SweetCorn

I just hit 10 months in the ER as a new grad and had a 12 week preceptorship. I'm far from a seasoned nurse, but I'm not the same RN I was last November. Those first few weeks/months should feel like a slow motion train wreck, at times. Don't jeopardize patient safety or your safety at any time. When the tasks started piling up, sometimes I had to "slow down to speed up". Meaning that in order to tackle a mountain of tasks, I needed a quiet moment in the med room to develop a plan of attack. I found that if I slowed down a (tiny) bit, made sure to get the supplies I needed in one trip, was prepared for whatever I was doing, this makes things go so much easier and less stressful. You will be slow getting things together and setting them up but with repetition comes efficiency. Lots of people on these threads have said that with exposure and experience comes confidence and comfort and at this point I agree. Something clicked around six or seven months for me and every month or so other things click, or at least I notice things fall into place with what feels like less effort or stress. Lots of things happen in what feels almost like automatic mode now. Until then, you gotta stick out the tough shifts, the terrible patients, the (hopefully occasional) degrading comment and keep asking questions and taking notes and looking things up. Figure out who your pillars are on your shifts, lean on them (but not too much) and learn from them. You'll get it.

I was advised that if I took TNCC after I had my license I could use those hours for continuing education. This is probably what I'll do.

I rented all my textbooks besides my med/surg books, which I purchased. You can get Amazon Student service which is essentially Amazon prime which gives you free shipping both ways. Any school that doesn't provide you an ISBN before a course starts is screamin' shady to me. Is it accredited?

Fyi... it's 106 degrees in Sacramento today, same tomorrow. But at least there isn't any humidity. The places in CA with the great weather, like San Diego, come with a cost (for the most part). Either cost of living is higher or pay is less or both in the case of San Diego. There are LOTS of nurses in CA and lots of nurses who want to work in CA. Get that first year under your belt and the opportunities are much greater.

12/48, ABSN program in the Bay Area, CA. We graduate in two weeks!!!!

I'd snap that one up. Great place to live even if it is rather remote. Cal Poly is located there, fantastic climate, surfing, coast mountains, good food and wine, no traffic like LA or Bay Area. I'd pick that over Drain-o (Reno) any day.

Regarding the FAIR part above.... SMU and other private schools don't determine who gets a loan or not, that is up to the banks. Many private schools offer some scholarships to ease the cost burden as well once you are in and can prove a financial need. Getting into this school was highly competitive. It's not just who has the $$$ gets in, far from it.

Cheap ones, if your school is like ours, and you have to wear white shoes. Mine will be burnt the moment clinicals are done. Not because they are gross but because they are white. Who the hell buys white shoes?? Look at Discount & Clearance Clothing, Shoes, Accessories and More | 6pm.com I found some Reeboks with a non-slip sole and a wipeable (word?) surface. You don't want material like canvas that fluid can soak into. Like an nclex question, don't overthink this. You'll have more important things to concern yourself coming up soon.

I'm attending SMU right now and I'm under the impression that most people are taking out private loans. You do get some federal money (around $12,250 if this is your second bachelor's degree) which comes at a nice low interest rate, but the rest has to come from private loans, or savings, or somewhere else. It's true, a lot of people can't apply to private schools because they can't get the loan. Check out the various options before completely closing off this option. I'm pretty happy with the program, and being done in 12 months is HUGE. Edit to add: If you are competative, look at Cal St. Stanislaus. It's a relatively new program and does not get nearly as many applicants as other programs in CA. It's around half the cost of SMU and is in the central valley which also helps with the cost of living. http://www.extendeded.com/asbsn/programoverview.html

I'm an SMU ABSN student right now, in my 4th month. The answer is not full time. There are a few people who have continued to work some during school, like one shift on Friday night, or stay on per diem with their former job. I'm not working and I couldn't imagine even slipping in an 8 hour shift once a week. The workload is strenuous and even the best students, basically all of us (we essentially all had 4.0s in pre-reqs) were/are overloaded with school responsibilities. This isn't like pre-reqs and your focus needs to be on school. Some of the parents in the group lament how our ABSN program is effecting their relationship with their kids. You essentially eat, breathe and sleep this program for twelve months. I should also add that another big obstacle to working is that your school schedule changes every 5 or 6 weeks, including clinicals and there is little to no wiggle room for when you attend clinicals. This is primarily why the schools don't want you working because their schedule changes so frequently and can change at a moments notice. I would say that once you figure out the best ways to study, improve studying efficiency, etc. the crush of school lightens a little bit, but I'm not running out to pick up a part time job. This probably isn't the answer you were hoping for, but I think you need to hear something honest. Now back to my care plan....

