passing meds with your preceptor, why weren't you?? And if the clinical instructor was supposed to watch you, where was she and why didn't she watch you pass any meds?

If death in general really bothers you, then don't work in a specialty where death is prevalent. No ERs, no ICU, no H/O. Try something like community health, school nursing, etc. In any field of nursing, you may experience death, but most facilities have some sort of employee assistance program or a chaplain you can speak to. Also, animals and patients are different. I loooove my dogs and could NEVER work with animals for the same reason. I could not deal with animal death or neglect or abuse. However, working with people does not affect me the same.

You need to contact the Board of Nursing of the state where you are interested in getting your license. Why can't you just take the refresher course?

I worked as a school nurse at an elementary school for one year. 100% of the students were poverty level and all of the students lived in 1 of 2 section 8 apartment complexes next to the school. I dealt with students who soiled themselves on a daily basis. I encouraged the teachers to ask parents to bring spare clothing. Most students never did though. I had a small collection of clothes. If I could not reach the parents or any emergency contacts, I would give the student some clothes and baby wipes and tell them to clean themselves up in the bathroom ALONE. I would have been fired if I assisted a student with this task. Sure a Pre K student probably struggled with this task, but as a RN in our school district, we were not allowed to assist. And furthermore, it is my job to worry about the health of students, not with toileting. If they aren't special needs (which we did not have a special needs program at our school) it is not my job. Even if we did have a special needs class, there would have been aides who were designated for toileting issues. The parents need to potty train their children before sending them to school.

Applying online is not enough. They probably receive hundreds of applications per day. You need to make phone calls to nurse recruiters and you could even hand deliver a resume to HR. Go to career fairs at hospitals and local schools. Join the Texas Nurses Association and go to local meetings. It is an excellent way to network.

You don't have to play the "nurse card." Even a non-nurse knows that your friend was receiving terrible patient care. Maybe the floor is understaffed and the nurses are too busy to provide appropriate care. If that is the case, the nurses can't do anything about it, but management can. I would ask to speak to the nurse manager and address all my concerns with her. If they receive enough complaints, maybe they will change things. When we (the nurses) complain about something not working well at work, nothing gets done. However, if patient complaints are made regarding the same issues, management jumps on fixing them. I would for sure go back and ask to speak the the nurse manager.

Children's Medical Center usually only hires new grads if they worked as techs there while in school. They cut their internships back in 2009 and have very limited spaces for new grads now. You can always call nurse recruitment, but if no GN jobs are posted, they aren't hiring.

Yes, new grads must go through an internship to work at local hospitals here. The majority of internships are filled for the May grads by March. It is late to apply, so if you don't see any job listings for internships or GN jobs on the hospital's website, it is because the spots are full.

https://www.cookchildrens.org/SpecialtyServices/Nursing/Pages/NurseResidencyProgram.aspx#1 Here is info on the residency program. The deadline has already passed to even apply if you were elligible. A little research goes a long way. Before moving to the area, you should at least do your research online. I am sure most of the positions have already been filled.

Cook Children's hires new grads into their nurse residency program. To be elligible, you need a BSN. It is very competitive and they prefer to hire nurses who worked as a care partner or extern while in school at Cook.

You could offer health teaching and promotion, but your scope of practice will limit you regarding treatment of any illness. Since you can not make a medical diagnosis, you can't tell them what to do regarding treatment, even if it is OTC. For example, when I worked as a school nurse, even if I knew the child had ringworm. I couldn't tell the parent and send them out to buy an antifungal cream because diagnosing was out of my scope of practice. I had to refer them to a doctor, even though the treatment was OTC.

I have two friends who are RNs that went through the ICU residency at Parkland. It is very competitive and they have a ton of applicants. I would recommend trying to contact a nurse manager of the specific ICU you want to work in. Parkland has 4 ICUs.

Have you looked into the accelerated BSN programs? Sure there are prereqs, but they are neccessary building blocks you have to know. I am not sure where the previous poster got that RN programs are 75% theory and 25% clinicals. That is not true. You will spend more hours in clinicals working towards your RN than in a class setting. I have my BSN and the nursing program itself was 2 years long. Classroom time was 2 days a week and clinicals were 3 days a week. The good thing about the RN program is that once you have one semester of clinicals under your belt, you can get a job at a hospital as an extern.

It means they prefer that you have worked at least 1-2 years in a hospital as a nurse.

Thanks for the rec for medscape. I found 2 interesting articles! We only have access to one journal at my hospital, and it isn't nursing specific. I have access to a hospital library at a sister facility, but it is a couple of hours away from where I live.

It has nothing to do with it being legal or harmful to your own body. It has to do with the proven dangers of third hand smoke in a smoker's hair, nails, skin, and clothes. It is proven that there are carcinogens in third hand smoke. It is also been proven that in respiratory patients, it can cause an exacerbation of symptoms. I have only come in to contact with 2 facilites that refused to hire a smoker. One was a asthma/pulmonology clinic and the other was a cancer treatment facility.

No longer being a student I don't have access to nursing journal databases. Google searches don't produce credible sources. I am not doing homework. I am looking for credible studies that I can use to help implement evidence based staffing protocols for my facility.

Does anyone know of any journal articles or research studies on nursing fatigue? Thanks! ETA: This isn't homework. I am not a student. I am looking for credible studies that I can use to help implement evidence based staffing protocols for my facility. Also, if you don't know of any, but work at a facility that has staffing policies to prevent nursing fatigue, what are they and how are they working at your hospital?

I assume you already have interviews set up. If not, I suggest applying for anything and everything you come across. Nursing jobs for new nurses are harder and harder to come by. With that being said, you need to be sure you look professional. Invest in a well tailored suit. It was the best 300 dollars I ever spent. Out of the 8 interviews I have had in nursing, I had 7 job offers! Also, bring extra copies of your resume. Even if you sent it in with the application, you should always be prepared with extra copies. You should also come prepared with answers to common questions. Ex. What are your strengths? weaknesses? Why do you want this job? Why do you want to work for our facility? Why did you choose nursing? etc. Always be early!! You can always sit in your car if you get their too early. You never want to end up stuck in traffic or lost on the day of an interview. Allow more than enough time to get there. Remain calm and confident! Good luck!

I suggest the BSN. The real question isn't what the CRNA programs prefer. The real question is what you will need to get a job on a critical care floor, which is the first requirement for CRNA school. Most CRNA schools require at least 1 year of ICU RN experience before you can even apply. Critical care jobs are highly sought after and tough to get. Most employers will consider you more with a BSN versus going straight for your Masters.