futuregasman

Well if you think you need pills now, wait till you get in to a program. This will be one of the biggest challenges of your life! Good Luck.

I graduated ten years ago and figured a manager of a floor or of Nursing services would be a good goal to work tward. EEEGAD what the #$#&* was I thinking after 3 years as a med surg nurse I tried my hand as an assistant manager on a tele unit. Every ounce of life force was sucked from my eye sockets. From the staff, the patients the managment and the doctors not to mention the families that said Aunt Clara's butt was dirty all night. I left managment behind me and retreated to the OR. During orientation I had the opportunity to shadow a CRNA. WOW the light clicked on and I started to ask questions about the profession. After a few years I gut the nerve to let go of OR nursing and return to Patient care in the ICU. It was a wonderful 2.5 years of saturation of knowledge. I learned a ton from my co-workers and the intensivists in my ICU. School starts in 6 weeks and I am lit like a christmas tree. Who knew that wanting to be a manager would have sent me packing to the land of gas. Shawn

Here is a squeeker for you! GPA: 3.25 GRE: 650 analytical, 450 verbal, 4.5 writing EXP: 1 year ICU,CCU and Open Heart Recovery (inclusive before interview) Cert: ACLS, CCRN Refrences: Excellent...... so I was told Akron U..................... Interviewed......Denied Case Western............. Interviewed......Alternate University of Cincinnati.. Interviewed....Accepted and start this fall

They are not pre reqs. The program director wants you to get most of the masters components out of the way or started before the interview. Classes like advanced patho and some of the resaerch classes. I know they also wanted to me to take a graduate level stats class. I took the stats class but I did not want to invest that much money in to a program that I was not gauranteed to get in to. I did not know if any of the material would transfer either. Decisions decisions. But you are right, there are a lot of roadblocks that lie ahead and much work to be done. Good luck! Shawn

I will be starting in September and I have done a lot of research and played with a lot of different pdas. What I purchased was a T5 by palm. I have used it in the clinical setting at work and find it very helpful. There are a bunch of programs on the internet that make it unbelievable while in practice. Epocratese was another thing that I found very useful also. It has a trial rx program to try. The thing I like best about the T5 is the large screen and the memory. I have added many programs and it is still only half full. There is also a place for additional memory cards or if you want Wi-Fi. The PDA already has Bluetooth but it just gives you options. Good luck with your hunt Shawn

Wow that is great you got the scholarship. I unfortunately have not heard anything yet. Hopefully i will score some bucks from the college of nursing!

I was very impressed with Cincinnati. The students I spoke with had good things to say about the program. I have also worked with a few who graduated from there and they are all very good CRNAs. The requirements for both colleges are fairly close you can custom work your plan to be able to interview at either college. I personally felt that cinci. returned my calls and stayed in contact much better than Akron. I must have called the director 100 times and never heard a single call back from him. I also have a hard time taking classes for a program that I may not even get in to. And to top it off Akron's interview was needlessly intense. I truely do not know how they can get to know their candidates in such a brief time. Shawn

Mr. Barton needs to learn how to return phone calls!

Akron University applied and declined. University of Cincinnati applied and accepted will start in September. Case Western applied and made alternate but I will not wait around! Shawn

Hope that interview was less stressful than the one at Akron! Good luck in your adventures this fall! I will be sweating in cincinatti come September. Shawn

Being in the Nursing profession now for the last 10 years has taught me a great deal of things. Being that you have the forsight to use nursing as the stepping stone is not wrong. But I feel that Nurses are truely different in the way that they care for their patients. We have the touch and knoweldge that comes from caring. If you have ever been at the bedside as an Anesthesiologist put someone to sleep vs a CRNA you will know the difference. The journey of getting a BSN may be your stepping stone but please do not use and leave the essence of nursing behind in your wake. Besides, the time you will spend in ICU or whatever critical area you choose may seem like a sentence in jail if it is just a stone for stepping. To sum it up, it took me 8 years to decide that I did not want to hustle up and down the halls of a hospital for the next 30 years.

I am sure that the 4.0 gpa is not tried and true. May of the nurses I have worked with over the years that were highly intellegent and had high gpa's could not integrate their knowledge effectively. That does not mean that every 4.0 person can not integrate their knowledge. Especially when you really get to know the nurses that become clinical instructors. Many of them are 4.0 gpa students, they quiz you on your book smarts and not on how you apply the information. On the other hand the best instructor I ever had was a 4.0 and could use the information flawlessly in the clinical setting. So don't take all the threads to heart! By the way I had only a 3.25 and I will be starting in CRNA school this fall.

I went to a ccrn review by Dr. laura gasparis vonfrollio gret review. I did this and got a book with review questions by the same person. 3 months of general overview, and i passed this week.

When I graduated from nursing school 9 years ago I also found ICU was a position you had to work to get in to. I worked on a Med/Surg floor and got comfortable. Just keep your goal in mind and that year will fly. Take the sickest patients get in on the codes. I find that most chronic floor nurses do not like the scare of coding patients. Also you get a good gut instinct working on the floors. Learning that there is more to look at other than those swan numbers and your automatic BP cuff. I also agree with the earlier post that telemetry would be a good place to cut your teeth. Good luck in your future endevors! Shawn

Looks like I will be joining you all too! What a relief that that's behind us!