ThatBigGuy

Nursing school prepares you to take the NCLEX. L&D is a large part of the NCLEX, and therefore your nursing program spends a correspondingly large amount of time teaching it. That's really all there is to it. I struggled in my L&D class with a lot of the same thoughts you're having, but powered through and passed. I've not since touched a baby or a fundus in my career, but I did pass the NCLEX in 75 questions on the first attempt.

Go for the nursing degree. You're going to make $75k a year working ~36 hours a week. I'm in Texas, I made $91K last year, although I did grind out OT shifts when I was able. You'll work less, get paid more, and have higher upside potential, all while having a more flexible schedule and more time with your family.

Many good specialty running stores will have equipment to measure your foot pattern and gait, and can help point you to a few shoes that will match with your feet. New Balance stores offer this service. If that doesn't work, ask your PCP for a referral to someone who can custom build you some orthotics. Setting yourself up for 20 more years of pain free productivity will require an investment of time and money in the present. I have Achilles tendonitis. I'm also >260lbs. I've found that foam-soled lightweight running shoes work best for me, but I buy three pair that I rotate each shift, and replace approximately every 6-8 months. I also do some light stretching during my shifts, and work on general mobility exercises on my days off. I've found that if my lower-back-to-feet muscle chain is flexible, my Achilles tendons are less sore as well.

The average student loan carries a 7% interest rate and takes 20 years to pay off. That means your initial $130,000 debt will have cost you $240,000 once it's paid off. This degree will cost you $240,000. You will pay $1000 a month until 2038. I would suggest looking at more affordable options.

Invoke Safe Harbor if you feel like an assignment is unsafe. Whether or not you should have the skills to care for this patient is irrelevant in the moment. You first give your license protection, then go give the patient the best care you can. If the review board later finds that you should have had the skills to care for this patient and discipline or fire you, then so be it. Just remember, you can't retroactively call Safe Harbor. I would have been on the fence myself, considering the patient's condition. However, the lack of communication and support from my coworkers and charge nurse would have knocked me off the fence and squarely in Safe Harbor territory.

The first thing your son needs to do is make sure he has bulletproof documentation from his doctors, which you sound like you guys have. Might it be possible to add a third, perhaps some sort of specialist in immunology to have the most complete case you are able to have? You can probably be exempted by the university with a doctor's note. You'll probably be able to do the same with a future employer, although with perhaps a more thorough evaluation. The trip line is the nursing program itself. They will have requirements more stringent than the university or a future employer because of the requirements placed on them by their clinical sites. Clinical sites offer the schools the opportunity to send students as a favor, with very stringent sets of rules and guidelines. It's a facility's worst nightmare to have a sentinel event happen involving a student. The liability is through the roof. With that in mind, go directly to the source: the nursing school admissions director. Your son has an uphill battle that starts with the nursing program admins. It would be best if your son does this himself, with your support rather than vice versa. He'll get a more receptive response from administrators. Also, let him have his own All Nurses account. This is a great opportunity to grow.

I'm a guy. I wear a cheap, narrow, stainless steel ring from Amazon while I work. Cheap (like $6 cheap) means it's easily replaceable. Stainless steel means I can bleach it if needed. Narrow means I can dry my finger off well, and have had zero dermatitis issues. I've never had it come off in the many years I've been wearing it. Silicone rings gave me dermatitis. I leave my real ring at home.

Looks for second degree BSN programs. They will give you credit for some/most/all of the general core curriculum you have with your first degree (history, sociology, English, etc). You'll have to complete the nursing program pre-reqs before entry into the program, usually 1 year full time, but each program differs. Once you complete the pre-reqs, you'll apply for the BSN program. If you apply for an ASN program, it will take the same amount of time to complete, but you will only retain an ASN rather than a BSN. You'll have to try an ASN-to-BSN program and hope your sociology degree classes transfer in. Your best bet is to apply to all the second degree BSN programs you can find. I did this, and received my BSN in three years total (1 year pre-reqs, two years BSN program). You end up with the BSN, and don't have to worry about dealing with a bridge program.

I would encourage you to finish the RN track you are on. This is the quickest way to earning a paycheck and eliminating your burden on your saint of a mother. Once you have become an RN, you can start working with children in 1 of 100 different ways. You may find a niche that fits you even better than you thought the speech pathology would. You'll definitely have more flexibility and options as an RN. If you do decide that speech pathology is absolutely where you want to be, then you can start earning your masters part time while working as an RN, funding it as you go. If SP ends up being your life's passion, you'll have reached it with the least amount of strain on your mother. No matter what, getting your RN will create a flexible foundation for your future, regardless if you choose to go back to school.