I second the travel assignment suggestion. Don't call it Cali, it's California.

In Northern Nevada, several of the schools I am familiar with have been adding requirements to their application process. Things like having a CNA license, more math classes, having to take the TEAS on site at the college, residency requirements, etc. I get the feeling this is an effort to decrease their applicant pool and to focus on serving the local population and eventually, the local hospitals better. I personally like the CNA requirement because it sounds like in the past there have been students who have gotten into nursing school but thought for some reason they wouldn't ever have to do direct patient care. The CNA requirement makes sure students who get in do indeed have a basic level of experience working with patients as well as have some very useful skills when they get into clinicals. When you think about the amount of time colleges have to spend reviewing hundreds of qualified applications, that takes a lot of work hours. For schools that constantly receive an abundance of applications and end up spending a lot of staff time to whittle down the list to their final 30 or 60 or whatever they accept, this is a lot of work that costs the program and school money. I can definitely see a school having an interest in removing the least desirable applicants by simply increasing the requirements for application. You mentioned Wayne State removing requirements. Well, that's Wayne State, in Detroit. There are regional differences and you can't apply a one size fits all argument to your initial question. The Cal State system has been understaffed and underfunded for years, actually coming up on a decade now. There are still hundreds of ADN programs across the state Board of Registered Nursing - RN Programs and many of them are accepting more students based upon qualifications instead of a simple lottery system (meaning students with medical experience and good grades are being accepted at a higher rate) rather than simple luck in the lottery system. This is the way it should be imho.

I'm thinking ABSN that is offered at the Stockton campus. Apologies for mixing them up and congrats to those who are in!

Are you sure this wasn't acceptance to Cal State Stanislaus itself and not the nursing program? The application period for the nursing program is open for over another month (app deadline is May 15th) and at the info session we were told they would be sending out notifications for acceptance to the nursing program by mid June. I can't imagine them sending out any notifications until all applications have been submitted and reviewed.

I think applying a one size fits all statement, like "there is a nursing shortage" to the entire country in just about any line of work is not going to work that well. Different regions have different needs and have different resources to fill those needs. The nursing market in coveted Northern California region is not the same as the less-coveted region of the southeast. California has lots of nursing schools to draw from as well as nurses from the rest of the country who want to work for good wages and under laws favorable to nurses. I live right on the California/Nevada border and work at a hospital in each state. There are significant differences in the staffing needs of these two hospitals and for most people, it comes down to pure economics. Working in Nevada = lower wages, fewer laws regarding patient and provider safety and more openings for nurses. Working in California, only 30 miles away = higher wages, more laws regarding patient and provider safety and fewer openings, with those being highly competitive. It is a prospective students job to find out what placement rates are like at the programs they are looking at. If they apply to a school that not many of their graduates find work after finishing their program, and they finish in the bottom half of the group, then they should expect to have lower prospects for finding a job. I really think it is that simple. Flexibility with getting into a program and landing that first job is key. If you aren't willing to spend a few years in a less desirable location in order to get that initial experience, then you have automatically reduced your chances for success as a new nurse. And this all comes back to researching your schools and the market you'll be graduating into .

I was wondering the same thing. I paid my $350 deposit at SMURF and haven't heard anything. I'm also working on the student health record and the other items outlined in the admissions email. Can anyone verify that the 2013-2014 FAFSA that I submitted last year will apply to this coming school year? I cannot submit the 2014-2015 one yet because of incomplete taxes. thx edited: For immunization records.... I have had to track down immunization records for some jobs and school and I was able to get a record from my high school. They (fortunately) still had a sheet that was filled out when I was a freshman and had my vaccination records for a lot of what is required in the health record. My dad was able to go there and request it and they produced it pretty easily.

Got my email at 0800 this morning. I'm in at Oakland. I cannot explain the relief I'm feeling. I can scratch off all those other programs from the list, all the other pre-reqs and now just focus on an actual program. Best of luck to everyone. Edited: Grades: I got a B in statistics (booo), everything else was an A TEAS: 89 Work experience: EMT Basic with 3,000+ hours as an ER tech Good references

I hope there are a bunch of these students in my ABSN program. They will make me look like a friggen' rock star because I love patient care.

