BWright81188

(See the post above) my original post was long enough, so I didn't want to go into detail about why I actually want to do advanced practice nursing. Long story short, it's been a goal of mine since before nursing school, and grew as I gained more experience and understanding of the profession. Thanks!

Thanks for the advice! I worked (and currently work) with NPs, interviewed one before nursing school and shadowed several during, and have met with program directors and deans from different grad schools to discuss my options. I feel confident in my decision to go to grad school. Unfortunately, I've never thought to pay attention to the back work of an NP during my shadow experiences, hence this post. So far, it sounds like it would be easier on my back than bedside nursing, but I want to make absolute sure before applying to programs and taking out more school loans. As much as I want to be an NP, if it were bad for my back I would have to give up on that dream and look into nursing research or nursing informatics (the 2 other disciplines that appealed to me in nursing school). I'm way too young for these back issues as it is, I'm very active, and I'd like to continue being active for many more decades.

Long reply here, sorry. I just graduated this September, so the wounds and pains of nursing school are still fresh ;-). I was a former EMT/ED tech, I had straight As, and I was feeling as stressed and low as you in an accelerated program. It's absolutely normal to feel this way. Nursing school is EXTREMELY hard. All Bs are really good. I've heard this to be true of other cohorts, but by junior year, none of us cared about our GPAs anymore. We just wanted to do as well as we could and learn as much as we could. Having that mentality lifted a HUGE burden off our backs. As an ED tech, the first two terms were the easiest, but after a few terms it didn't matter as much that I had prior medical experience and some of my counterparts did not. Yes, I understood medical jargon more than my counterparts who were not CNAs/techs, there were some skills or equipments that I was more familiar with, and my comfort in talking to and working with patients was high, but before long, my counterparts without medical experience were using the same jargon, skills, equipment, and bedside care. In fact, most of my cohort did not have prior medical experience and every single one of us passed the NCLEX on the first try, got jobs before we even graduated, and made the best of our nursing school program. Keep working hard, and you'll be right there with your CNA classmates. In my experience, the lows you're feeling come and go. I was excited at first, then lost interest in everything, then back to excited. I went through an entire term of acute--the one term I had been looking forward to, given my emergency background--and I was so bored, exhausted, and NOT excited. I especially disliked my ER rotations! Oddly enough, what got me excited again was my very last rotations at the end of the term in OB. I didn't become an OB nurse, but it sparked my curiosity about nursing again and I went into the next term excited. One student in my cohort felt this similar indifference toward everything all the time. She constantly questioned whether nursing was right for her. Nothing made her excited about nursing. She feared that she would graduate and never find a specialty that interested her. But she got through it, and is loving her current nursing job. One thing that helped us both during our lows was going to a professor and venting. We texted, emailed, had coffee with, and cried constantly to them. I thought something was wrong with me until at the end of that acute term, my clinical instructor reassured me that it was completely normal and that I was not the only one. So I hope you power through this, use your resources (e.g., professors, mentors, etc.), and know that you are not alone.

Thanks for your response! Walking is fine with me. It was actually highly advised by my surgeon. It's prolonged sitting and frequent bending/twisting/lifting that get me. I can overcome the sitting at my current work place by charting standing up, but I'm more concerned about the bending/twisting/lifting stuff.

Hello! I am a 27 y/o former firefighter-EMT and ED tech, now new grad RN. As a tech and a firefighter, I worked for companies that didn't exactly have cultures of back safety. As a result, I was straining my lumbar muscles about once every 2 months. Just before nursing school, I got an MRI and found out I had 3 bulging/protruding discs and mild stenosis in some of those areas. Fast forward to nursing school and all of a sudden I wasn't pulling my back regularly (probably because I wasn't pulling up/lifting patients daily by myself). I was feeling great and I realized how much bedside care and poor body mechanics at work really had screwed up my back. Nursing school taught me a lot of tricks to save your back (e.g., raising the bed) that I had never been taught as a tech, and I've been doing my best to apply these lessons in real life nursing. I just got a night shift job on a really awesome cardiac unit for a hospital that discourages lifting of more than 35 lbs. Unfortunately, I haven't seen this lift policy played out in reality, and night shift lift resources (e.g., Hover mats) don't seem to be readily available. Plus, we all know how strenuous bedside nursing is even with a no-lift policy. After only a few weeks on the floor, I severely herniated a disc and required emergency back surgery. In addition, my updated MRI shows worsened bulges in the other areas, and severe stenosis in the herniated area. I know I won't be able to survive a long career of bedside nursing. I'm not entirely upset by this, because nursing school really peaked my interest in 3 areas: nursing research, nursing informatics, and advanced practice nursing. My preference is to become a NP and work in a more rural setting. However, I don't know how strenuous this type of advanced practice nursing actually is on the back. For those working in clinics or offices as FNPs or PNPs, would you say that advanced practice nursing is easier or harder on the back than bedside floor nursing? What are the most common lifting/bending moments? Given my back history, would you advise for or against an APN career? Thank you!

