nfdfiremedic

Good morning, I am interested in becoming an NP. I initially thought my future would be in nursing management and leadership but over the past year or two I've had a change of heart and decided that my true path is in hands on practice. I have 15 credits towards an MSN (mostly the generic core curriculum stuff.) Here's what I've found confusing: None of the colleges clearly describe the scope of practice you can expect upon completing the program. I have seen some called "acute care NP," other called "adult/gerontology acute care NP," others just called "NP." Is there really a difference? Do they all take the same boards at the end? Do they all just end up with the "CRNP" credential and practice in whatever setting they want? Right now I am the stroke program director at my hospital. I really enjoy Neuro, and would like to expand upon my role and be able to actually provide care to the patients rather than just run the program. I've also always enjoyed the ED. Is there some path that will enable me to be practice in Neuro full time but also leave the door open to work in a setting like an ED/Urgent Care on the side for extra money? I have zero interest in primary care, and can not see myself ever working outside of a hospital. Thanks for any help you can provide! Andy

This is the answer your manager would likely give you. It's what I would say if someone asked me.

Hello everyone, I was hoping to get some thoughts on the best graduate degree for me to consider. I originally graduated as a diploma RN, and completed my BSN this past May. I hold two nursing certifications (CEN and CNRN) and have about three years experience in nursing leadership. I have functioned as an Emergency Department clinical coordinator and, most recently, the coordinator of my hospital's stroke center. I'm prepared to go back to school for a graduate degree, but I'm not sure what I should pursue. I'm turning 30 next month, and I have many working years ahead of me. High level administration is my long term goal. I hope to become a VP of nursing, director of nursing, chief nursing officer, service line VP, etc in the future. I'm wondering if I would be better served by an MBA or an MSN. The problem I'm seeing is that most of the MSN programs I am finding are clinically focused, i.e. nurse practitioner, CNS, etc. The same appears to be true of the DNP programs, which are mostly focused on preparing the candidate for a clinical or nurse educator/researcher role. If my intent is to pursue executive leadership, would I be better off going the MBA route? I would appreciate any thoughts on this subject. I guess there's really no "right" answer. Thanks! Andy

Well, I took it yesterday... passed! It was the hardest teat I've ever taken for sure, especially compared to my other nursing certifications.

My advisor told me not to bother applying unless I had a 3.5 GPA when I started my BSN. I worked myself to the bone to get it (since I also work 60+ hours a week and did all through school) but I did, and I started my NP program this month. You can do it, but be prepared to grind for those grades to make it happen!

The school where I did my undergraduate studies offers three Master's programs for nurses. They are CRNA, CNS (Adult health), and FNP. My intent is to work in an acute care setting. I currently work in management, but my clinical background was in the ED, trauma unit, and ICU. I'm not positive where I want to end up, but I assume it'll be a similar practice area to what I'm used to. I'm thinking I want to work in an ED, ICU, or possibly some type of surgical specialty like plastics or ortho. I want a job where I assess, diagnose, prescribe, evaluate interventions, and adjust the plan of care accordingly. As a result, I think NP is the appropriate flavor of APN for me rather than CNS. Will I be hindered by the fact that my program brands itself as an "FNP" program? I see that other institutions across the country offer programs they label adult NP, acute care NP, etc. My understanding is that they all lead to the same CRNP credential. As a nurse with experience and nursing certifications (CEN, CCRN, CNRN) will I be able to pursue the type of career I'm looking for after graduating from an FNP program? I'm enrolled in my first three classes at the moment, so I'm not too deeply invested. Thanks!

Hello, I am hoping to sit for the CNRN exam when it is next offered in March of 2013. I'm actually a bit surprised they only offer the test during defined widnows. I hold other nursing specialty certifications and I've never had to wait for a window to test before! I was wondering which are the most up to date and appropriate resources for review. I saw a similar thread on here but it looks to be pretty old, and I'm wondering if newer/better resources are now available. Currently my institution does not have any CNRN's. My clinical background is in critical care, trauma, and emergency nursing. I recently took a position as the coordinator of a stroke team, and would like to add this specialty certification to my list. I have not worked in a neuro-only setting at any point in my career, but working in critical and emergency care areas has afforded me years of experience with patients suffering from a variety of neurological and neurosurgical diagnoses. I'm hoping this is sufficient. Thanks!

I have very few living family members (my parents, one brother, and a few aunts/uncles/cousins but not many.) The closest one lives 5 hours away. I generally get chinese food every holiday. To that extent, since I'm not missing anything but sitting on the couch in my underwear and eating sweet and sour chicken, I work every holiday. Can't beat double time and a half for 8... or 12... or 16 hours!

