angrykitten

Just to echo what everyone else has has said, you did exactly the right thing by realizing you needed help and asking for it. Unplanned extubations happen in the NICU to nurses who have been there twenty years and nurses who have been there twenty days. When ETTs are only in 6-10 cm you don't have a lot of wiggle room. Regardless of what the CXR policy is in your NICU, now you know what to do if something like this happens again. You will still have to ask for help. You can't bag the baby and reintubate them by yourself.

Try branching out into neighboring towns. An hour or more commute is not fun - but it is better than no job at all. You could move later, or use that experience to get a job closer to home in a couple years.

In the NICU, we change the bag every 24h and we don't rinse them out between bolus feeds. As far as I know, this has never been an issue.

I don't own a single "matched set." I usually wear black pants and a solid-colored top. Sometimes I wear navy-blue pants with a lighter blue top so it still coordinates. I also have brown and dark grey pants, but only wear them with scrub tops that are printed and have that color. I prefer darker, more neutral pants just because I feel more professional than I would if I were wearing bright pink pants to match my bright pink shirt.

Thanks for all the replies. It actually feels better just to have my feelings validated. It just gets really frustrating sometimes. As for dad of six - I left out that the only child those parents have custody of is the baby we sent home with them, which is it's own extremely frustrating post. He also said under his breath when I was trying to teach them CPR that I should have more sex, which I pretended not to hear, because the only thing I could think of to say was, "I think you should have less."

I don't have kids. I love babies, obviously, but I just don't plan on having any of my own. However, I am constantly asked by families if I have kids. Usually, I just say something jokingly like, "Nope, I like to take care of my babies here and then go home and sleep through the night." Rarely, this becomes a problem with discharge teaching though - recently I had a dad point blank say to me, "I have six kids and you don't have any. You don't need to try to tell me how to take care of a baby." Even coworkers ask me, "So when are you going to get one of your own?" I don't really want to get into a discussion of why I'm choosing to stay childless at work. All you other childless nurses, do you have a go-to answer for this question? I want to be friendly, but I'm really over talking about my child-bearing plans or lack thereof with strangers and acquaintances.

As someone who did an ABSN (I did not know what I really wanted the first time around), I say just get your BSN now. Berkeley is a great school, but no one is going to care that you went there for your first degree and there are plenty of other great schools that also have great nursing programs. If you already started this semester, do a semester of pre-reqs, then transfer. Most nursing schools have a preference for students who complete their pre-reqs there.

In nursing school, I was taught it was ok to cry with the family as long as it was about them and not you. So a few tears are okay, but you shouldn't be upset to the point where they might feel like YOU need to be comforted - or at least not in front of them. I don't cry in front of the families in the NICU, because if I start, it's hard for me to stop. I will let them see I'm holding back tears. I concentrate on giving their baby who has moved on the best ending I can manage by making hand and footprints, giving them a gentle bath, wrapping them up, and carrying them downstairs to the morgue myself. I save my tears for when I'm curled up in my bed that night.

There is also a Florida nursing forum under United States Nursing, if you want more info.

You can't really tell for sure how your first 75 are going based on questions that seem easy or difficult. Remember that fifteen of those questions do not contribute to your pass/fail. They are unscored questions the NCLEX is testing on you.

If it is truly what you want to do, keep applying to NICU jobs now and don't wait. You have a great answer to why you are leaving your current job: "I like it, but my passion really is the NICU."

I do not want to discourage you from doing your MSN because I believe that more education is always a good thing. I just want to share this: my friend and I both started working in the same place at the same time as new grads - she did a MSN program like you are considering and I did a second-degree accelerated BSN. It took me just very slightly less time (not enough to really make a difference in your decision-making, I think), but hers was more expensive. We are currently paid exactly the same amount. When I go back to get my MSN, my job will cover most of the cost and I will be in a position to pay up-front what work doesn't cover. So in terms of time spent in school, the direct MSN program is definitely faster; however, it seems like your concern is more financial and in those terms, an accelerated BSN might be better. All the best to you, whatever you decide.

Same. I wouldn't hitchhike, but I think you'll be fine walking, though I'm sure that makes for a long day. I would also ask around. I'm sure some of your classmates live off-campus, too, and wouldn't mind giving you a ride home for a little bit of gas money. I know I wouldn't have minded and I did actually used to drive a girl home from an old job every time we worked together. Good luck!

That child is definitely an outlier, but we've had at least four or five kids stay past their first birthdays in the past two years. There are many more chronics who have been over six months old when they have left. It does cause some controversy in out unit when they are over a year old. We do have child life and our docs do consult with the PICU docs, but what is usually decided is that the PICU wouldn't be doing anything differently for them than we do, so they should stay where they and their families are most familiar.

We have had several patients celebrate their first birthdays in our NICU since I've been here - we never send them to the PICU. Our oldest patient right now is 1y9m. We do frequently send patients to a pediatric rehab hospital, but they have to be on a home ventilator and these particular patients are usually unable to tolerate the settings they would need to be on.