GBC_Student

I just passed the 7 year mark as a nurse. I still do think I'm cut out for it. But I keep showing up and no one has told me to stop. I don't care for med surg, I never enjoyed it and don't plan to go back anytime soon. Keep trying new jobs. If medicine isn't your thing try psych or community or school nursing or something else. Like others have said, nursing is such a wide field. You may continue to find bed side nursing isn't your bag, but don't give up, it does get easier.

I did detox on and off for about six years. Once you get your assessment skills down the job can start to feel a bit routine. Most patients I worked with were fine, but there are some that are rude, abusive or just awful to deal with, just like any other group of people. I never personally experienced violence. A small number of patients would talk big, but no-one ever tried to hurt me. I never had to restrain a patient who was undergoing detox. Meth induced psychosis sure, but people coming off of opioids are typically just really physically unwell for a week, and most people coming off of alcohol just want to get their diazepam and rest. I know the detox unit at my old hospital had a lot of nurses who stayed for ten plus years. Once you find your footing it's not a bad job, but the manipulation from patients did start to wear on me. I've worked in both acute psych and addictions and in my experience violence doesn't happen often in the addictions field. You might run into patients who are highly intoxicated that become violent, but I never had this happen to me and I had some pretty drunk patients. Good luck on your interview.

It depends on what their drug of choice is. It's tough to say for sure, but the most common drugs of abuse I see in the population I work with are fentanyl, crystal meth, or crack cocaine. Prices vary depending on what it is and where they're buying it. I work in a safe injection site and people can easily use fentanyl 6 times in a day and we're not open 24 hours per day. A hit might cost you $10-$15 per hit in Canadian dollars. A bag might be one point, which is 0.1 grams. Heavier users can use 2-3 points at a time. Of course you can find people that use even higher doses. If it's crack cocaine a person can use many times per day. It doesn't last that long so you could see a person buying crack 10 or more times per day. If they're shooting coke then you could easily do it 15 times a day or more. A baggy is likely a couple points and goes for about $10-20. I don't see people using meth as frequently as fentanyl. However, meth tends to last longer than fentanyl and much longer than crack. A point of meth can run you anywhere from $5-$15 per hit. The thing with meth is you can stay awake for three or four days using which drives up how much a person spends. All of these prices are about what these drugs cost in Toronto Canada. Obviously covid19 has changed drug prices because of supply fluctuations, but hopefully this gives you a rough idea about how much people spend and how much they might use.

Do you work over there? I thought one of the RN's who works there is an NP.

The bridging clinic, geriatric outpatient, CAITS. There could be more but those are the ones I can think of off hand.

I graduated from GBC in 2013, so I don't know the current state of the program. However, my experience back then was very negative. I don't know many nurses who have a kind word for that program. If you got into Humber I say go for it. People I know who did ther RPN diploma at humber had really positive things to say.

I work in a psychiatric emergency department. We don't typically call codes in our department. As soon as people start escalating the team in the department is great at responding. Other inpatient units in our building call code whites by pressing the code white button on their name tags or pressing the code white buttons on the walls. Usually one RN from the ED responds to codes in our building and one RN from each floor responds as well. The ED RN is designated code manager. Security and the duty doc respond as well.

It depends where you work. Clinics pay less than hospitals. If you do overtime, obviously your wage will be higher. When I was a new grad RPN I was making $24.86 an hour which ended up leaving me with about $2800 per month after dedications. Wages for hospitals are a bit higher now so you'd be looking at about $3100 per month as a new grad.

I'd probably go with the hospital job. You'd be in the union and after your probation you could apply to internal job postings. SHN is not as well funded as some of the other hospital networks but it's still a good thing for your career.

You could try reaching out to nurses on LinkedIn. You may not get many responses but if you send out some messages and say you're not asking for a job or a leg up, but just asking some general questions you might get some responses.

I agree with the other comments. Your mental health is no one's business but your own.

