angrykitten

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...

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 da...

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 a...

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, w...

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...

We always had to fill out a form for each of our group mates basically grading them on their participation and listing sections that they were responsible for.

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...

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 ...

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 ga...

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...

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...

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 iss...

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 speci...

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 beca...

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...

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, t...

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 spen...