OneOfTheGoodGuys

To the OP. The short answer to this question is no. Hating A&P will not make you fail as a nurse. A&P is absolutely essential to the nursing profession, in all specialties, HOWEVER, A&P is very diverse and you may want to give yourself some time to see what areas of A&P interest you. You mentioned you like psychology, maybe psych nursing would be more to your liking and you can focus neurotransmitters and anatomy of the brain. Regardless, you are not going to like every aspect of anything that you do. For instance, I love most A&P with some areas more than others (I love cardiac, GI, and Pulmonary. Neuro is cool, I don't care for ortho, L&D, or OBGYN stuff.). My interests function very well for the area I work in, and I still have passable knowledge in areas of A&P that I don't care for because it helps me provide better care for my patients. Compassion and caring will serve you better in nursing than any strong desire to know every anatomical landmark and physiological process in my opinion. Anyone can study hard enough to be very solid in A&P and they can still make crappy nurses if they view their patients as pieces of machinery with broken parts instead of viewing them as people with needs that transcend their medications and treatments. Another fun little thought about professors.....especially professors for prerequisite classes....Guess what? Your A&P professor is probably NOT a nurse, so while knowledgeable in A&P they really don't know exactly what makes a nurse a "successful" nurse. Good grades in A&P will be very necessary for you to get in to nursing school, but whether you love it or not isn't as relevant as your willingness to put the work in to learn it. YOU are really the only one that knows if nursing is the right choice for you, so if you are having doubts than take some time to seriously reflect on why you want to be a nurse and if you are willing to put in some hard work and do some things that you don't like to achieve your nursing goals. I don't like poop. At all. Prior to starting nursing school I had a crippling terror of poop because I was afraid that I would gag right in front of a patient while trying to clean them up and then the patient would feel terrible and embarrassed and I would be the jerk that made them feel like that. By the end of my final semester in nursing school I put a BMS system in a patient (basically a bag that goes into the rectum that collects feces, that you get to insert with your index finger) and during the insertion the patient proceeded to start defecating very warm, and watery stool all over my gloved hand. The nurse with me looked right at me and said "whatever you do, don't pull your finger out! Hurry! inflate the cuff!! INFLATE THE CUFF!!!" so there I stood like some cartoon parody plugging a tiny crack in an enormous dam desperately fumbling with a syringe trying to inflate the cuff so that I could get this horribly warm and moist glove off my hand and wash my hands in boiling water for about three days. After it was all said and done, I washed my hands very thoroughly and ate a sandwich about 5 minutes later. I still don't like poop, but I never hesitate to deal with it because it is part of my job as a nurse and I love my job as a nurse.

P.S. Also not trying to downplay the seriousness of MRSA. It is a horrid little bug that is notoriously hard to treat and is very common, and I have been told it is very painful. Once again the image of someone wiping a booger into their wound just makes me laugh, because I am actually a 12 year old stuck in a grown ups body. Apologies to anyone this offended, that wasn't my intention.

Generally, I live by a couple rules that I feel transcend all other policies in place by hospitals, laws in place by governments, protocols, agendas, etc. One of those cardinal rules is this: it is never a good idea to wipe boogers into open wounds. (This post was made in humor, with no intention of trying to be demeaning or offensive to the OP I just had to say it because its hilarious to me)

Well this is a bit late to post however, I recently received a PM from someone asking me how this situation panned out. I do not have enough posts yet to have PM privileges so I will post the answer here. I did not receive this position. The manager contacted me and told me that her hands were tied and the resources were simply not in place to bring on a new grad. This was devastating at the time, however turned out quite well for me. I am now a recent hire in an intermediate care medical unit at a local teaching hospital with magnet status, and am very excited with all the resources that are in place at this location for new grads, and my manager is super supportive and loves new grads. I am also involved in doing per diem work for a home health agency, so I take over home health clients for nurses that are out of town or just want days off and I love it. The patient population that I work with is awesome, and I am learning a lot from a very talented nurse that works from this company and is wound certified. I have learned an astonishing amount about the rationales behind some of the treatments used in wound care which was a topic only briefly touched upon in nursing school. ICU was my first choice, and I am still planning on getting there eventually, however I am pleasantly surprised at how much I am enjoying the work I am doing now. Perioperative nursing would be fascinating and quite different from other areas of nursing, and someday down the road I may return to this specialty. In the interim, I am quite happy with the path that I am on. That is the one of several reasons that I was attracted to nursing, it offers a wide variety of work environments to sample as you like. Thank you very much to everyone who took an interest in this post and took the time to advise a new grad. I wish you all the very best in your endeavors.

