Glutton-4-Trauma

Currently working on a critical care unit. Worked ER with a stint as a traveler previously.

If you are still functioning at the level of a new grad after one year of ER experience you should strongly consider switching specialty areas. Also, the words of YOUR ER director aren't gold. That is the individual perspective of one person. Most directors will expect for you to be a fully functioning and independent nurse by the time you have hit the one year mark, as opposed to a new grad who requires constant supervision and direction during his or her shift. It is expected that you will have become comfortable with the "basics" and are able to manage your patient load and turnover your rooms without having to be constantly prompted to do so. These are things that are not expected of a newly licensed nurse. You should still have questions and you will most certainly need to request help as you are still learning and encountering things you have yet to see. However, for the most part, you should be flying solo successfully after a year of experience, which is something a new graduate nurse isn't capable of doing.

The idea of a new grad traveling is silly. I had a year of experience before I began and I can tell you that there is absolutely no way one could be safe and function as a new grad traveler. That phrase alone makes me shudder! I definitely wish that I had gotten atleast another year before I began, though I have excelled tremendously and learned things that I likely would never have learned at my home facility. You have to first MASTER the BASICS and even then your first few assignments will be challenging. Shift your focus to securing a new grad position at a good hospital. Perfect your craft and re-visit the possibility of traveling when you are more seasoned.

I agree with giving any job you began as a new grad a year before transferring, especially if you aren't miserable where you are (you mentioned missing your med-surg crew, so Im guessing you aren't)..you've got just 4 months left. You can never go wrong with dressing formally for an interview. I was hired on as a new grad in the same ED I worked as a tech so I knew management. I still dressed formally when I interviewed for the nursing position.

Definitely depends on the market! I started with my associates because I didn't want to miss out on a few years salary and valuable nursing experience. ADN and BSN new grads are equally desired where I'm from and I did just fine in the area that I graduated in. I wanted to go straight into an RN-BSN program for personal fulfillment, which served me well, as I am now in an area where the market is saturated with new grads and the BSN has become the standard. Who knows what the market will be like in a few more years. If you choose the ADN route be sure that it will be possible to secure employment in your area or be open to relocating to find work.

While in a classroom during orientation for an agency assignment I had another nurse question my choice of jewelry displayed on a picture for my ID badge. Normally, I wouldn't entertain such silly dialogue regarding my personal appearance for a stranger or acquaintance in the workplace that I hardly knew, but she appeared to be innocently inquisitive by nature so I bit. Bad idea! She proceeds to question my sexuality and aggressively moved to religion as if I had somehow confirmed her ignorant assertions. Loudly..in front of the entire class. I won't repeat what she said for the sake of keeping an already boiling thread at bay, but I was infuriated! If looks could kill..she'd no longer be with us. I'm sure she could tell by my facial expression that she had gone too far, as she stopped before I could open my mouth and let her know what time it was. Though I hadn't responded to any of her assumptions regarding my sexuality or religion, I opened the door by allowing her to question my appearance in the first place. Therefore, I would not report her for this. I know better, but I was trying to be friendly. It's never okay to allow anyone to cross that line..nip it in the bud the minute it begins. I would definitely keep it out of the office unless it continues. Let her know how it made you feel and emphasize how inappropriate she was. You don't have to be rude or insulting just be firm. If it continues then you are 100% justified in reporting her.

I've been thinking about Seattle for my next assignment this Summer. I'm not at all bothered by the excessive gloomy weather, but I would love to know which facilities to steer clear of during my search..I would be greatly appreciative if you could shoot me me a PM if you are comfortable doing so! My last assignment was at a moderately sized ER whose staff were less than hospitable to some of their travelers. Not sure how I managed to make the "naughty" list, but I felt unwelcome from day one. I considered leaving early d/t scheduling conflicts with management but I stuck it out for the sake of maintaining my rep as a consistent and dependable traveler. The day after my contract ended I was contacted by my recruiter after the facility called the director of my agency claiming that I no called no showed. Turns out administration hadn't communicated the correct end date of my contract to the ED so they were expecting me to show up for a shift that I wasn't scheduled to work. I'm sure they were severely understaffed, so for that reason, and for the sake of not burning any bridges, I emailed the director of the ED as well as the agency coordinator apologizing for a mistake that wasn't my own and I even attached an email proving the date that the facility and I had agreed would be my final shift. Never received a response. I'm fairly certain that this facility would likely give a bad reference (for whatever reason..still unsure), but I am still okay with the fact that I didn't cancel or walk out on my contract. I was able to maintain the respect of my agency and I am much more aware of the red flags when choosing an assignment (got an offer in less than 24 hrs of submitting and no interview). I figure we've got to experience the bad in order to thoroughly enjoy the good..all about perspective!