Apply apply apply. Just keep at it and apply to every job that comes up no matter what the experience asked for is. Become familiar with the mental status exam, try to learn about the most common mental illnesses like schizophrenia, bipolar, major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, ect. Become familiar with doing suicide risk assessments. And start learning the psych meds like loxapine, seroqul, olanzapine. And if you haven't already give some thought to what area of mental health nursing you want to work in.

Totally a scam. It's poorly written, promises way too much for a nursing job, and asking for a passport is a huge red flag. A company car? $500 per week in pocket money? No way is this real.

I've never heard of a four year contract. That's a bit of a red flag but not a definite bad sign. It's possible they're hiring for an occupational health nurse in one of their corporate offices. At a store level I've never heard of that before but again with covid19 it's possible they're hiring nurses. If they ask for you to pay for any part of the hiring process I'd be suspicious. Especially if they're asking for it in bit coin or Apple gift cards.

Camh employs NPs.

They don't count my rpn experience so I'm starting at the bottom of the ONA pay scale which is $33.23 an hour at my hospital. With shift premiums and a holiday shift here and there my wage for one year should be about $68,000 before tax and other deductions.

Yeah I was kind of picky when it came to RN positions I was applying to. I think a lot of employers get that not every new grad is going to find a job right after school. I think if it was like a two year gap they might wonder but six months or even a year isn't crazy.

Toronto is a tough job market. When I graduated in 2013 it took me about ten months to find my first rpn job. I got my RN license in July 2019, I just got my first RN job last week. It can take a lot of time unfortunately and it's definitely discouraging to keep applying and not even get a rejection email. Keep at it, it'll happen. Apply for every single job, even if it says they want two years of experience, a specific certification or whatever else.

It's bs. There were people in my bridging class who did not make the GPA that GBC said Trent demanded and they still got to do the Trent portion and graduated with their BScN.

It's a huge juggling act and there are so many small assignments worth 3%,5%,8%. It's obnoxious but it's not difficult. You should sit down when you get the outlines and plug in every assignment into a calendar or a spread sheet. There's a lot of manage but I firmly believe that if a person can pass the rpn program then the bridge isn't bad by comparison.

For the most part the instructors were fine,nothing to get excited about but competent enough. They treated us better than the GBC rpn instructors treated me when I was an rpn student. It's been a little while but I don't think I spent more than $2500 over the 3 years on text books.

For the GBC bridge you need to "b) graduated from the Bridging program (George Brown) with a minimum overall cumulative average of 75%; c) achieved a grade of not less than 70% in the follow courses NURS1093, NURS1101, NURS1074, NURS1084, (or in the approved equivalent course); and d) achieved a grade of not less than 60% in the other NURS courses or the approved equivalent course and two (2) approved university level Liberal Studies (or in the approved equivalent courses). " As long as you keep up with the assignments don't work too much it's not that difficult to keep your average up.

I used to work for a company where this was often the situation. I was a full-time RPN and I'd often be charge nurse if the other nurses working were agency or part time RN's.

You may never love nursing or even like it. It took me three years of working my first job before I finally landed a better one. My current job isn't perfect but I've managed to bring down my 45 minutes of complaining to my partner when I finish a shift to under ten minutes. Joking aside I don't love being a nurse, it's a job that I sometimes take a lot of satisfaction from but usually it's a grind and I look forward to the end of the day. Try moving around if you can, try different jobs in nursing. You may never find one that you love but you may find one you can tolerate and feel okay with. I also think it's okay to decide that it's just not for you if that's the case. I don't believe it's a failure on your part to leave nursing. I'm sure there are lots of school teachers, lawyers and plumbers who decide to leave their professions behind and try something new. Best of luck.

This is just hear-say, but from what I've heard UofT gets first kick at the can when it comes to placements. If you plan to go for the NP program it might be easier for you to go from one UofT program to another. I've never been asked in a nursing interview which school I got my degree from but in the end you might, and this is a big might, end up with more interesting placements.