vegnurse21

I started 5 weeks ago and this is 100% how I feel about it. It's completely self taught, I would love to have their jobs..they don't do anything lol.

Umm..I couldn't have dreamed up a better job than what Humana has offered me as a care manager. I love the company and love my job. Of course there's metrics to meet, that's how anywhere is. It is a company after all, and a very successful one. I joined awhile back and have no regrets.

I had no idea you could even do this lol. Let us know how it's going!

I know I'm pretty late to this but I would be interested in finding out where some you all that hate working from home in CM are working. I work from home w/insurance and LOVE IT. I don't have kids but even if I did I would definitely have to arrange for child care because well, you're still at work!!! You can "set your own hours" in a way, but if it's telephonic then you kind of have to go with the patients schedules. I would be angry w/7:30am calls to talk about my heart failure lol. So we mostly work 8-5. I get a break up to an hour as long as I'm clocking my 40 hours a week and they are productive (i.e. no starting the day at 7 because what can you really get done?). Yes productivity and metrics are the name of the game for the most part, but isn't that everywhere? You go to the hospital and it's the same thing. I help people, I work from home, I work out on my lunch break, my dog can snooze by me as I work, I can go potty as I please lol...this is truly a dream job.

Intake at my facility was very different. We did screenings via the telephone and got patients from outlying facilities. We only went to the ER if there was a conflict of some kind between the psychiatrist and the ER staff. The patients had to "meet criteria" for admission and that would present some issues sometimes. It was incredibly stressful on my unit because I would have to also do the insurance work too for pre-cert and also do ECTs with the psychiatrist three days a week. We would sometimes have up to 8 patients coming at the same time and NO ONE was hardly ever willing to help me out which put too much responsibility on my shoulders. I loved doing the admissions but hated the lack of teamwork and overload of work that would sometimes occur.

I had to leave bedside psych nursing for the exact reasons you mentioned in your original post. I was having nightmares about knocking a patient out cold because they can just be such jerks. I DO still have all the empathy and caring in the world for psychotic, depressed, and demented patients. They are not included in the nightmares part lol. I'm talking about all of the addicts who do this nonsense and keep getting away with it. And with heroin being so huge right now we have so many of those. I saw a lot of patients who genuinely needed care get pushed out of the way by drug addicts who knew exactly what to say for three hots and a cot for a few days. I still love psych but I had to move on. I miss my coworkers and genuine patients but I am so glad I left.

I am on my feet literally for at least 10+ hours of the day on a step down unit. Sometimes the whole entire shift. It's so crazy because we have tons of post op patients who are out of the critical period but still very prone to rhythm changes, bleeding, etc. We care for vascular patients and cardio thoracic patients and then also are getting all of the post cath lab patients, many of whom still have lines in that we DC on our floor. The beds don't even get cold before they fill it again and you have to catch up on ALL of that discharge charting. It's crazy. I have many many days where I just cannot keep up. We pull chest tubes, wires, IJs, and also do our own discharges. We do our own ABGs as well if a patient is deteriorating. It's a ton. I have a love/hate relationship with the chaos lol.

Etsy has some absolutely adorable nurse things that you can get personalized. A friend of mine just graduated and I got her this really cute sticker for her car with her initials inside of a stethoscope. Highly recommend etsy for gift giving!

From my limited googling on this subject, step-down in any form does NOT count and they want you to have experience with invasive lines and swans. Stepdown, ER, PACU, none of those count. It has to be cut and dried ICU.

Location: Southwest Ohio Pay: $26/hr Area: Step down RN with 1 class left of BSN Years of experience: 8 Full time Shift diff is $4/hr for evenings/nights..no shift diff for weekends at all. This survey is really making me think I should have asked for a raise when I moved to step down.

Thank you guys. :) She never called for my phone appt when she was supposed to btw I was quite annoyed. I have to wonder with the amount of schools offering NP now especially online (which is the way I like to do things) if they are all up to par or if they are just selling fluff. I guess they have to be able to back it up though with passing percentages and stuff.

Thank you Brit! Very helpful! I have an appt today at 3 to speak with someone about the program close to me. :)

LOL I agree with you on that. I have done tons of youtube-ing with this new floor I'm on just trying to get the grasp of things. It's been immensely helpful!

Forgive me for my username...I picked it out 10+ years ago when I was entering nursing school . Just giving my background...2 years med/surg, 6 years of psych, just now started on a cardiac step-down unit. Each unit has been it's own learning experience and has been mostly learning as you go. I will be done with my BSN at the end of the summer and am applying for grad school for the beginning of 2015 if possible. My question is this though...does NP school adequately prepare you to practice? I would hate to come out of school feeling like I do as a new nurse to a new floor. I would want to know that I have adequate knowledge to practice. I'm not sure where my specialty will be. I love psych, I love geris, but am working towards critical care just to make myself well rounded no matter where I end up. Do you feel like the classes you are taking are helpful? Is it more than just the BS your way through nursing classes like my BSN ones are? Busywork is all they are it seems like. Do you take more in depth pathophysiology and pharmacology courses? Do you feel prepared well enough to work independently?

No I am aware of this but the OP didn't specify NP, they just said psychiatric nursing. And I would NOT feel comfortable going to a PMHNP that didn't have extensive experience first since they are able to do meds, etc. It's just my opinion of course, but I hate the thought of APRNs going into practice without experience. We all know experience is the biggest teacher.