douxmusique

I know this thread started a year ago, but to help any newer viewers looking for tips: I recently started as a new grad on a mother/baby unit. Remember that culture dictates raising of children. There are so many different ways families take care of mom and infant, learning to navigate that is especially important. PP is all about education, education education. Many patients will have little to no prenatal care, many don't know anything about pregnancy, childbirth or how to care for a newborn. Hispanics will swear to you "no leche" and "no quieres" and say baby needs formula. Some middle eastern/indian patients are used to the nurse doing EVERYTHING for them (to include picking baby up from bassinet to hand to them in bed, though they are capable of doing it themselves). Many women never learned about and don't understand the presence of after pains and we have to teach about that and pain control as well. So much teaching..... I was shocked to actually see the need to teach patients SO MUCH about having a baby. I made my own "report sheet" that I have tweaked several times to include things I always tend to forget to do or ask about (OMG did that baby have her cord clamp? I looked now I forget!). It helps me out tremendously and keeps me organized. It's not necessarily a head to toe assessment sheet, but it has the important things on there- vitals, fundal assessment, baby bracelet number, meds, routine tasks.... Don't be hard on yourself as you learn the job. If you have a question- ask. If you are concerned and uncomfortable in a situation- ask. If you need a moment to breath- say so. Use your preceptor to your advantage but within reason. Be confident in your assessment skills- you know your stuff.

I actually had the same thing happen to me, I didnt realize it would hit me so hard. I wouldnt say I am not "cut out for that kind of nursing" though.... I would say I had an unexpected reaction and will have to work on it. In school I have watch many invasive procedures without any issues, not sure whh the circumcision got to me. I would consider it normal based on the understanding and concern I saw from the nurses I was with that day. Lighten up.

Yes the focused reviews helped. I did the practice assessments and then was able to narrow down what I needed to study based on the assessments.

There is an ati app in the play store as well. Honestly read your book word for word. I had to remediate for fundamentals and every question I got wrong was in the book word for word. I have taken 4 ati tests now and the last 3 I have received level 3s. If you know your book you will do well. Relax and Good luck!

We have our clinicals in hospitals. If thats what on site means. And yes the two programs are completely separate and have their own accreditations. Good luck to you as well :)

Speaking on woodbridge campus program only......Yes the program is very new and not regionally accredited. Those are the two major downsides to the program. However...... the program is ccne accredited and is good and strong and prepares students to be smart competent nurses. The faculty always has student and patient best interests in mind and they are not trying to turn out nurses for the sake of $. They are well rounded, experienced icu/er nurses teaching skills and lectures. Im not sure what you mean by on site clinicals...... I am in the same boat... military spouse needing to finish before service member is relocated. However. .... I am not sold on getting my masters, ever, so I am content with not needing to transfer credits. At this point in the game I just want to get my bsn. I am happy in the program. stratford falls church campus has a 68% pass rate. Woodbridge campus has 100% as of q513 when the first cohort graduated. While the accreditation is provisional under falls church, woodbridge is attaining their own accreditation.

I have the hardest time with alzheimers/dementia/confused patients... I am not sure how to respectfully and effecivelty communicate with them. Those have been my most challenging moments. I wish I would have had more confidence to just deal my first few times but I guess I'm slowly learning that. Speakly slow and clear and loud and smile ks what I have found works best..... Shocking/funny? Followed a tech in to do some foley care and I wasnt warned the patient had scrotal swelling. Any other fun details of the story would give away too much personal info but it was pretty hilarious. I dont really enjoy clinicals. I feel like a constant annotance and completely incompetent. I learn alot and make the best of my situations but some days my nurses are just not very willing to jave a student and it really messes the day up.

There is a poison ivy shot?!

