FuturePsychNP

I'd first have to determine the legality of doing so, and then I'd have no qualm whatsoever with reporting it. I'm always the first to demand police involvement when I observe something unlawful or suspect among our patients.

The ones I posted happen to be the type that I have three pair of from previous life work. When I went to work I wore them so it makes sense (to me) to wear them now to work. I like them because they are fluid impervious, easy to clean, more comfortable than any tennis shoes I've ever owned, and they keep my toes warm in cold hospitals, lol. In life, I only wear tennis shoes to work out or run in. The rest of the time I'm wearing some type of casual boot or hiking boot/shoe such as these I'm wearing right now: Amazon.com: Merrell Men's Moab Waterproof Hiking Shoes - Beluga 11 - Wide: Shoes

I'm not really into "physical nursing" as you put it either. I like knowing stuff, and I like seeing people do stuff. By that I mean, I love learning about physiology and pathophysiology, and I enjoy seeing other people enact various medical interventions (most of which are things nurses don't do). However, I'm not really keen on actually doing anything hands on. I'm not squeamish, and I'm not scared of needles. It's just not what I want to personally be doing. I got into this for outpatient psych as well, lol. The only thing I'm averse to is feces. Yes, when I started it wasn't that big of a deal, but now I'm rather repulsed by it to the point I have to calm myself when exposed to it. Yes, I'm being serious. I'm not visibly upset by it, but I have a mental crisis of "If I see this **** one more time I'm gonna flip out!" I'm actually leaving hospital nursing entirely in August (or sooner) so that'll be a welcome chapter closing in my life, lol. I don't want to get used to it either as the site and smell of human excrement shouldn't be a cool, normal thing. The best way to get over needles would be to go to the pharmacy, buy a bag of diabetic syrines, and randomly jab yourself with them, lol. Just kidding. Don't do that. I have a dark sense of humor, lol. Remember you're going to be sticking other people. Not yourself. As for getting in better physical shape...absolutely!! It's great to be in shape. If you're not now and don't exercise you have to will yourself through the first couple (or more) weeks of it, but you get to a point where your body doesn't feel sick and tired. At that point, you merely exercise, catch your breath, shower, and go on about your day. Once you do it enough and habitualize it then it's part of life like eating dinner. I enjoy working out. There are a variety of positive health benefits that I'm sure you're already aware of. Right now I look forward to it because it's when I get to loosen up. I abhor stretching for the sake of stretching, lol. Seriously, as much as I work out I haven't been able to reach down and touch my toes for the better part of a decade. Tight hamstrings. Anyway, I carry my stress in my neck and back muscles. Other than the poo I mentioned above there isn't really anything that noticeably bugs me mentally. After a run, a good lift, etc. they're loosened and lubricated. I can then stretch out the stiffness which I really look forward to. Remember to hydrate and get plenty of sleep.

Undergrad micro is totally safe. I took it around 12 years ago, and the worst thing about it was the smell, lol. I wouldn't stick your fingers in the colonies and rub your eye, mouth, nose, open wounds, or genitals, but you'll be ok, lol. You won't get any more sick from it than you would any other class chock full of 20 year old over-secreting, hormone baskets!

Renal is a lot more complex than most people think, but it's interesting so I believe it's "learnable." Cardiac is just fun. It's not really difficult, and most people seem to be interested in it. Cardiovascular my favorite system. Neuro is easy to get bogged down in. I've been reading neuro again, since school ended, to brush up on some things for this fall (as there is some overlap between neuro and psych), but I find everything south of the brain to be pretty boring, lol. I think neuro is hard, for me, because it's not that exciting, there's little to be done when something goes wrong, it's really easy to get bogged down in as there are a lot of words that aren't really used outside of neuro, and it requires a lot of memorization to retain these words and find application for them. It's all very doable though. Everything is doable!

Relax, absorb, learn, take everything in stride. It's all doable. Many thousands of people have done it from stupid to intelligent, lol. One day at a time, grasshopper. Rather than focusing on the ultimate end, focus "long-term" on rocking the semester. December and May come fairly quickly even though in August and January they seem so out of reach.

