nobodywarnedme

We work 8 hour shifts, our problem is that we are always short staffed & our 8 hr shifts turn into 10 hour shifts (usually w/out breaks). I am too burned out when I leave work to do anything & my days off are spent catching up on sleep missed & trying to get things done around the house. At least with 12 hr shifts it would be less time at work overall.

I know in my state the first few classes of nursing school could be used in place of CNA classes & you just have to take the test. Also, around here hospitals hire PCAs, which is a different class. Cnas work in LTC.

Thanks for the input. I definitely have some thinking to do regarding where I see myself in the future (short term & long term). I am thinking I might ask for an interview to get a better feel for the environment & go from there. Truthfully, I may not even get an offer. Honestly, I don't think I would be miserable in subacute or certain areas in the hospital & I certainly could deal with med-surg for a year or 2. On a side note, but not totally unrelated...one of the interviewers basically said to me that monkeys can learn the clinical skills. I don't believe that for a second, it kind of blew my mind that she said that.

I am currently sending out resumes & interviewing for my first RN position. Everyone seems to think going into the hospital & getting clinical experience is the way to go in nursing. I have found several jobs that are not acute/sub-acute care general clinical skills type settings. I have came across one job in particular that deals with patients in outpatient setting and is more psych related. The job has the perfect hours, the pay is slightly above the average for the area, and offers full benefits (except tuition reimbursement). I feel the skills needed for the position are a good match with my previous skills & life experiences. I have also done some research on the facility & strongly believe in their mission & feel like this would be very rewarding work. I also like that you get to build professional relationships and see the follow through. The recruiter I was speaking with said they hire new nurses & seemed to like me & asked that I contact her for an interview if I am interested in the position. I also have an offer for a sub-acute care facility that has an excellent opportunity to learn & advance my career, but has lower pay ($250/week less). Honestly, I feel I would be fine if I never worked in the hospital or with acute care patients. But at the same time I don't know if I should limit myself at the beginning of my career. I hear strong clinical skills are the basis of many other jobs. Any input to whether I should consider positions outside of acute/ subacute care? Any stories from RNs who have gone alternate routes? Thanks

Not sure which method would be better... the cons to "flipping the class" IMO- If the whole dept is made to do this then like you said unqualified teachers will fail, the text book has to be excellent if students are to teach themselves (there are many that fall short), the majority of the class has to be on board- if many students don't prepare or you are stuck in a group w/ students that aren't prepared the student who does try her hardest will suffer. And your last point about written tests... well none of us are going to become RN's without passing the NCLEX so passing tests unfortunately has become a high priority schools. That would be the hardest thing to change.

Thanks all for the responses. The problem wasn't that the whole class (including the 4.0 students) didn't study hard or crack open their books for the test. We all didn't make is this far for nothing. The lousy teaching was a part of the reason everyone did so poorly, but that is not my biggest complaint. Episteme... You aren't coming across as harsh, the example you posted above is a valid question that many students probably over think. When I first started nursing school I used to think teachers were trying to trick me with the easy questions like that leading me to put the wrong answers. "About 10% of the time, I can find a wording issue that prompted the students to pick the wrong distractor. Those are just thrown out. Other times, I can see how two of the choices are really close and it would be easy for the students who knew the content to have trouble distinguishing between those answers. So maybe we allow two of 4 distractors to be counted right. Then we do further item analysis. We look at the troubling items very closely but sometimes" This is my biggest complaint. A new teacher, a new test, too many poorly written (& difficult) questions. I know in the past teachers have given points back for questions, I'm not sure if this one will or not. These questions are harder to dispute though as it is more subjective.

Truthfully... I am still getting a B & can pull off a B+ (have gotten all A's in previous courses) if do really well on my final, but this still bugging so I need to just vent a little here. We are in our 4th semester of an ADN program, so most of the students who needed to be weeded out have been & we have all had much practice with critical thinking questions. I feel the biggest problem was the way the questions were worded & the difficulty in them. A lot of the students said they didn't know what she was asking. There were more difficult questions than usual... they really focused on very fine details not covered in class. In the past professors would give enough information during lecture to critically think through the answer to a detailed question. Our professor, who is new to teaching, was condescending & taught us very basic info, some of which we learned in the first fundamentals class (or just know through common sense). A big part of me feels it is not fair to the students who have struggled to get this far and are now on the border of failing out because of one crazy test. And these are not students who party & goof off on studying, they didn't make it this far for nothing. I mean when students who normally have a 4.0 get an 85 (the highest grade I have heard, and the 2 highest grades are from LPNs) there must be a problem. I guess that is what is bugging me so much. Thanks for letting me vent... I will be going to test review Mon. and need to get it off my mind so I don't just blurt out what I am thinking to the instructor & I need to think clearly so I can understand why the questions were marked wrong.