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.

Only docs/NPs put in UVCs/UACs in my Level 4 NICU. What other kinds of procedures are you doing?

Talk to your educator/manager about this. Maybe you can do a few more shifts with a preceptor, just focusing on the highest acuity. If you can narrow down what you are having the most problems with, that will help. If it is more a time management issue, only practice can help, but in the meantime, ask for help when you feel like you are drowning. Finally, the NICU is not for everyone, but that does not mean bedside nursing is not for you. Investigate some less acute options, like a special care nursery or even well-baby.

Nursery, L&D, or mother-baby are definitely great ways to get experience if you can't get into the NICU now. I think most NICUs would rather have someone experienced in assessing infants than med-surg type experience. You could also look at special care nurseries, which are a step down from NICUs. However, if you just started a job somewhere else, you should stick it out for awhile. You'll still be learning and developing your skills and you will be more likely to get the next job if it's been at least a year in your current job.

I left that unit for a new job in a bigger unit in a large teaching hospital. I haven't been there very long, but I love it so far. 12 weeks with some classroom time.

I left a job after eight weeks of orientation (though I had a new job lined up). I know the first year sucks, as I have spent far too much time lurking in this forum. My old job was hard and very stressful. I lost more than ten pounds. It wasn't because of the job itself - it was challenging and I liked it. It was because I know that as a new grad I have a lot to learn and I wasn't learning. I was scrambling every day to get stuff done while one of my preceptors shopped online. I would have loved some criticism or any sort of feedback at all. My other preceptor was better, but she was off all the time for her own medical issues. The full time unit educator seemed to have no interest in checking up on my progress, even though I was the only nurse in orientation and I asked for meetings. I want to be a great nurse and for me, that included "job-hopping" to a place that supports new grads and where I can actually learn how to take excellent care of my patients.

I worked and took A&P 2 in the summer. It is doable, as long as you don't expect to do anything else :)

The MacBook Air was perfect for me in nursing school. All my classmates were jealous of its lightness. The size also really makes a difference on those tiny desks in auditoriums. It works perfectly for everything you said you would use it for. If you were doing a lot of gaming or video editing, I would say get the Pro. Photoshop runs fine on the Air, though. As for the disk drive, if you really think you need it, just buy an external one; I had one and I used it maybe 5-10 times. Most programs can be downloaded from the App Store.

The only clinical I listed on my resume was my capstone because it directly related to jobs I was applying for - I listed it under my degree. I have heard of listing all your clinicals, but instructors at my school recommended if you were going to, to list them on a second sheet.

You opened a can of worms with that one. It's really not set up in any way and it's been really frustrating to me, actually. I've been precepting on the floor though only one of my preceptors gives me any teaching/feedback - the others generally spend their time chatting at the nurses' station or online shopping. I haven't really had any education about diagnoses or anything outside a giant binder full of unhelpful power points I was given. Thanks to the forums here, I bought the Merenstein and Gardner, so at least I'm learning on my own. In my eight weeks on the floor, I've had two meetings with the nurse educator, both of which I had to ask for myself. The first one was to ask for help, which I didn't get really, and the second one was yesterday to ask for more time, which I sort of got - I was already scheduled two shifts a week, so I'll have feeder/growers and some intermediate babies, but pick up a third shift per week for orientation. My first day on my own (with a resource person) is today actually, unless there is enough staffing to give me a preceptor, so wish me luck!

When I was in nursing school, I had community health clinical in an elementary school and did about 120 vision screenings (not hearing though). I also got a classmate to come do some because we needed volunteer hours as well and honestly I thought I had learned enough about doing vision screenings :) I would definitely ask around for volunteers like the previous poster mentioned.