MEINstudent

At my very large level 1 trauma center, clinic nurses start at $5 less per hour than bedside/OR/ED nurses.

I moved to the OR and while it's very different from bedside nursing, it feels more exciting than stressful. Pre-op is a decent environment, especially in the same day surgery environment, where nurses take turns staying later in the evening when surgeries run late, but don't work any weekends or holidays. PACU requires ACLS, and here at least, we do have occasional codes and other emergencies there. You could also try endoscopy or an outpatient surgery center.

I always bring a grapefruit to eat when I work at night. It takes a while to eat, is super hydrating, low calorie. I buy a big container of roasted, unsalted cashews, and keep a few small containers (those little Ziploc square plastic ones) in my bag. A greek yogurt, with another small container filled with paleo granola to mix in. I try to keep my food intake at night light, healthy, hydrating and protein-filled.

You are extremely lucky you did not harm her. It's good that this is staying with you. It will make you a safer nurse. You could let it get the better of you, but the adult thing to do is to remember it and move forward so that you are extra careful from now on, with everything you do in nursing. The fact is, that nurses can harm or even kill patients through mistakes. But the best nurses remain aware of that, and they use that fear of doing harm, to make their practice as safe as possible.

I could see giving a muscle relaxant med ordered for TID PRN, closer together than 8 hours. Say, the patient takes one when he wakes up, but then likes an additional dose prior to physical therapy. But if a patient asked for a second dose less than 8 hours from the first, I would page the provider to verify it's ok to give that close together. If the patient will be in the hospital for a while, and this is his habit, then I would suggest to the provider to add or amend the med orders to say it's ok to give close together for PT. Otherwise, I would page every day to confirm it's ok, just to cover my butt. If you had other patients assigned to you, you shouldn't have left the floor to follow the escaping patient. You should just notify the charge nurse, call security. I'm not sure it's ok even for the CNA to follow alone. Your hospital should have policies and training on that. Safety first.

I agree with above comments that it takes years to be comfortable and confident. I would say actually, about 10 years, personally. But... you should not be making med errors or any serious errors. That is carelessness and not paying close attention. Focus on your doing your job well. If you have questions, or any doubt about something you are doing or a med you are giving, ask a peer for advice and help. Don't worry about someone watching you and reporting back to management. Use that person as a resource to learn. Did you just get off orientation? I went through 12 weeks of orientation on a basic med-surg floor as a new nurse. It's not right if facilities are not giving a decent orientation to new nurses and then are critical if their performance is sub-par afterward.

University of Connecticut. But there are other places that have a better program in my opinion. The way the UConn program was set up, you pass the NClex but you don’t actually learn a whole lot. It’s too much too fast. And I graduated with a very high GPA that did not reflect at all my actual learning. Just being honest

No. I have a first degree in Liberal Arts - Literature. I went back and did a one year BSN program that was designed for people with degrees in prior fields, and intended for second career (i.e. older) people. There were about ten of us at the information session I went to before enrolling. Guess what 8/10 of those people had? A bachelors in psychology. And they had all just graduated in the prior year and realized there wasn't much they could do with the degree without going on for a doctorate. If you're only halfway, cut your losses and switch to a BSN program. Considering how expensive college is, you will save yourself a lot of money.

Are you on babycenter? They have an excellent "Family Finances" group that will help you figure this out. There is a budget template where you can figure out how much you need to make. A weekend Baylor shift, where you work 24 but get paid for 36, would be better, as you already have fairly low take home pay. You say you are due soon? The best thing would be to figure out what your take home pay would be, and start living on that now to see if you can do it. Your husband cannot work at all? Will he receive a living stipend for his program? He cannot watch the baby at all to avoid daycare? The Family FInances group on babycenter can help you better than we can.

It's only been 18 months since you left, right? Do you live in an area with a nursing shortage, or where there are plenty of applicants for every job? I don't think you are at a disadvantage; you haven't been out for years and years. You will likely need a good orientation but any decent facility will give that to you anyhow. I would keep your resume brief, like one page, and write a cover letter that humorously covers the events of the past two years.

In response to the highlighted portion above, your logic is flawed. If a healthcare worker is refusing to participate in an objectionable procedure of an LGBT person, it is not discrimination. They are objecting to the procedure, not the person. I realize that there are some people who may abuse this law, but the law is still necessary, and eventually those people out themselves as bigots and racists and get what's coming to them. States are battling over abortion rights. And while you may think it's terrible that one state has passed the heartbeat law, I think it is far, far worse that other states are loosening restrictions way past the point of viability. Try googling "abortion horror stories", and it will pull up a NYT story on late term abortions that includes a woman who legally got an abortion at 30 weeks of a healthy baby because she did not want to be a mother. That is just wrong. Late term abortions don't just happen for fetal anomalies. It's infanticide and killing the most defenseless members of our society.