I'm sure it happens more than I can recall. Honestly, I've gotten more disturbing comments from elderly and confused pts about my race than I have about my gender. Both are a non-issue for me. I knew what I signed up for when I made the decision to be a nurse. I remember how excited I was when I got my acceptance letter, not to mention finishing nursing school and passing NCLEX. Getting a new grad position in the specialty of my choice was the icing on the cake. Accomplishments give you a sense of self-fulfillment that can't be negatively affected by another person's opinion, which is likely why I am unfazed by anyone's negative perception of a male nurse. Of the guys I grew up/went to school with there are less than a handful who have the level of job satisfaction and income that I do. If you are the kind of guy who lack's the ability to excel in the face of adversity, nursing probably isn't the career for you. If you are the kind of guy who is determined to thrive despite the ignorance, prejudice, and stereotypes spewed by others, welcome aboard!

Scared, The level of immorality regarding what the poster did is purely subjective. To each his or her own. Further, Pearson will NOT penalize a customer who's card declines, as it CANNOT be known whether the mistake was intentional. The customer is pre-paying for a service that they WILL NOT receive until after the availability of funds has been verified-period. This is not a difficult concept to understand, so I am not sure why you are choosing to initiate a debate. I am also not sure why you are addressing the validity of Pearson's move to correct the "trick" in your response to my post. My post was geared towards alleviating some anxiety caused by your implying that a poster broke the law and needed to be nervous about the fact that his or her card declined. Right or wrong, the last thing a person needs when awaiting NCLEX results is to be scolded about a decision that was clearly made on impulse, especially when there was absolutely no harm done to anyone in any way.

Nothing to feel bad about, IMO. What you did isn't NEARLY as immoral as knowingly writing a bad check. Credit cards decline-it just happens. Vendors have transitioned to electronic payment methods so that the availability of funds can be verified before a service or product is ever recieved. No one is going to haul you off to jail, nor will you be penalized by Pearson in anyway should you require their services in the future.

We have been using immediate bedding for about a year in our ED. The patient arrives at the front desk requesting to be seen and the tech pages the triage nurse. The tech will then quickly register the patient while the triage nurse makes their way up to the front. The triage nurse is paged over a phone system, so all nurses in the dept are able to hear the page. The patient is taken straight to a room and is triaged at the bedside (vitals, ESI, med list, etc.). The triage nurse will then assign a primary nurse and handoff the patient. The primary nurses are expected to pay attention to the triage pages so that they can bed and triage new patients if the triage nurse is busy triaging another patient. The process works fine for the first few hours of the shift when census is manageable, but it becomes problematic when flocks of patients begin to flood the department at the same time. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the primary nurses to drop what they are doing to triage new pts within the required time frame when they already have a heavy pt load of their own. We are being told that our numbers have improved drastically, which was the purpose of the new workflow. However, the process is exhausting and the nurses are twice as overwhelmed. We typically try to leave at least one trauma and/or one cardiac room open for high acquity patients, but this is not always possible due to the unpredictability of the ED. I hear that administration is pushing to make more changes to the process, none of which will benefit nursing staff, of course.

I've got two theory exams, a skills final and a theory final all back to back within the next few weeks, which means I should've spent the majority of TG break studying and preparing. But I didn't. I refuse to let school work come in between me spending time with my family during the holidays. I'll work it out. There may be lots of late nights and early mornings involved, but I'll "get er done". With that being said, the answer to your question is yes, there is a point in celebrating holidays while in nursing school.

I haven't seen nurses bend needles after an injection at the facility I work at, but I would think that older school nurses probably do this habitually to prevent accidental needle sticks. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. It's not something that I would ever dare do at the clinical site, though.

It's very refreshing to see someone so supportive of their spouse (a lot of my married classmates don't have that). I have a classmate who I knew long before nursing school and we're very close. She was struggling a lot when we first started and she was having a pretty rough time doing well on our exams. We started studying together and I noticed that when I offered her my view on certain concepts and practices from a "male perspective" it helped her put all the pieces together and it would just kind of click for her after that. I've learned that our perspectives combined help us both understand the material in a well rounded way and we did really well on our exams after a study session together. We are now able to spend less time studying and we do much, much better on our exams than we did in the beginning. You might be able to help her by offering your perspective on the content so that she can get a more well rounded grasp of the information. Nursing school tests have a lot to do with perception. I think that if she is able to process the information in a way that she can see things from both sides, it will help her eliminate the wrong answers and choose the best answer come test time. Hope that makes since and I wish your wife luck!

I agree with the posters who said to speak with the instructor directly. I would hate to have a co-worker or classmate complain about me to a supervisor or an instructor without speaking to me about what's bothering them first. Personally, if I had an issue with an instructor I would arrange a meeting with him or her and explain the issue I have with them in a constructive and tactful manner, as it's not what ya say, but how ya say it. If he or she was not receptive, I would then take it a step further and speak to their boss. If all else fails, you better believe I would be speaking to the Dean about the problem.