Tragically Hip

If it is your passion, though, from what I've read, psychaitric advanced practice nurses are in demand, and paid well.

Good choice. Hopefully the stethoscope I chose will work out, but if not, I'll do what you did.

Congratulations, jasilady. You made it on on your own hard work and brains. I wish you great success.

The amount of money pharmaceutical companies pay out in lawsuits pales in comparison to their marketing budgets, which easily exceed their R&D budgets. And don't conflate lawsuits by the public with legal fines drug companies are forces to pay for misfeasance or malfeasance. Do you have any idea how much all those television and print ads for all those purple pills (that do no more than the coral-colored pills that just went generic) costs? Or the cost of the perqs drug companies have traditionally handed out to doctors in order to encourage them to prescribe the company's latest new, expensive, under-patent drug? The big money in litigation is not from people who complain about a runny nose side effect. It's from pharmaceutical companies that do things, often known by managers in the company, that either harm a lot of people, or put the public at serious risk. KPMG International's newsletter Issues Monitor (June 2011) (PDF file) contains an article entitled "Rising cost of litigation in pharmaceuticals industry" that goes into good detail about the nature of litigation against drug companies. It's sad that the propagandistic idea that all lawsuits are frivolous or are brought by only by people who want to steal money from those with deep pockets has become so common. In reality, it's often the only recourse that we have to keep a company from riding roughshod over everyone. Remember, a company's only fiduciary responsibility is to their shareholders and their equity.

When you use a lot of expensive medical services, chances are that you're not going to be able to hide the fact from your boss. In a small company, one employee with cancer or other expensive illness can cause the rates an insurance company charges an employer by a large amount. There is really no way to keep it secret. That is one reason having employers provide one's health insurance is an absurdity, a relic of wage controls from the WW II era.

In a local magnet hospital, ADN RNs are being "encouraged" (i.e., effectively forced) to get their BSN. I had a classmate from that hospital in my microbiology lab, and she hadn't taken a college class for a while. I'm pretty sure the hospital is paying for her classes. This hospital has a very good reputation in the community, and they probably don't want to tarnish it by willy-nilly firing nurses. It's too bad that the management of many facilities just doesn't care.

You can get the same stethoscope cheaper on-line, including the cost of shipping (and normally, no sales tax). I got and ADC Adscope 601 with interchangeable parts for quite a bit less than the bookstore's price Classic II SE price. It seems very nice, though it's quite heavy. I don't think there's anything the bookstore carries (other than proprietary items like embroidered clothing and name tags) that you can't get cheaper or far cheaper elsewhere. They have a very large markup on most things they carry.

Congratulations, LCinT. There are indeed a lot of good people, or a lot of good things done by people.

Propofol — there was a circus of recalls within the past few years for contamination with minute stainless steel particles, exotoxic bacteria, hepatitis C. Instead of making single-use vials, Teva used cheaper (maybe they had a lot of them) larger vials, which were then used on multiple patients, leading to hep C infections when the large vials were reused (for endoscopy, at least). Baxter was sued as well.

it's generally a prerequisite, and you will get a lot more out of the class if you take it first. my microbiology professor happened to be a chemistry freak, which for me was pretty cool. i did a little project on the metabolism and energy yield of a particular lipid, which was a great learning experience.

On this this MDC Web page it says that A&P 1&2 + labs have to be "Completed within 10 years of program entry date," but some courses (like microbiology) that should be there are missing, so the information is probably out of date. You need to call advisement for definitive information — their Web pages are sometimes out of date.

I got the lab coat. It seems to fit OK. I wish I'd had it for chemistry and microbiology labs rather than the rip-prone disposable lab "coats" I used. I'm waiting for the bookstore to get scrub tops and bottoms in more men's sizes. If the next batch is as deficient as the last one, I'm kind of hosed.

It has nothing to do with companies not marketing drugs in which there is little profit? Why would a drug company bother when it can put its funds into marketing a little purple pill that does nothing more than the previous pink pill that's gone generic does? Aside from liability, selling vaccines is logistically complex, and profits are low. Developing them into a marketable product is very complicated as well. Why bother, when there may be yet another patentable proton pump inhibitor that's no more effective than the previous one, but might be a marketing bonanza? We are paying for the lion's share of the development of most new drugs through taxes.

Most of the money pharmaceutical companies (certainly the large ones) take in goes to marketing. Their saturation advertising on cable channels, so that people are encouraged to wheedle prescription from their physicians doesn't come cheap. The fact is that, while drug companies conduct trials, and a lot of drugs don't make it through the process, most of the drugs are discovered on the government's dime, through research in federal labs or through federal money grants to universities and to corporations. I know a researcher in Maryland (where a lot of such research is done) who works for a private company that's developing a particular vaccine is getting government grants — gifts, essentially — the government will gain no equity stake. The process of validating the effectiveness of a drug is long and expensive, and it's a double-edged sword. Rapid approvals lead toward some drugs that turn out to have dangerous side effects that affect a large number of the drug's users. Slow approval leads to people suffering with a malady that might respond well to a drug that's years away from widespread deployment. There are no easy answers, but is certain cases, if the need is great enough, companies can obtain waivers a fast-track approval. The problem is that major drug companies don't want to deal with low-profit drugs (i.e., many generics) that would provide a steady but low income. The companies have the fiduciary responsibility to serve their shareholders, not the public, so they don't bother with those drugs. Among them are vaccines (low profit/high risk) or orphan drugs (drugs with a very small market). In those cases, the unfettered free market does not serve the best interests of the public. Perhaps, at least for orphan drugs, the government should finance research, as they do now, and when the orphan drug is ready to be marketed, buy the patent from the company. It would provide a good return on investment for the company, while allowing people with devastating but treatable illnesses to have access to the drugs they need. Is whose interest is it that antiretroviral therapy for HIV is so costly in the U.S.?

The Ph.D. Now Comes With Food Stamps, The Chroincle of Higher Education, 6 May 2012 A few years ago an adjunct English instructor wrote a great essay on how hard it is to survive financially on the pay colleges offered, even given the large number of classes he taught. I'll try to find the article.