They might be out there but I havent heard of any asn programs being 18 months prereqs to finishm like a pp mentioned many/most have at least a year of prereqs, sometimes three semesters, then an additional four semesterd of nursing core. In many BSN programs the progression is almost the same with a few extra classes and you can still finish in three years if you take your prereqs stacked and through summer. I guess it comes down tothe necessity of working or not. If someone doesnt need to work asap then why not just get into a bsn program and go that route? Personally I had so many additional classes that bsn degrees require it would have been a waste of my previous time and money spent on education to go with an asn which was my original plan way back when. So there are a lot of personal circumstances out there and different program options to fit everyones personal styles. Its not always a matter of working asap or getting done fastest.

Yeah thats not what was happening.

This is exactly why I tend to struggle with saying something or not. And hand sanitizer is considered washing hands from what the hospitals have taught me. So even some hand sanitizer!

Youre absolutely right I am definitely going to need stop worrying about not offending people when standing up for stuff like..... immediately.

Suturing. I wasnt sure if it was surgical or medical so I didnt know when/if the way he was laying everything out was contaminating a sterile field or even if it was sterile or not. I havent studied that in class yet so I just didnt know. Plus.... real world vs school...... I just thought I was being a little particular because I use gloves at home to cook food and change bandaids and dont eat anything with my hands. No, not even pizza. But I emailed an instructor and learned I should have said something because what i saw was worth a few sentences. Thankfully the wound healed up just fine no infections everyone is fine. I have come to the conclusion I am just going to say something if I feel I need to. I have to.

I struggle with some ocd stuff and figuring out what is normal germ awareness and what is hyper obsessive germ awareness (im talking about in therapy once a week for this) so my experiences since starting nursing school have been real confusing and hard for me to determine when to speak up (add on to that I am "just a nursing student" and not really "allowed" to confront nurses it has to go through my instructor). I bet the next time I need to speak up and choose to do so it will be the one time I misjudged a situation and the provider was actually right haha! Im going to just work on not trying to overthink the situations and just tell people to wash hands when I need to and be that crazy handwashing girl. Its for the best.

I'm having a hard time not critiquing every single thing the nurses/Dr. I come into contact with are doing. Last week I had to take my child into the ER and a follow up with the primary today. The Dr. was the worst in the ER with procedure related sterility and today the nurse didn't even wash her hands when coming into contact with my child. I don't ever tell anyone I'm a nursing student (because the last time I did that I was quizzed on the spot) so nobody knew I was monitoring things like a hawk lol. I know things are different outside of nursing school so I don't get all loud and self righteous I'm just a little annoyed that I can't just go in for medical treatment and trust everyone to be following proper precautions for my/my children's safety and health! How do I get over that? Do I say anything to those not washing hands? How do I say that without being a total psycho witch?

So a level one is like high 60s in oercentages depending on which test youre taking and when I take a test and get the assessment report it lists the class average and the national average and where my scores fall in that. I know for the fundamentals test the national average was 70% or something. Level one is like 60% level two is 68% and level three is 80% and up. So its not requiring 95% to pass. Trust me if you have been through your course and have learned what youre supposed to learn and read the ATI you will pass the test. My classes are structured around ATI and most of our tests are taken right from there. We have to study from our texts but when it comes down to it Ati has 95% of what I need for tests and clinicals.

Ive taken two so far and in my opinion if you have read and read and read your ATI books you will do good. There is an ATI app that is helpful also. One free version and the paid. I havent upgraded yet but the free one is good. When you take the practice assessments look over the assessment it gives you and go over the points it outlines. That is really helpful. It kind of directs you towards the areas you need to concentrate on. One other thing is you could search around online and find some tutorials on nclex question strategies since ATI is styled similarly. Good luck!