And again.

Shall we continue?

It generally depends on the employer. I'm the charge nurse and generally assign new admits to a room, do their admission assessment, and assign a staff member to them. However, if I'm away from the desk I couldn't care less if whoever happens to answer the phone makes the room assignment. Also, if I assign a new patient to a LPN I create their careplan and get the ball rolling on the education materials. If it's a patient that won't have any needs other than pumping in some fluids and going to sleep I don't mind taking that patient on. If the patient will have other stuff to be done I'll defer them to another employee on shift because I take as many or nearly as many patients as other employees on the unit. I also do or make sure the frige, crash cart, glucometers, and other items are checked. It's a smaller hospital, and I bounce to other departments for codes and other crises.

I wear these: Danner - Striker™ II GTX® Side Zip Uniform Boots

To address some misunderstanding....

It can be

I like to wear these rather than slacks or scrubs: http://www.511tactical.com/All-Products/Pants/Tactical-Pants/Taclite-Pro-Pants.html You can comparatively shop and find them $10-12 cheaper online and often with free S&H. I also wear these with any form of pants in the hospital: Danner - Striker™ II GTX® Side Zip Uniform Boots - Boots They're easy to clean and impervious to fluid. I get ribbed about wearing boots, but I really don't care. I wore them in a previous life, and have three pair to make use of, lol. You may find them for about $140 online and almost always with free S&H. The above clothings is highly durable, ultra comfortable, and very utilitarian.

I don't at all like the phrase "giving report." I refer to it as "briefing" since we're briefing the oncoming shift for their duties. At my employer, we brief everyone on the unit's oncoming shift in a conference room. I don't mind briefing the oncoming shift, but I hate being briefed by the offgoing staff. Too many workers want to go talk ad nauseum about individual conversations they had with patients, "cute things" that were said, the substance of their defecation, and any other number of happenings. When I finally make it to the duty station, I put my census sheet in a drawer with what few notes I've written on it, and I immediately go assess patients. I won't do anything else, other than perhaps resuscitate (LOL), until I'm finished assessing all of them. At that point I'll tend to any immediate needs and then fill out the flow sheet on the EMR. I include two types of assessments seamlessly when I evaluate patients. First, I perform a focused assessment of why they're there, and then I assess to the extent necessary to fill out any remaining fields in the above mentioned flow sheet. I almost never look at the census sheet again until it's time for me to hold the briefing at which time I may note observations worthy of detailing to the oncoming team.

It's just something I've encountered. I'm not condoning nor denying it. I couldn't care less about what the rationale behind the statement is because I was merely passing the hearsay.

LOL. My orientation was, "if you have any questions just ask!" My first day I mostly shadowed and helped out and that wasn't even for a whole day. My second day I took a full, four patient load. Six weeks later I was sent to nights to become the shift charge nurse - the role I was hired to do. I still have that job, but I'm quitting hospitaldom in a few months and will probably find some other type of job until I finish grad school.

I chose psych NP because it seems to be the most efficient way to become trained and licensed to be a comprehensive psychiatric provider. Having said that, the NPs in most cases do only med mgmt which I'm fine with. The psychometrics of psychologists and psych examiners is really interesting as is the therapy they may provide. The counseling of mental health counselors and social workers is also really interesting, but the reimbursement is negligible so that didn't seem like a good investment as a second career. Psychiatrists spend a lot of time before becoming psychiatrists, yet they're still not really trained in psychometrics and spend a lot of time in medical school doing rotations in fields, as all med students do, that I couldn't care less about.

