alibee

I did! I already worked as a CNA at the hospital I'm a nurse at now, so that was an easy transition. However, I know that Cooper, Atlanticare, South Jersey Regional, and Kennedy (south jersey hospitals) all let you apply without a license #.

Yeah, I ended up getting my application sent back after I'd taken my NCLEX and completed my fingerprinting because I didn't check a box. I finally drove up to Newark last week to the BON and I counted nine - yes, NINE - cubicles dedicated to the BON....

Yes you can. The only book I'd recommend staying current with is the med-surg book used across your 3 med-surg classes (they like to take questions directly out of there). If you have Altmiller for fundamentals, just augment her powerpoints/lecture w...

I work at on a post-op surgical floor in Camden, NJ. Our ratios are 1:6, no matter the shift, with 3 techs for 30 beds.

I'd advise sending your paperwork in March. True, they can't send your ATT until your school sends in the graduation paperwork, but at least you can get your fingerprinting straightened out quickly. I sent mine in April, and I'm still waiting on my l...

So students shouldn't try in nursing school? They shouldn't be proud of putting in the work and getting good grades in a difficult program? That "nursing school highest gpa crap" actually does matter in a lot of places, thank you very much - here in ...

Here's a worry that I have: IV insertion. My school in Philadelphia didn't teach us anything about it aside from how to look for infiltrations. We didn't get to practice in school because of "liability" (is this normal throughout the country?), and w...

I got a real nice guy at the BON finally, and I sat there on the phone as he typed up the letter to "light the fire" under the fingerprinting department, and sure enough, my fingerprinting paperwork arrived today. I have to drive an hour and a half t...

This is a great thread, and I've also been sifting through this forum like crazy - I graduated with my BSN this past May, and I also start on a surgical floor next week. Like the rest of you, I'm excited and terrified (I'm trying to preemptively come...

Yeah, I'd say that you'd be okay to apply for new graduate nurse positions early. Also, if you currently work in a medical setting that hires RNs, you should be okay to apply there around the time you graduate. Good luck!

Philly is an extremely competitive market right now. You have Villanova, Temple, Holy Family, La Salle, Penn, Drexel, and probably some other 4 year schools that I missed that just had thousands of nursing students graduate with their BSNs. Most of t...

I met with the nurse recruiter for Presbyterian Hospital (part of the Penn network), and it is VERY difficult to get hired there as a new RN. She stated that you want to make sure to only apply for the clinical nurse I positions (which require 0-1 yr...

La Salle May 2012 graduate here - first off, congrats to all on getting into the program! It really is a good school with some great professors (big shoutouts to Dee Matecki and Gerry Altmiller!). As far as penlights go - don't buy one yet. You have ...

Yes, most of the techs at my hospital who graduated this past May have landed RN positions (including me, yay!). It definitely is to one's advantage to find a tech job, show your work ethic, and make a name for yourself in a hospital setting.

Yes, I completed my prereqs at Camden County. Originally I was going to go to Helene Fuld, but the RNs in my family strongly urged going to a 4 year to get my BSN. I transferred to La Salle and was able to transfer all of my credits with no issues. T...

The first year is DEFINITELY the hardest because nursing school is a complete 180 from the classes that you've previously done in college. I was a straight A student, and I remember studying my tail off for the first two Fundamentals tests and gettin...

It really depends on the hospital. My husband and three in his graduating class got into the ICU as brand-new grads, and this is at a large rank-one trauma center with extremely high acuity. The nurse manager preferred "fresh blood" that she could tr...

I actually work in a trauma center, and we offer bloodless care as an alternative to blood transfusions because we have a lot of Jehovah's Witnesses in our patient population. If you do want to work in a hospital setting, but don't want to be in a se...

The Saunders NCLEX-RN review book is a godsend. I'm in a program where the tests that the med-surg instructors give do not pertain to the lectures or powerpoints whatsoever, but when I switched from rifling through the textbook to reading the Saunder...

For La Salle's nursing program, you have to take the NLN. There's an NLN prep book that you can get if you need to brush up on math, reading comprehension, etc. I didn't think it was that bad - it was a lot like the community college entrance exams, ...

I'm a CNA at Cooper now (and I have had clinical rotations here in nursing school), and my husband is an RN, and we both love it. You really learn a lot here. Cooper's nurses are union, and they just finished their contract negotiations (which were p...