So I did not read the entire 440 pages of this new rule, but I read a few synopses of it, and it seems like a lot of the hysteria is based on hypotheticals. A lot of "it could mean" or "it could allow". Clinton signed into law the original conscience clause, and Obama rescinded part of it. I did not read carefully the particulars of what Obama rescinded. But there have been abuses also where healthcare providers have been threatened for NOT participating in things like abortion. From what I read, this "new" law intends to protect healthcare workers from being forced to participate in procedures they object to, and does not intend to protect healthcare workers from discriminating against a group of people. There is a big difference between the two. I am an OR nurse, and we do late term abortions in our facility. I object to it, and have signed the form here indicating I won't participate. It hasn't been a problem. This new law doesn't change a thing for me, because I'm at a facility that respects my conscience. Hopefully this new law has a good effect at facilities where the conscience clause for healthcare workers was not respected.

You want to argue that abortion is something not easily chosen. And I have no doubt that it is a painful experience. But statistically, 45% of women who have had abortions, are having more than one. That statistic comes from the Guttmacher Institute, which is pro-choice, and it tells me that abortion is being used as contraception. The pro-choice position can't have it both ways: saying that there is nothing wrong with it, and then saying that it is a difficult choice. What makes it a difficult choice, if it's not the deliberate ending of the most innocent form of human life?

My primary point was that almost all of the responses to OP were outrage over the very restricted access some states are seeking to make law, but in other states, laws are being presented that allow unrestricted access to abortion. So that hypothetically, a 12 year old incest victim in one state may be prevented from aborting, while a 30 year old may be allowed to abort a 39 week fetus. To the best of my knowledge there are at least 7 states that do not stipulate a limit to when a woman can seek an abortion, and the wording of the law is vague (health of the woman? that is a very broad term). All of the reasons you say why a woman cannot be expected to seek out and utilize the services available to help her carry her baby to term, can be used to say why a woman can't be expected to find a means to abort her baby. So the woman who delivers her baby in a bathroom and discards him in the trash in secret, would you excuse her if she used any of the excuses you list above, for why she couldn't have just legally aborted the fetus she clearly did not want? And while we are on the topic of consent, the fetus is not part of the woman's body. When you have a gall bladder removed, you are not whole afterward. When you deliver a body, your body is still wholly intact. A fetus is carried within, attached to and dependent on their mother for a finite period of time.

I am an OR nurse, and we regularly do abortions after 20 weeks, sometimes for no other reason than the woman changed her mind. Perfectly healthy baby. I exercise my right to refrain from participation, and in a huge OR, the truth is that there are only a handful of staff who will participate in them, even though the majority of the staff would probably call themselves pro-choice. I've talked with most of the staff who do them, and even though they are pro-choice, they come of those rooms feeling disturbed. One fellow nurse, who I like and respect, told me she tries not to look at the pieces of fetus, and has to think of it as a specimen in order to get through it. It's illogical to me that a baby in the womb would not be considered a person. And since R vs W, we have learned beyond a doubt that the fetus feels pain. Neonate surgeons speak of having to give anesthetic to fetuses at 18 weeks during surgery. I can tell you beyond a doubt that abortion doctors do not give anesthetic before tearing the fetus apart and removing it by pieces. You can be disturbed by the bills banning abortion, but what about the laws in New York, Vermont, Virginia and elsewhere being passed that ensure abortion up to birth without any restrictions? Seriously, no outrage? What is worse, a law that makes a woman carry a child to birth and then allows to her to give the baby to a loving home who desires a child so badly, or allowing a woman to abort her baby at 39 weeks because she changes her mind or wants to prove a point that it is her body/her choice? For the record, I am pro-life, and pro services for women and children. I hate Donald Trump. I wish there were a pro-life Democrat to vote for because I feel stuck voting Republican because abortion has to be at the top of my voting issues, but on pretty much every other issue I side with Democrat. I am seeking to adopt, but while there are 400,000 children in foster care in this country, the number up for adoption is significantly lower, and babies up for adoption are almost non-existent. I have a 2 year old, and almost all of the children up for adoption in my state are required to go to a home where they are the only child, or the youngest child. Infertility runs in my family, and I have 2 brothers and a sister who are all looking to adopt, and it is near impossible and financially crippling. I hear this same tired argument about people against abortion not caring about the women or babies after birth, but I don't know a single pro-life person like this. The best of us volunteer at pregnancy centers, and financially support facilities that provide housing, education and childcare for woman in need. The one near me allows a woman to live for up to 2 years after she gives birth, and helps her to get a degree so that she can get a job to support herself and her child. You should go to one of those pregnancy centers and ask about services. Then go to Planned Parenthood and ask what they offer to women who want to keep their babies but are poor, alone and afraid. Then come back and tell me who has the agenda.