I have two jobs. One is what I presently do for a living and was a requirement to complete NP school, and there other is a hobby related to my first career. Between those and school (I just finished my busy work semester) I got tied up a lot, but when I went back for the BSN and now the MSN I swore to not let it eat up my personal life so I luckily found a RN job in which I can sit and do my school work. Nothing about the "generic" BSN or grad school so far has been hard. The burden is some of the time consuming assignments and interference with trivial, busy work assignments with little to no point value. It seems manageable with any amount of work and family involvement because all types of people with all types of obligations do it. I'm not in the FNP program, but I know many that are as most people in our school are in the FNP tract. None of them complain about the course content being too demanding. I don't feel like their three classes are enough and deep enough in content though, and I have heard some of them say that. Unfortunately, for the FNP students, FNPs have just about reached market saturation in all but the most BFE-type places to live in my state.

I graudated with the BSN as a career changer, got conditional admission to the MSN/NP program, passed NCLEX, got unconditional admission, summer drifted by, and I waited six weeks after getting licensed to look for a RN job (just didn't have my heart in it). I got a job, and a month later grad school started. It's actually the only one I applied for and was called to interview less than 12 hours after I applied online, lol. I got the call on a Friday and was interviewed/hired before lunch the following Monday. Timing is everything, lol. I've yet to take anything or be exposed to something that I didn't feel mentally competent to do in grad school. I've finished the first 19 of 44 semester hours, and will be quitting my RN job in August. It's just completely wrong for me, lol. Grad school and my clinical focus is pretty nice though. I like it. I'd say you have more than adequate experience, and there are countless NPs and NP students that never actually worked as a RN. I got a RN job because I had a compulsory 2,000 hours of work experience to complete, but, to the disdain of many, there isn't really a RN job anywhere that I'd want.

I agree wholeheartedly with everything said. I think the amount of certifications that exist for nurses, let alone the fact that many people spell out every cert they have, is ridiculous. I believe that NPs should be licensed to practice in the intended role of an NP - primary care and tend to primary care type issues. As we see, all physicians and physicians assistants are authorized by law to do whatever it is they do (or want to do) on their license. All NPs should have a NP LICENSE and not a ridiculous certification. Beyond the NP license with primary care training I believe all NPs should be required to choose a specialty: gero, psych, acute, family, etc and train it and receive a certification in the specialty. In my state, I'm a licensed RN and will become a certified FPMHNP APN (or perhaps APRN pending legislation). In my instance, a lot of psych patients don't see other healthcare providers and are doing good to see a psych provider. If I were trained, and licensed, i.e. considered by government to be qualified, then I could tend to some other matters of the patients such as writing a script for a HCTZ refill, for example. I agree that this wouldn't be something one would do all the time, but in a pinch on as needed basis I think it would be prudent and reasonable if, as stated in the second sentence of this paragraph, I were adequately trained and licensed to do so. My state boards would technically prohibit a psych NP from prescribing something as simple as amoxicillin. I'll say this again because it's an issue of merit to me; NP master's programs do not need two to three research courses, a course in nursing theory, or additional fluff like my one credit hour "design a community health promotion program course." All NPs NEED more biomedical training as I think we'd all agree that there are facets to healthcare that we're undertrained in and uncomfortable doing even in our own specialties.

I understand how it would help. Thanks, Z.

I think so, yes. Tough school. If you can't cut the mustard they'll have you walk the plank.

Like I said, it's not necessary. Any chemistry from general to organic to biochem will aid in the understanding of physiology (which is my favorite part of healthcare). An example that immediately comes to mind is action potentials. Read about depolorization and the phrase "less negative." Without having an understanding of chemistry do you know how two sodium and potassium (both positively charged) could be "less negative." Electronegativity. A good lesson in itself.

Is there a con? No, education is a good thing. Is it practical? Well, it depends on what you want to do with it. I'm thinking of a college I read about once that has a master's in "general nursing." The courses were devoted to nothing that directly involved making sick people get better, lol. If this is what you're looking for I'd say you're spending your money poorly. If you're going to do edu, NP, admin, etc. then go for it. If you plan on never doing anything but working as a clock punching RN (not that that's a bad thing) you'll find you won't really need it and likely won't get remunerated for it.

Necessary, no. Prudent, yes.