After several years spent as the clinical coordinator of a large tertiary medical center's emergency department, I am moving up a rung on the ladder to a new position. In my institution, the "clinical coordinator" is basically another term for "Assistant manager." My duties included policy development and implementation, PI, staff discipline issues, scheduling, you name it. Additionally, I provided clinical support as needed (help with codes, traumas, and critical patients of all other flavors plus lending a hand whenever anybody was "sinking" etc.) After an extensive interview process, I was selected to take over as the leader of a brand new project. I will be overseeing our hospitals newly forming stroke team. This is a new position and, as such, there are no official definitions or job descriptions per say. Our hospital is moving toward JC accreditation as a stroke center, and a large part of my job will be to oversee this process, develop and maintain a PI program, perform staff development activities, and provide patient teaching. This is a step into a totally new arena for me. Prior to this,my career has been rooted in a clinical environment, with a few days a week doing administrative/office work. Effective Monday morning,I'll be "one of those white coat people" wearing a tie to work, coordinating the effortsof a large multidisciplinary team which includes physicians, nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists, nurse educators, and probably more. I feel ready for this challenge, but I'm understandably a bit nervous about it (as I presume anyone would be!) I'm curious if anyone else here functions in a similar capacity, and if they have any insight to offer. Thanks!

I have seen hundreds of LP's but I've never seen one with sedation.

It's never a bad thing to get "on the radar." It's an opportunity to make a good name for yourself and demonstrate your work ethic, bedside manner, etc. These are things that give you an advantage when it comes time to interview. You may be one of ten names on a paper that all lack nursing experience, but if the hiring manager has personal knowledge of your work ethic, you may end up the one they hire.

I will contribute this: GETTING the job may be one thing, but KEEPING it is another. I work for a large hospital chain. They have strict rules that forbid talking about the hospital in any public venue, or representing them poorly in any context. That means don't list them as your employer, don't post a status update of "My job sucks!", and for the love of god don't take a picture on their property with your cellphone and upload it to Facebook. I've seen people fired for every one of these things. Sadly, despite the above privacy measures, employers are still presented with this info even if they aren't looking for it. Every instance I mentioned above was brought to mgmt's attention by other nurses who were friends with the offending staff and printed out/reported the content to the boss.

Unfortunately, I'm in their offices on a regular basis alongside my physician medical director, and we continue to be told they're "working on it." I'm running out of options here, there is no higher level for me to take it to.

Greetings, I am hoping to find out a bit about hospitals in other parts of the country and their staffing situations. I keep reading about difficulty nurses are experiencing finding jobs and, with that in mind, I'm curious if this problem exists as well in those areas where jobs are hard to come by. I am a manager in a very busy ED. We see around 160 patients a day, which ends up being around 50,000 per year. We are a trauma center, an accredited interventional cardiac/chest pain facility, a stroke center, and pretty much an everything else center too. Our ED has 32 beds, of which 3 are in the trauma bay, and 7 are an "Express Care" area that runs twelve hours a day during peak hours, and 22 are regular ED beds. The hospital above us is licensed for only 176 inpatient beds. Every Friday afternoon, one of the floors in the hospital is closed down. They reopen it on Monday or Tuesday. This results in massive, catastrophic, distaster-level ED overcrowding every weekend. It's not uncommon for our ED to be stuck with as many as 20-25 inpatients for the entire weekend, leaving us with no rooms whatsoever to see "real" ED patients. As a result, wait times are high, left without being seen rates are high, patient satisfaction scores are low, and staff are worn out and frustrated leading to poor staff retention. When ED leadership asks senior hospital administration about this problem, we are told there is "no staff" for the floor that is closed on weekends, but that "they are working on it." As far as I can tell, they have been "working on it" for a long time. Some senior staff say they have been "working on it" for 15 years. The sad fact is, ED staff are being mandated every weekend to help, the department is in a weekly disaster/diversion state, and the vast majority of staff are utterly dissatisfied with their jobs. It's hard to walk through the department without finding at least one computer open to the job listings screen. Does this happen to you too? Do these parts of the country that are not hiring actually have enough staff to meet all of their needs, or are they doing things like this to avoid having to hire/to save money?

Greetings, I am a veteran ED nurse leader. I am an assistant manager in my department, a CEN, a former paramedic, (prior to becoming an RN) and have extensive specialty training in trauma, etc. I am an instructor.educator for all the "normal" critical care stuff, like ACLS, PALS, TNCC, and so forth. I am 28 years old, and have decided that I will never get any further than my current level without going back to school. I have been contemplating pursuing training as an NP. I realize that the answer to this question may vary from state to state, and thus answers to it here may not be entirely accurate to my specific situation. Still, I am interested in hearing what people have to share. From my experience, most nurse practitioner training declares that the candidate will be trained as an FNP, or "family" nurse practitioner. As you can probably assume from the above paragraph, the last thing I ever want to be is somebody's primary care provider. I have looked up the PA programs in my area, and some of them offer a specialty in Emergency Medicine. The only NP programs in this area are so called "FNP" programs. Will these programs limit me to practice in primary care settings? I have also had in the back of my mind the notion that I may want to get involved in some sort of surgical field. Ortho, plastics, trauma surg, general surg, etc all hold a certain appeal to me as well. If this is a field I were looking to enter, would that be possible for me as an NP? Are there some things that are "PA only?" I have read in lots of places that "an NP can do more" but I'm not entirely sure what that actually means with regards to scope of practice and career path. I have many PA friends who have explained the versatility of the PA role to me but, sadly, I have no NP friends to ask for the other side of the story. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks very much! Andy