Hey brother. This makes us look bad. As one male nurse to another (brotherbear-I'm assuming you're a guy) don't be vindictive. Do you really need eye contact to validate your profession? I know I don't. maybe that person has something going on in their life that affects their ability to be personable. But then again, maybe they really do think they are god. No matter what, the question is...... Does it really matter? I don't really care if people think that they are better than me. I know what I'm capable of and I don't have to prove anything. In this same situation, I would ask myself "Do I want the extra money or don't I? Do I want to work this shift or not?" My decision would have nothing to do with whether I felt slighted by the person asking me to work. Another piece of advice... Think more about your patients. Sports are awesome, don't get me wrong. My fantasy football league is looking strong and my college team is looking promising. But that takes a back seat to my patients. I definitely want to win my league this year but I want my patients to have quality care above that. You are a nurse brother. This is what you signed up for when you went to nursing school. In the words of L'il Wayne, "I don't go around fire expecting not to sweat." So when the fire gets too hot, smile and sweat. Cause this is your career now. You can either rally against it by making vindictive moves against management or you can embrace it and be a better nurse than anyone would ever expect you to be. The choice is yours. Good luck brother.

I'm pretty sure I know the exact company you are working for and I recently got offered a job from them as well. I opted for the direct deposit option instead of the payroll card because I was unsure as to whether I could use that card to withdraw cash from an ATM. If this is the correct company that I'm thinking of (First name starts with an M) than they should have a direct deposit option which you may be more comfortable with.

Well, I am not a NICU nurse but one of my buddies is a new grad NICU nurse, and they liked him enough during his clinicals that he precepted NICU and got a job in the NICU fresh out of school. This is his advice: Just be aware that NICU nurses are very protective of their little patients, as they should be. They may or may not let you touch the babies, and they may or may not be super friendly in the beginning. NICUs are closed units because a certain type of environment is absolutely essential for the survival of these little dudes and NICU nurses don't always like unfamiliar faces running around on their unit. Just be prepared to identify yourself frequently, do not touch anything without permission and always have a nurse there with you for any patient contact. Do not go into a room without a nurse with you if they are in private rooms. If you have a cold or are feeling slightly under the weather, DO NOT GO TO CLINICAL THAT DAY. These little guys are all super immunocompromised so what might be just a little cold or bug to you could be devastating for these kids. All that being said, just try to enjoy yourself. Be enthusiastic, learn as much as you can, ask questions, and participate wherever you are allowed to. Being that you already sought advice from this website about how to get the most from your experience it leads me to believe that you are going to be just fine during your rotation, so I wish you the best.

Oh man, I absolutely love this post. The nursing profession has made so many advances in terms of autonomy and increased scope of practice in the last 20-30 years and it has always been discussed as a good thing for health care. This is the first time I have ever heard a nurse actually criticize the NP role. That being said, I couldn't disagree with you more, but I am not interested in trying to change your opinion. Believe what you want brother, if you think that pure bedside nursing is the future than I'm cool with that. Pure bedside nursing can be YOUR future if you want it to be, nobody is going to make you go to NP school. I am a new nurse as well and all throughout nursing school it seemed like nobody in my class was actually interested in being a bedside nurse. It was all about trying to get the minimum years of nursing experience and than applying to either NP school or CRNA school, which at times became nauseating for me. When I watched the same person almost fail out of nursing school three times and then at graduation boldly announce to the class that they intend to be an NP in 5 years, my heart sank. Like any other field there is good and bad individuals, but that concept has been beaten to death on this thread. So I will come at this from another direction. NPs do not just do acute care or primary care, they have other functions as well. For instance I know an NP and she works at presurgical admissions for her hospital. She actually works for an anesthesiologist, instead of a hospitalist or primary care doctor. Her function is to analyze the patient and determine if they are medically stable enough to undergo surgery. This helps expedite the entire surgical process, allows the surgical side of the hospital to see more patients and has been shown in this hospital to improve patient outcomes. So I guess the bottom line is this: it really doesn't matter if you can't see the reason behind the nurse practitioner role. The nurse practitioner will be utilized in greater numbers in the future to help meet health care demands that will be in excess of the current supply of other medical practitioners available. Advance practice nurses are the future of health care. The physician-driven model of health care is ancient and outdated, and is already in a state of flux as we see more and more advanced practice nurses and PAs coming into the field. However, like I mentioned earlier no one will ever make you go to NP school. I think its awesome that you think pure bedside nursing is the future as this is a very critical nursing role and the bedside nurse is absolutely irreplaceable in the acute care setting and most new grads do not seem to be interested in remaining at the bedside for any length of time. I wish you the best in your career, and hope that you continually strive to be the best nurse that you can.