I would factor in the cost of your extra wear and tear on your car. A general rule of thumb is a mile costs approx. $0.55/mile, not including gas. This take into account tires, oil changes, general wear and tear, depreciation, etc. If you only work one shift a week, the difference between the two jobs in car cost will be ~$1700/year. That doesn't include gas, which would put the difference over $2000 a year. If you work 2 shifts a week, you're looking at $4000 in vehicle costs. If you want to do this for a year or so, then I'd say other factors might weigh more heavily (I loath floating to med-surg). Of course, the longer you stay, the more the costs add up, and the heavier that decision would weigh on me. On the other hand, I love driving. Music and podcasts are therapeutic after a tough shift.

Is the $10,000 contract prorated or to be paid in full should you not complete the two years? If it's prorated, I'd jump at that opportunity. An ICU residency is worth its weight in gold. I wouldn't worry about the OT pay as a new grad, because the ICU residency makes up for it. On the other hand, if you want out, $10,000 is nearly 30% of your yearly salary when taking into account taxes and benefits. I can do anything for a year; the same cannot be said for two years.

My family looked at several places to live in our travels so far, both Seattle and NM were on the list. We chose NM. We lived in southern NM for 5 years. It's an amazing state, full of interesting culture and history. If you are outdoorsy people, you will find that there is more than 10x the amount of public acreage in NM than in Texas. The cost of living allowed us to maintain a middle class lifestyle on one RN income. The food is beyond superb, better than any Tex-Mex you can find, specifically the red and green chiles. You are within an afternoon's drive from hot springs, waterskiing lakes, hiking national forests, snow sports, desolate wilderness, cultural hotspots, and legitimate history. There is a lack of professional sports, although you can make a weekend trip to Denver, Phoenix, or back to DFW for those things. Your husband should find massive job opportunities with his Spanish capabilities. However, he will not be paid well, and will be dealing with one of the worst performing student populations in the nation. You will find plenty of opportunities yourself, and your combined incomes will be allow you to live in any city, Santa Fe included. We were intrigued with the culture and diversity of Seattle, along with the weather as well. However, we would have needed to become a two income family to live in the areas we identified as right for us. That was our deal breaker, so we moved to NM. We are no longer in NM due to life, but we have often considered moving back. We miss the food and geography, but what we miss most is the pace of life.

As the only male on my unit, I often "take the charts back to PCU" around 3am. I think they're on to me.

You need a higher GPA, because JHU requires at least a 3.0 and probably only accepts those with 4.0 GPAs due to the sheer number of applicants they receive. Just to get your GPA up to 3.0, you need another 50 hours of classes at a 4.0 GPA. You have a great mix of extracurriculars, but your GPA is prohibitively low. You will need to cast a wider net and apply to many, many different programs in order to increase your odds of acceptance. You also need to consider retaking the classes with the worst grades in order to improve your GPA.

According to UT Arlington's website: If you live near one of the listed cities, you should be good to go. Being online and accelerated makes this a very difficult program to finish, but the reasonable program cost ($18,000) reduces the overall financial risk if you cannot complete the program.

Food for thought: The average student loan takes 20 years to pay off. Statistically, you'll be 70 years old when you pay off your loans. I would highly recommend that you put program cost at the top of your list, save as much as you can before starting, and work while you are in school to defray costs as much as possible. There's a likely scenario that you will be gathering social security AND paying on your student loans at the same time.

$160,000 in tuition ends up being $297,000 after the average student loan debt payoff of 20 years. You will be a slave to your lender for decades if you choose this school (Proverbs 22:7). Debt isn't prohibited in the Bible, but it is discouraged as debt will always require focus, energy, and resources. By default, this means you have less time, energy, and resources available to perform the work you are called to.

I had a beard, but stayed shaven throughout nursing school per school policy. At my first job, my charge nurse exempted me from n95 fit testing, so I was able to grow it out again. After a year, I changed jobs. At the new job, there are no exemptions, no exceptions, so I shave once a year for my annual fit test. I then let it grow out for the rest of the year, and re-shave for the next annual. There's an understanding on my unit, that as a large man, I'll get the heavier/more combative/aggressive patients, in exchange for not having to care for the very rare TB patient. I understand that at any point, I may be asked to follow the dress code policy more strictly, and that's something I'm willing to do should that be the case. One thing I've found is that a beard will accentuate whatever look you have. If your hair is unkempt and your scrubs are wrinkled, your beard will make you look homeless. If your scrubs fit well, your hair is tight, and your shoes are fresh, a trimmed beard will make you look incredibly distinguished. Specifically for your current beard, trim a clean line across the top of your beard in the cheek section. Then, figure out where you want your neckline to be and keep that line tight as well. Trim the sides/sideburns to a length similar to the length of the hair on the side of your head. Your haircut is on point, just sharpen your beard lines a bit and you'll be good to go.

