Ross1

It is important to understand that there is a difference between bipolar I and bipolar II. Bipolar II, does not include full-blown mania. People with bipolar II experience a milder form called hypomania....which is less severe and does not cause the same level of impairment in social functioning.....in fact......people can be very functional and productive while hypomanic.

I would recommend that you check out the following: Nurse's Board of Victoria http://www.nbv.org.au/ To echo what another poster said, you don't simply "move" to Australia. You must go through immigration and obtain a work permit or "landed status" if permanent residency is your goal. It is my understanding that if you are under a certain age, as a citizen of a member British Commonwealth Country (Canada), there may be special visas to allow you to live and work in Australia for one year. You best bet is to start with the Nurse's Board of Victoria and possibly the Australian Nursing Council or whatever nursing organization in Australia is charged with evaluating foreign credentials. (there are lots of links from the web site above). Also.....you need to speak with an immigration attorney that specializes in Australian immigration law. Depending where you are located in Canada, that probably wouldn't be too hard, especially if you are in Toronto or Montreal. Good luck with your plans. Australia is a wonderful country and as 2 young Canadian RNs, I do think your goal is doable, but it will take some work.

We already have partial "nationalized healthcare" in the USA in the forms of Medicaid and Medicare. For folks in the USA that are so opposed to national health care......remember, your sweet old grandmother has it in the form of Medicare and possibly Medicaid too. I'm not an economist but I do know one thing....one of the largest costs of doing business in the USA is health care. I wonder how our economy would be impacted if these costs were shifted away from employers and on to the federal gov't. Yes we would probably pay more in taxes, however, would we pay less for other things? How much would goods and services costs if employers didn't have to pay for health care coverage for its employees.......which is the fastest growing cost of doing business in the USA. The answer to this question would be very interesting and I'm sure that there must be many studies on this subject.

Thank you for the additional explanation. By the way, I'm Jewish as well, even have a graduate degree in Jewish studies, but at the same time, am opposed to circumcision, even for religious reasons, unless the male is capable of giving consent, which an 8 day old baby is not. After witnessing both a hospital circumcision as well as my nephew's B'rit Milah (jewish circumcision), I vowed never again to observe such a procedure/ritual. Though you are correct, the Jewish B'rit Milah is conducted differently and honestly is much more "humane" then the hospital procedure complete with circumstraint (which is barbaric in my opinion) As to why this practice developed in the non-Jewish and non-Muslim world (yes, Muslims also circumcise for religious reasons), it goes beyond the issue of just cervical cancer. Non-religious circumcision only became popular in English speaking countries, primarily the UK, Canada, Australia, and the USA (not sure about New Zealand and South Africa). As of today, it is only widely practiced in the USA and has been pretty much abandoned everywhere else. It became a class issue in the UK with the upper classes preferring it. Some say that during Victorian times it was done in the attempt to discourage masturbation (no success there, albeit circumcised males don't have a foreskin to stimulate). In the USA, it became popular following WWII with our great emphasis on hygiene when in reality hygiene for uncircumcised memberes isn't much different then hygiene for the rest of the body....soap and water.

It is infighting like this that serves as one of the factors that makes nursing a less then desirable profession. Nurses have hard enough jobs as it is with the demands of patient care not to mention the pressures from MDs, patients, and their families...........yet despite this, nurses have to make it even better by being disrespectful towards each other. What do nurses have to gain by making disparaging remarks about each other's educational preparation?

I don't believe what I am hearing. Surgery imposed on another without consent for the goal of looking like others in the locker room? Any boy being born today will see both circumcised and uncircumcised memberes in a locker room given the fact that the current rates of circumcision of newborn males in the USA are 60% cut - 40% uncut and these percentages are reverse in CA where leaving the member intact is the norm (60%). I just still can't get over this mindset that this should be the choice of the parents. In the absence of any medical reasons, forced, painful, cosmetic surgery on unconsenting patients is unethical. We have been socialized to be blinded to this fact when it comes to routine infant male circumcisions. I would suggest anyone on this list to look up their state's statutes on child abuse and see how easy it is to argue that infant cirumcision could be classified as abuse. Don't believe me, what would the law say if a parent, MD, or RN was found cutting off a baby's earlobe or removing his finger nails? They would be charged with child abuse.

Why don't you compare ASN/BSN salaries to Master's level PT and SW salaries. Can't speak for PT, however, if you look at MSW salaries in comparison to ASN/BSN RN salaries, you will find that it is usually the case that an RN with a 2 year associates degree makes way more money then an MSW. Social Work (and perhaps teaching) are the lowest paid of all "professions." Some social work jobs in health care institutions do pay on par with nursing, maybe even higher on occasion, but overall, there are no opportunities for advancement in such settings for a social worker and the vast majority of social work jobs no longer exist in health care settings (partly due to the rise of "nursing case management" which has taken over many of the traditional social work responsibilities in health care). As to PT.....the first thing that comes to mind for me is the salaries of Physical Therapy Assistants. The PTA degree is a 2 year associates degree, however, unlike ASN/ADN RNs, PTA are always "assistants", have limited opportunities for professional growth, have a fairly low salary (to my knowledge they typically earn in the 30s...but maybe I'm wrong), and they operate under a complete different licence then a PT and must always be practicing with a PT. Each profession has its pros and cons.

This is one situation where I would recommend that you consult with a Canadian immigration attorney. At a minimum, you will require a work visa which may be possible secondary to NAFTA........but if you are interested in immigration, a work visa does not lead to "landed status" (the equivalent of the US "green card"). Such legal matters are to complex to rely on the advice of folks in this forum, including myself. If moving/immigrating to Canada is your goal, invest a little money and get proper legal counsel. "Moving" to Canada is really immigration and not as simple as moving from one American state to another.