I did classicdame. I did try to Get as much from the patient as I could and might end up using the pt for a care plan if I don't find another next week. I'd say bilateral PEs is a pretty good care plan patient I'd be interested in working with :)

that taught me what NOT to do as a nurse. Trust me, it took me a full day to process the entire experience and put a positive spin on it so that I wasn't left with feeling like my day was a waste. We started at a new clinical site and after a few hours of orientation we were assigned nurses to shadow. We choose on patient to do an assessment and plan on, but we are to follow the nurse to all assigned patients. Without being too wordy, let me just list out what I witnessed (and trust me, I'm aware of nursing school vs reality). 1. Nurse goes into pt room and then tells me that the pt is on isolation precautions but it was no big deal because there was just a history of positive swabs and no active infection. Hands discharge paperwork, points out what should be read then discharges and leaves the room. 2. No handwashing in or out in any patient room. I only saw one handwashing in four hours. Since I was shadowing and not running around I had a lot of observation time. I can give a little understanding for some things but handwashing is seriously the easiest quickest thing a person can do to promote health. I don't think that's asking too much for a nurse to wash their hands? 3. Nurse had a family member visit, hung out in the hallway for 35 minutes visiting and ordering products offline then went into employee locker room and took a personal call for another 30 minutes. I visited pts to check if they needed anything (water, trip to the bathroom, etc) and then informed my instructor I probably needed a new nurse but was told it was too late in the day for that to happen since we only had two hours left (really?). I have a whole three pages worth of actions that I could list but I'll save some reading time and brush those off as a real world nurse not having a great day and being burned out over the constant pain med seeking she was dealing that day. I did my assessment on my chosen pt and spent some time practicing "therapeutic communication" and trying to take everything in.... but spent most of my time walking around attempting to "look busy" or find my instructor. I am just incredibly disappointed. I was genuinely excited to get in and learn and expand my abilities and gain more confidence in what I'm learning/training. I was really robbed of a great opportunity yesterday. The instructor said she won't use that nurse anymore but that doesn't change the fact that my classmates were able to do so much more hands on learning and I'm left feeling behind the curve in everything now. Hoping next week is better :). Any tips from anyone on how to handle this type of situation in the future?

All I know is I've seen people using $300 of SNAP (because all the snap cards look the same....) on frozen fried chicken appetizers, pizza rolls and huge boxes of fruit loops while I dont even walk down chip and dessert aisles in order to afford food for my family of three adults and three school aged kids.... there is no way I could afford the "cheaper" junk foods. I have never been able to (im in nursing school and we have always been a one income lower enlisted military family). Ive never understood the correlation between poor and obese since when we are broke we stretxh our beans and rice pretty far... and not every poor obese person lives in a hotel... whats the stats on that figure?. It doesnt make any sense to me but I dont really argue its truth. I just dont get it. But the numbers are there I guess?

My experience so far is that yes, peers try to ambush you.......not all but some. It is sneaky and selfish and makes no sense especially to those of us who genuinely dont want to see our friends fail. I do t want to go into specifics but lets just say i didnt realize what waa going until i felt stabbed in the back a quarter too late. Yes, professors neglect you if you are anything less than amazing: cranky attitude one day: shunned. Poor quiz grade: shunned. Showing signs of stress: shunned. I had a great term and then a weak term and my instructors have nothing to say to me anymore besides hello and coursework.... it used to be different when i was making 95 and 100s on everything. My program is very small but it was difficult at our clinical site to talk with our instructor because one student was constantly "hogging" her. It meant a lot of hovering when I didnt have that time really. Our coursework is not insurmountable and only helps to retain the material. Nursing school is tough but not terrible. Its important to just keep your mind over matter and buckle down and not let your mind race and stress too much and ignore any seemingly personal attacks because theyre generally nor your problem. Easier said then done....

2. Unsanitary drinking water is a leading cause of illness in developing countries, bottled water is clean and free of pathogens.

So true on the first two. Im about to finish up my first semester as well and the whole subjectiveness of test questions has been hard to get used to. It has probably been my biggest challenge. It had even made me incredibly nervous to interact with patients in clinicals because I was seriously getting every therapeutic communication question wrong. But.... I got better and am more confident with it all.