Google "Nike Air Max all white" and you'll get tons of hits. We had the same shoe requirements, many chose the Air Max.

What is the timeline of your proposed graduation from an RT program? The CRNA route is going to take 8 years at least. You'll have a year of pre-requisites and then 3 years of NP school. You'll need at least 2 years of acute critical care experience, and then another 2 years for CRNA school. You're looking at a CRNA grad date of 2024 (8 years). That's assuming you are admitted into all the programs immediately upon application (a big if), and you find an acute critical care NP job without any experience (a HUGE if). If there are any hiccups along the way, the 8 years could easily be 10 years or more. The main hurdle in this plan is the assumption you will find an ACNP job in an ICU without prior RN experience. I do not think this is a possibility, considering the intensely incredible resumes of the ACNP applicants I've seen, many with decades of experience in big time ICUs as RNs prior to becoming NPs. The most efficient way to become a CRNA is to do an accelerated BSN program (ABSN), followed by the two years ICU experience, then apply to CRNA programs as an RN. If you ultimately find that CRNA isn't right for you, you can always go back to NP school after you've determined a more focused specialty. On top of all that, you have to consider the increased cost of pre-reqs, BSN or NP school, plus CRNA school. There's a possibility where you're a CRNA in 2026 with student loans of $250,000. Or you can be an RT with a decade of earned income in that same time frame.

Use your gap year to move to and establish residency in a state on the continent. That's going to save you so much money over the course of your education. Avoid California if possible. Nursing programs as a rule are incredibly impacted there, and since you're free to move literally anywhere in the continental US, choose a state that gives you a better opportunity to be accepted statistically. It also has a higher cost of living than most other states, which would make it very difficult to live on a CNA hourly rate. Look in the Midwest, South, and Southwest parts of the US. Avoid the West Coast and upper east coast. The more dense the overall population, the more applicants you'll be fighting for acceptance into a nursing program.

Your daughter has a major negative counting against her: a failed nursing program. She also has a major positive counting for her: a completed bachelor degree. She needs to look for programs that offer a second degree BSN program. This is specifically for applicants who have a previous bachelors. Schools keep these spots open because they know that if you've been successful once, you're more likely to be successful a second time. Also, your daughter has had incredible success despite all that life has thrown at her. Have her develop an application essay describing the events leading up to her failure in the nursing program, and then focus on the fact that she was able to persevere and graduate with a degree. Nursing schools love second degree students who have been through the ringer in life, and come out on top. This means your daughter might be more likely to be successful in the program. Make phone calls and send emails to all the schools in your area and find out who offers a second degree program. Apply to those with your spruced up application essay. You might find more success that way.

1. I palpate most of the time. In general, real world practice, you'll have other cues to help you decide patency. I watch the patient's face for s/s of pain, but keep one eye on the tegaderm to make sure the IV isn't leaking or the vein blows. 2. Those green caps are nice, use when in doubt. That being said, I would just have used a new flush post-Lasix. Scrub the hub in between flushes and meds. My IV med administration looks like this: scrub, flush, scrub, med, scrub, new flush. It adds mere seconds to the time of administration, but you're pushing the Lasix slowly anyways, so you have the time.

When considering an ABSN, always throw in the added complication of "if I finish". Accelerted BSNs are much tougher with higher attrition rates than standard BSN programs. ADN: finish sooner and earn money sooner, but will have added complication of RN to BSN or RN to MSN in future. ABSN: finish later, if you get in, if you make it through the program, income earning delayed, but you get to be a Sooner. Another thing to consider is the cost of the program, although it might not be a big difference, because OU's program is about $18,000, which is incredibly affordable for an ABSN. I would suggest the ADN program. There are a lot of "if's" with the ABSN, added to the delayed earned income factor. If you really want to be a Sooner, get your Masters through them later.

Nursing program classes do not transfer. If you might be moving, and know you can finish your ADN before you move, then get that one finished. You can then work as an RN. At any point after that you can do an RN-to-BSN program, many of which are online. I would not consider starting a BSN if there was any chance that I could not finish it before moving. You would have to start over at the next place. If you can get your ADN before your move date, go for it!