rubylipstick1

Wow, I think this is the first "About A Nurse" comic that I've actually disliked. Let us remember: "Age is not an accomplishment, and youth is not a sin" (Robert A. Heinlein).

i am a relatively young nurse, in my early twenties. i currently only have 1+ yr experience compared to the many senior nurses i work with that have 25+ years of experience. i also look quite young (being 4'11" doesn't exactly help), so sometimes it seems like almost every shift i work i get a comment about my age from someone. i definitely feel that i need to work hard to prove myself, sometimes to patients and sometimes to other nurses. patients will often ask how old i am or how long i have worked there and some of them seem to need reassurance that i am capable. fortunately, i almost always win them over by the time my shift ends. :) i find that other nurses are sometimes not so easy to win over. this is not to say that all of the nurses i work with underestimate me. in fact, i find the majority of them to be supportive and have confidence in my abilities, however, there's always the odd person that doesn't. honestly, i find that since i make such an effort to be professional and mannerly, people usually come to see that i am, in fact, quite competent. but i've come to realize that some people just have the notion that "young people" in general have nothing to contribute or nothing worthwhile to say...because they are "young". and i can't speak for what obstacles, judgements, criticisms and other negatives that older nurses face because i'm not at that point yet. i'm sure when i do get there, i'll find that there's a whole other plethora of issues and criticisms i'll have to endure.

One of my favourites is "Oh, if I had a dollar for everytime someone said/asked that, I'd be able to retire now!" lol

$2.30/hr extra on nights and $2.55/hr on Saturdays and Sundays. Stat holidays are time and a half.

I work in Eastern Canada (unionized) and as a new grad RN my starting salary was $30.77/hr. Shift differential for nights is $2.33/hr and for weekends is $2.55/hr. However, I am a casual employee and because I do not get benefits, etc, they pay me a casual premium to make up for that which is an extra 20% an hour.

I graduated from university here in Canada in May 2011 with roughly a $30,000 student loan. I've been making payments since I started work which was also in May, meaning I took advantage of the "grace period". So far I've gotten it down to just some over $22,000, but thankfully I'm about to get a pretty great tax return now, so I'm planning on putting that on my loan as well and hoping to get it down to just over $17,000! I hate my student loan and absolutely can't wait to be rid of it! No beans and rice here though

No, you're not mistaken! I have noticed this too. There's just something funny about how a large number of senior citizens are obsessed with having a BM! They feel as though they have to have one daily. If they go a day without a BM, they make a huge deal out of it until the doc orders some kind of laxative for them. Then they might end up having a massive amount of explosive diarrhea that night, but if by lunchtime the next day they didn't have a BM again, they say they're "constipated"! Obviously not every single patient is this way, but I have noticed a trend.

I work on a gyne floor (not L&D or OBS) so I cannot speak for what is used on the other floors in our facility, however, we do always use cytotec for induction of our bereavement pts who are terminating e.g. IUFD, lethal abnormalities, etc. It is ordered to be given q4h and is preferred to be given lady partslly, but it can only be given PV by a physician. If the physician cannot come for whatever reason, we may give it PR or PO. We have no specific monitoring protocol for cytotec, but when we are caring for a bereavement, it is 1:1 nursing.

As a brand new grad, I received roughly a week of classroom orientation which was of little benefit to me. It included very vague information about the hospital as a whole for the most part (nothing specific to my clinical area). On the floor, I received six weeks of orientation with a preceptor.

I just graduated from university here in Newfoundland, Canada this May with my BN. From reading your responses, I can see that there are some things my school has been doing well, but of course, I still feel there are ways it could be doing better. I'm surprised to see that so many of you did not learn IV insertion and agree that this is something that should be taught in the program. We were taught IV insertion, drawing bloodwork, etc and I had enough practice with this during my clinicals to feel comfortable doing it as an RN. We have a lot of clinical hours in our program, including a preceptorship in 3rd year and a consolidated practicum in 4th year. We are allowed to take on a full patient load (5-6 patients) as we progress through our preceptorship and again in consolidated practicum. Having said that, there are still certain skills or tasks that we as student nurses were not allowed to complete, which means that caring for 5 patients as a 4th year nursing student was much easier than caring for 5 patients as an RN. I do find that I need to work on my time management. We were not allowed to take off orders until our last year and even then I was not permitted to take verbal or telephone orders from a physician. I feel like because of that, we didn't get any experience with calling the physician to ask for something when it is needed. As the student nurse, I may have realized that there is something needed but there was really no point in me paging the physician as I would have to say "Oh, hang on a minute while I put you on the phone with my preceptor. I'm not allowed to take telephone orders." So, basically, I'd always have to let my preceptor know and she would call and get the order for me. I think this should be changed. There's no reason we can't be calling and getting the orders in our last year. It would help us prepare.