Hi Lindsey, I am a new grad that is actually coming up to KRMC to interview for a position there very soon. I have done some research on the facility and I have yet to find a negative comment, and the facility itself seems to treat its employees well. I currently live in Tucson and the job market here is VERY tight, especially for new grads so I started looking to more rural areas that might have more openings. If I get offered this position this will be a big change for me, and I really want to be as well informed as possible before I make my decision. So I have a couple of questions for you about that area, and that facility if you feel like answering them. 1. How does this facility do with new grads? The position I'm applying for has a 6 week orientation period and that's it. Is the staff friendly towards new grads? Were you a new grad when you started there? If so, how was your experience there? 2. Am I going to be bored to death living in Kingman? I know laughlin is about 40 minutes away and I love laughlin, I went there earlier this year and had a blast but I'm just wondering about everyday stuff to do in Kingman, I see a lot of comments about outdoors stuff which is awesome but what about other things like movie theaters, restaurants, etc? Thanks so much for any info you can give me, I really appreciate it.

I feel like it went very well, however there are not a lot of resources available in this specialty for new graduate nurses. During my tour of the unit I asked the nurse educator about resources she might have in place for a new grad in pre op and she just looked kind of stunned and said "hmmm...I don't know I'd have to talk to so-and-so to see what we have..." The manager said that she had kind of just expected to interview me and that would be it, however she said she was pleasantly surprised, and she believes that I have the right personality and mindset to make it in this area as a new grad. The only problem is that this area of nursing is "a graveyard for ICU nurses" (The managers exact words, not my opinion at all) and she said that some of her nurses aren't "Fuzzy" meaning that they may not be too excited about having some young pup new grad running around asking everybody questions and looking for people to mentor him. The manager said that the main stipulation at the end of the interview would be the response from the general staff, and whether they would be willing to welcome a new grad on to the unit. She said it would be a hard road for me, and that I would be under the microscope in the beginning if I get the job, but if I make it she would be willing to move me around the entire surgical area after I spent some time in pre op (I expressed an interest in getting to know the entire surgical side of nursing including pre op, OR and PACU). I'm very excited and I hope there is someone on staff willing to take on a new grad, because as much as I want this job I do not want to be thrown out there without any lifelines and would rather not get the job if the majority of staff is heavily opposed to a new grad being in that area. So I don't know. I wrote her an email asking about whether she had reached a decision and talked to staff yet and have not gotten a response as of yet. I'm keeping my fingers, toes, and nose-hairs crossed.

Hi everyone, I am a relatively new graduate and newly licensed nurse that is interviewing for a position in Pre-Op tomorrow. I am very excited, however, I have no idea what kind of questions to ask or what to expect during this interview. I had very little in the way of pre-op training during school (Interesting fact, we had an entire text book dedicated to critical care but only 16 pages of my med-surg textbook dedicated to pre-op nursing) and I had about 4-6 days total doing some type of pre-op care during my clinical rotations. I enjoyed the limited exposure I had to the pre-op environment, the fast pace was awesome and I think it would be a fun way to get some experience and maybe maneuver from there to the OR and PACU. I have interviewed before (I interviewed for a level 1 trauma ICU and got asked back for a second interview but didn't quite make it) and I was just hoping for some last minute stuff that I could brush up on, or some references to material I could read that would better prepare me for the interview. Thank you very much in advance for any advice that you can give me!!