I would have liked to have been the flight nurse from Africa to Atlanta. I bet he/she got paid a TON! Not that money matters in this context, but it makes you wonder what they paid him/her just for that trip alone :)

I was on the waiting list for an ADN nursing school at a community college in California. They had the same situation. I was under the impression that many of the community college nursing programs in the Bay Area and central California were like this, but I could be mistaken. I'm in an accelerated BSN program in Oregon now and they follow a state-regulated schedule where the classes are named according to their subject matter, but I don't much about it. I'm just going with the flow. :)

Oh, you already have one! I missed that detail, sorry. I wouldn't purchase more memory until you know you're about to run out, and even then you can always back everything up onto an external hard drive or a cloud. As far as Microsoft goes, I think they are superior to Apple when it comes to word processors and power points. Fortunately for Mac users, Apple sells Microsoft Office (it is a bit twitchy sometimes, but I think that is expected)! IMO it's definitely worth the investment, especially if your instructors send you Word docs; sometimes Pages doesn't format a Microsoft Word doc perfectly. Good luck in school!

I have the 11" MacBook Pro, basic model, and I use it for everything! All of my textbooks are ebooks (we used Elsevier Pageburst, which works really well with Mac IMO) and our program is set up so that most of our lectures are online, then we go to class 3 days a week and have discussions, lab, clinicals, and tests. I also take handwritten notes with a Livescribe smartpen so all of my notes and recordings are automatically uploaded onto a cloud (Evernote) and available for review anywhere. So it's very hybrid, and an 11" has been great. If you think scrolling will be an issue, go to an Apple store and find a few lengthy articles on Goodle Scholar or CINAHL, read them for a while and see if you either adapt or want a bigger screen. Personally, I haven't found any issue with the 11", but before this I used a netbook for 4 years which seemed considerably smaller and slower. I am, however, purchasing an iPad mini this August for days I only need to read or have Evernote open. The only disadvantage in having a MacBook Pro IMO is that it's heavy. I walk or unicycle a few miles a day to class, coffee shops, and some local medical facilities, and with some paper, my computer, my charger, and a water bottle, my back gets tired fast (imagine if I had paper textbooks!), and I'm using a women's-specific day hiking backpack that is ergonomicallt designed for heavy walking! The MacBook Air might have solved this problem, but I don't think it would have been powerful enough to handle all of my textbooks, documents, and online work open simultaneously. What type of work would you be doing on your Mac? If only Internet use and word documents, maybe an Air would be more portable and efficient for you. So in conclusion, I highly recommend the 11" MacBook Pro if you don't plan to walk a lot, if you're using e-textbooks or doing a lot of online work and studying, and if you don't mind some scrolling.

If you want to stay in nursing, maybe working in a research setting would be more appropriate for you. Higher education might be required, but it sounds like additional schooling wouldn't bother you.

Where in my post did I bash a nurse?! It was my fiancé's fault for downplaying his pain during triage and ACTING like it wasn't a big deal to appease his mother. I was giving an example of how acting like he WASN'T in pain only made things worse for him.

When my fiancé fell through a roof and landed on his back, he tried to laugh and joke around in triage so that his mom wouldn't cry or worry. Because of this, he ended up waiting hours in the lobby, despite the mechanism of injury. When he finally got back to a room and they got some images, the doctor was furious; the fall had actually broken his back! Kind of a funny reversal of the topic. :)

Add the Facebook group! We're only missing 4 students from the group if you two add!! It's called "OHSU Accelerated BSN Program-Ashland Campus-Class of 2015".

Me! There is an ohsu absn ashland class of 2015 Facebook group! Add yourself! -Bri-

Oh wait I see your point regarding the automatic upload of the results. Another possibility might be if one doesn't clean the surface of the finger in the first place, the results are skewed! These are certainly all possibilities, which is why I believe they require so many inservice hours/mandatory CE classes on how to properly take finger stick BGs and other POCs at my hospital. But a nurse could just as well make these mistakes too. I'm still not in favor of only allowing nurses to do these.