I'm still in the wait and see phase of applications right now, so I can't help you there, but I have one suggestion.... You can do what a friend of mine did and pick his top ten or so locations in California for an associates degree and apply to them all. Entrance at community college programs, which offer associates degrees, is based upon a lottery system given academic requirements are met. That means getting into a program is entierly up to chance and if you apply to LOTS of programs, your chances of getting into at least one of them is greater the more you apply to. This method won't work for everyone, it helps to be mobile and willing to relocate for school. If you are anchored down, then your options are a lot more limited. Regarding associates programs, the more rural programs have fewer applications. So if you are willing to move to Oroville or Marysville, or even Ukiah, your chances of getting picked in one of those schools lotteries is much better than any of the Bay Area or LA region schools because they literally have thousands of applicants per application period. Good luck.

I can't help you with an individual NP but can comment on living in Alaska a bit, I lived there for 5 years. Sitka is stunningly beautiful, all of Southeast Alaska is. The primary reason it's so beautiful is the precipitation. It rains quite a bit which creates the lush forests and awesome landscapes. Let me repeat, it rains a lot, like moss grows on anything left outside, including things like cars. It's also isolated. Sitka is on an island and you cannot get there any other way than flying or by boat. There are some roads out of Sitka but they don't go all that far, and maybe only to one or two small villages. And that's a pretty big deal if you've never lived in a place that is literally cut off from other places. You can't just jump in the car and do a weekend road trip. You need to jump on a plane to go really anywhere and you're probably 2 or 3 flights to Seattle, and those flights aren't cheap. All goods have to be shipped in by barge or plane, so things cost a bit more there too, groceries, etc. Things like fresh dairy and produce will likely cause some sticker shock. In general, I think you need to be comfortable in a small, rural community. I have a good friend of mine who has lived there for many years now and she loves it. I would recommend visiting for a week or so before fully committing. good luck.

I got my acceptance email on Monday (Oct. 18th). However, I'm not accepting, so there is another slot that is going to be open for someone else!! Good luck to those who got in and are on the waiting list.

I took the course online through Santa Barbara City College. I was relatively pleased with the course. You need to be a self motivator though. There are some hoops to jump through too before you can register for the course, i.e a pre-req. If you've got A&P done you should be good. Get started on that early so you are ready to register the day it opens for you. It's also very reasonably priced if you have CA residency. I took both patho and pharm from that school. For summer start we aren't finding out anything until Feb/March? I could well be 2-3 months into another program by then. Wish it didn't take so long.

I live in Northern CA too and I gotta be honest, the competition for the slots that are available here is pretty fierce. There were two accelerated programs that would have been a good option for you that have been discontinued (not sure for how long) one at Sac State the other at Sonoma State. There are private options like Merritt, but it's $$ and it too can be difficult to get in. Take a look at UC Stanislaus (Stockton). Their cohort for this year has already closed, but for next year you might be able to have your pre-reqs done by the time the application opens. I believe their applicant pool is smaller than many of the other UC programs. You need all the regular pre-reqs + regular chem and O chem. You might try taking O chem at Berkeley City College?? Las Vegas has several options too including UNLV which has 3 starts a year. Their pre-reqs are pretty straightforward aside from an online Nevada history/constitution course you have to take. There are many direct entry programs at Cal St. schools, like some of the ones you've mentioned but most of those are masters degrees and lead to advanced practice licenses, think Nurse Practitioner. You could also apply to associates programs which there are many and they are affordable. I would suggest picking about a dozen and applying to them all. You might get selected in a lottery for one of them. I have looked outside of CA and have found many more options. There are some schools that have very short pre-req requirements and are 12 months. Just about every other place is cheaper to live than the Bay too. I don't see any reason why you couldn't take a new career path. You might have more success getting started if you're willing to be flexible on where you'll go to school. Good luck.

That seems like a really reasonable stud fee.

Those 5 hour energy things are a joke. They are all advertising and no "energy". I drink a sugar free rockstar on some overnight shifts around 0300. I personally prefer its wakefulness properties to coffee, which I drink daily. I'm usually busy enough to not need something to pep me up, but rockstars do the trick.