I would stick it out for a year, so that you don't burn bridges at your hospital. I started in med-surg and transferred to the OR at my hospital after 2 years on the med-surg floor (I didn't care for the culture either). Does the hospital you work in have an OR nurse residency program and hire nurses with no OR experience? If so, I would contact the OR educator in a few months and ask to shadow for a few hours in the OR. Make that contact, ask about when they run those residency programs. At my hospital, it's 2-3 times a year. And the time you spend on med-surg will help you in the OR. Where I work, many of the OR nurses have spent their entire career there and have tunnel vision when it comes to patient care. I feel like I am always walking into work and noticing things that others have missed, that would have been first and foremost in a floor nurse's mind. Good luck!

Did you even keep up your license? Do you honestly remember anything? Seven years is a very long time to be away for someone with even more years of experience. You forget meds, symptoms of serious illness, etc. I don't want to put down your dream, but I would be very nervous about returning to nursing. Is there anything else you could see yourself doing?

You could just keep two extra scrub tops in a big Ziploc bag in your locker, so that if you have a c dif patient, you can plan to change your shirt. If the conference room has a microwave in it, you should pick up the medela steam bags. they are awesome for steaming the flanges in between pumpings. target sells them. they last 30 steams, if I remember correctly.

Honestly, I would talk to your manager about taking the full 12 weeks, especially if you have post partum anxiety. They could make an exception for you if they like you. Your wording is weird. You had the baby already? Does your hospital have a designated pumping room? I work in the OR, and was similarly paranoid about contaminating while pumping. I put a pack of antibacterial hand wipes in my bag and would wash my hands before pumping, wipe down the area where I laid my stuff, and I brought a few old hand towels from home and would lay one down to put my stuff out to pump. on a 12 hour shift you will pump three times. I would suggest taking your scrub top off entirely. Where I worked the hospital provided the scrubs, so I would just go change my shirt before pumping; it took all of an extra 60 seconds. I also bought extra sets of the pumping cups, and would bring three for my 12 hour shift. Target sells a one piece medela cup that doesn't fall apart like the 2 piece one does, when you are juggling with one hand. As my daughter got older I relaxed a little bit.

I started in bedside nursing six years ago and got burnt out pretty quickly. three years ago I moved to the OR. More money, less stress. Fewer holidays. No nights or weekends (Baylor in place). Minimal call. I work the evening/trauma shift at a level 1 trauma center so it's rarely boring.

I would not go into $300k debt. I would explore all my options to avoid that. Can you move back in with your parents or another relative that is near a school? You are only in your 20s? How about looking to see if joining the national guard or other military would help pay for it? Or as others have suggested, take a year to do travel nursing with the intent to knock down some of your current debt. A $300k education debt is going to be around for a very long time, and will impact future decisions like starting a family or buying a home. Just for comparison, my brother in law borrow $250k for medical school, but is making > $400k as a specialist.

Nursing is a second career for me. I spent thirteen years working in patent law, but grew tired of it. I did a volunteer trip to Calcutta, and thought nursing would offer me a better work life balance (working 3 days a week), and be more meaningful. So I became a nurse at 35. I make decent money, but six years later, I can tell you honestly that my life was so much better in a M-F office job. I had no aptitude for nursing prior to choosing this as a second career and that is something I wish I had considered. There are people who go into nursing because it genuinely interests them, and then those that go into it for job security, and or because they envision being some rock star nurse. But the truth of the field that I have experienced is that the work itself is exhausting and stressful. And the commonly heard phrase that nurses eat their young is an understatement. In 13 years of office work, I never experienced the level of lateral violence that I see on a daily basis in nursing. Yes, there are those days where I leave feeling like I gave my best and made someone's life better for a little while, but I know I did not need to go into nursing to do that. When people tell me they are thinking of becoming a nurse, my first recommendation is for them to think long and hard about their reasons why. I think there are a lot of people like me who went into nursing for the wrong reasons.

Bullying encompasses a lot of things. I would be curious to know how many people have heard (or done themselves) a nurse trash-talking a fellow nurse to their peers? That is bullying. I have been a nurse for 6 years, and never thought I would be the subject of bullying or lateral violence, which is a bit difference. But recently have encountered both. I started to read up on it, and recognized that there is so much lateral violence in my workplace, and some bullying. I too, in complaining about a coworker to a friend, have engaged in lateral violence. I agree about people taking constructive criticism as bullying, but I also think bullying and lateral violence are excused away.

I also am a nurse as a second career, though I've been a nurse now for about six years. It takes 5-10 years to really get comfortable in nursing, but I think it is just a stressful career choice. I don't love it, but I appreciate the flexibility of hours, and decent pay. You might like care management. Less stressful, though probably tedious and boring. Or the clinic, or an infusion lab. Or if you have decent IV skills, maybe a vascular access nurse? You also may like PACU if you have ED experience.

I am an OR nurse, and transferred from a med-surg unit several years ago, going through a perioperative training program. PACU is not really going to get you closer to the OR, especially at an OSC, which likely does not hire unexperienced OR nurses. You probably need to find a hospital with a training program, as it is a 6-10 month process.