That was just in the news last year. Sadly, the victim committed suicide last year. Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/reimer/

I guess this discussion may be somewhat futile because minds are made up. But let's not forget what originally started the discussion. A new graduates observation of a severely botched circumcision. And it is that little boy and future man who is going to have to live with the physical, psychological, and sexual implications of having a deformed member. Not you, not I, not the RN, and not the MD. This trauma was completely preventable. I do agree with you on one point though. You comment about cosmetic surgery is correct, however, most cosmetic procedures are performed on patients who can consent to the operation, or as is sometimes the case, on minors who may be disfigured and the surgery is "reconstructive" as well as cosmetic. I believe in such cases, the pros far outweigh the risks and the parent does have the legal and moral right to make that decision on behalf of the child. Circumcision just doesn't meet that standard. Having a natural intact member is not a disease or a deformity that requires surgical intervention so I disagree that it is the parent's right to make this decision. What if the parent decided to cut the child's ear lobe off? Would that be okay?

Excerpts From the American Association of Pediatrics 1999 Policy statement: CHICAGO - After analysis of almost 40 years of available medical research on circumcision, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued new recommendations today stating that the benefits are not significant enough for the AAP to recommend circumcision as a routine procedure. The new policy statement was published in this month's issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the AAP.......................... Studies conclude that the risk of an uncircumcised man developing penile cancer is more than three-fold that of a circumcised man. However, the AAP policy notes that in the United States only 9 to 10 cases of this rare disease are diagnosed per year per 1 million men, indicating that while the risk is higher for uncircumcised men, their overall risk is extremely low. I don't need to quote statistics or citations to form my opinion. Circumcision is a surgery and ALL surgery has risks. Clearly a certain percentage of circumcisions do go wrong as evidenced by the postings on this list. Why would anyone impose a surgical procedure on a healthy patient for which there is no medical reason for that surgery? .....especially on something as sensitive and important as a male's sexual organs? If anything is radical, it is circumcision. All a male requires is basic hygiene and he will have no problems with his foreskin. I know this firsthand experience.......not from what others tell me...and not from anti-circumicsion web sites....but from my own actual experience as a male (with a foreskin.....which is probably more then most of the posters in this discussion can say!) It is true that circumcision does promote penile hygiene, but so does soap and water. I'm sure that the men out there who have had botched circumcisions, and there are many, would much rather have a life of soap and water then their botched circumcision. Even if the complication rate of circumcision is only 1%, that is still a lot of people given the numbers of male babies born each year in the USA.

Well said! Thank you. All surgery has risks and clearly a percentage of circumcisions do go awry and it is the unfortunate boys/males who pay the price, not the doctors, not the nurses, and not the parents. There is no medical reason to be perform routine infant circumcision. In fact, I recently read a quote somewhere (can't remember the source though) that said that more male babies die each year from complications associated with circumcision then adult males who are diagnosed with penile cancer (a very rare cancer for both circumcised and uncirumcised males, but often toted as one of the reasons to perform circumcision....to prevent penile cancer).

Referring to the original posting, I'm sure that this baby boy is going to grow up to be an adult male with a dysfunctional member. I cannot believe that in this day and age, especially with all the concerns about medical liability, routine infant cirucmision is still being performed here in the USA. While it is true that in this country, a parent as the legal right to consent to this procedure for his/her infant son, in my opinion, that parent does not have the ethical or legal right to do so. And any MD who performs this unnessessary and permant procedure (or RNs who assist) in my opinion are violating basic medical ethics. I am not some radical anti-circumcision activist, an adult male. I am just stating to me what seems so obvious. The only person who has the right to consent to part of his body being surgically removed is the owner of that body....plain and simple. It is not the doctor's member, the nurse's member, or the parent's member. When are people going to recognize this. I

Actually it doesn't apply in the US. If you look into various RN-BSN completion programs you will see that it is usually much easier to transfer credits from an ADN program into a BSN program then it is for Diploma programs. It all depends on how the Diploma program is set up. Example: some hospital diploma programs now have an affiliation with a local university so official college credits can be granted. Some will also award an ADN in addition to the diploma if specific requirements are met. But overall, it is a safe bet to say that an NLN accredited ADN will always transfer into a BSN program, even more so if the ADN program has an articulation agreement with a BSN program. This is not to say that you can't transfer with a Diploma, just don't assume that because a Diploma is 3 years, you will get more transfer credits.....you will not!

Given the fact that you already have a B.S., an ADN will enable you to become an RN with the least amount of additional credits and coursework. When I investigated these programs myself, I found the ADN to be more flexible then the "fast-track BSN" programs which often have considerable course requirements beyond nursing and science. Not only would I have to take additional nursing classes (about 24+ credits) there were also additional non-nursing courses (almost 30 credits) that I did not have in my BS but would be required to meet the general requirements for the new university awarding the BSN. Irony was that by doing the ADN first and then transferring into an ADN-BSN program, I could avoid much of these extra credits since some of these "completion" programs are very flexible, especially if one already has a bachelor's in something else. Unfortunately or fortuantely, depending on your frame of references, I dropped out of the ADN program after one semester. My grades were great but the experience helped me to see that nursing was not where I wanted to be. Thankfully I figured this out before I invested too much time and expense in the program.....which is a very important consideration. If I tested the waters in one of these fast-track BSN programs, I would have major debt right now compared to the rather low tuition at my ADN program.