phalanx

If you can't hack 12 hour shifts and that's all that hospitals have...I don't really see the mystery? I bet you could get a job as a staff nurse in LTC any day, and those are usually 8 hours so it's less on your feet on a daily basis...but expecting the hospital to change their needs for you doesn't seem realistic.

El Centro is still seen positively by most employers in the community. However a lot more hospitals are wanting BSN now so even the ones who hire ADNs are making you sign a promise to get it. BUMC only hired internal candidates with an ADN. And UTSW is only looking for BSN as well and I think only hired like one tech from the ADN class. I would try and get a job at one of parkland's clinics or JPS or something and get the foot in the door for after you graduate that way. Because most people who had jobs when we graduated made the connection in clinicals (which we get far less of as LVNs) or they worked there already.

The school offers clinicals at some area hospitals but due to issues with faculty rudeness they have lost a few sites. Bridgers only get to choose peds OR OB, iff you choose peds clinical, it likely won't be at a hospital, you will go to a doctor's office, head start, pedi clinic, and have one day at Scottish rite where you aren't allowed to pass meds or touch the kids really. If you choose ob, it will be at a hospital. Your psych clinical 3rd semester is at a drug and alcohol AA meetings center. 4th semester you get two days at a psych facility. Med surg clinicals - 3rd semester everyone's group was placed in a hospital. Parkland, Methodist Charlton, Baylor Carrollton, Baylor Dallas, Las Colinas Medical Center, the VA are some I remember. However 4th semester spots were very competitive because they are precepted clinicals, meaning your instructor and group don't go with you. You are assigned to a nurse and they are your instructor and you work the shifts they work, and submit your paperwork to your instructor, who will come by once in awhile and check on you. The fourth semester spots last year were almost all at LTACs because the hospitals give most of their availability for precepted clinicals to the BSN programs in the area. If they have fixed their relationship with hospitals maybe it'll be better by the time you get there. I got to go to a medical center but I was lucky (one out of maybe 10 who got to do so.) Also, all the 4th semester clinical spots at the hospital were night shifts and they have a lot of rules about when you can schedule them so it was kind of a hassle. They do the clinical site allotment by lottery.

I graduated from the bridge program (with honors, before anyone calls any of this sour grapes.) It's extreeeeemely disorganized. Get ready to annoy your employer with constant last minute schedule changes, things taking hours longer than they are supposed to, etc. Rules change daily depending on who you're talking to. Many faculty members are ignorant and rude. There are just as many who really care and advocate for the students and teach well, but the Head Honcho is unfortunately not one of the good ones. One thing that bridgers should note is that despite going for 3 semesters, you only get two semesters of clinical rotations, meaning less opportunities for networking compared to your generic classmates. And bridgers do not get to do both OB and Pediatrics clinicals -- you have to choose one rotation or the other. I was working double weekends during the program so I could not take OB clinicals because the only OB rotations were on Sat/Sun. And the pediatrics "rotation" was sending you to Head Start and a Doctor's office. Basically useless. The skills lab is extremely boring if you have actually worked as an LVN (and not in home health, no disrespect to HH nurses but they struggled with tasks they hadn't done in years whereas those of us who worked in facilites did not) I found it weird that they made us spend a whole semester doing it when the program required experience to be admitted. It should have been a short review course, then a checkoff, with remediation for those who NEEDED it... I honestly don't understand why transition takes a whole long semester. It should be in the summer, then doing fall-spring so the program takes a year...as it is, the program takes a year and a half, which is the same amount of time as Brookhaven even though they are a generic program. So you may as well apply to Brookhaven as well, in my opinion. If you have any specific questions, let me know...i know I am coming off very negatively here. However the program is much cheaper than all the other area alternatives and I got the degree I wanted, so... They are increasing the standards (needing a 78 to pass instead of 76) and changing the textbooks. What they need to do is give MORE LECTURE TIME, LESS PNC, and BETTER FACULTY. Not like they'd ever listen!

Post traumatic stress so bad she can't return to work? Really? I should claim post traumatic stress from working for a Catholic employer that wouldn't cover contraceptives even though MY religious belief is that everyone's healthcare decisions are their own.

I wonder this as well because I know two nurses who were affected by this. Both were ADN prepared nurses who had many years of experience, returned to school when their hospitals mandated it, one obtained a MSN in leadership, the other in education. They both were then told they needed to get a BSN as well. One of them did so, the other chose to go to a different hospital (after 20 years) because she was sick of the nonsense. Bureaucracy rearing its ugly head? Corporate types wanting to check boxes and not actually understanding what the degrees mean?

@shauntil, I was wondering if you ended up deciding on PA school or going ahead and going for the RN? Allnurses' post functions aren't working right on my phone so I can't stalk your recent posts lol but I'm just curious

Email the webmaster from the board of nursing if it's taking a long time. If you call they will leave you on hold for a million years.

I've applied for Parkland numerous times and never heard anything back, but I didn't know about some of those other systems having clinics! Will do, thank you.

I am an LVN already; I applied at several hospitals for tech and monitor clerk types of positions trying to get my foot in the door but they won't hire me to work below my licensure and the ones that do hire LVNs won't hire me as an LVN because I don't have med-surg experience. It's kind of a roundabout thing and it makes me very nervous. I went to RN school because I want to get out of LTC but I am starting to be afraid that won't be good enough once I graduate. I am not picky about specialty, it doesn't have to be anything glamorous. I would *prefer* to stay in the Dallas area because I don't really want to move, but I understand that rural areas are probably going to be a better bet. That's my plan B right now. Trying to construct my plan A at the moment :)

Just want to hear input about where I should target my job search after I graduate I've done some research but I also heard in clinicals that some of the hospitals that say on their websites that only hire BSN outright, actually will hire you with an ADN as long as you promise to get your BSN within a certain timeframe. Thanks in advance, y'all!

millennial3, are you a nurse now? where did you end up going to school?

I was confused by the abbreviations when I was a new grad--my program didn't teach us any because "you're not supposed to abbreviate!" Then I got in the real world of SNF where everything is abbreviated. One way I got myself up to speed was reading all my patients' charts whenever I had spare moments--I picked one chart a day, looked up their meds, read their whole history, all the progress notes from their hospitalizations, looked up everything I didn't understand, asked other people if Google wasn't helping. As far as accepting report without the diagnosis--in LTC I've never ever been given a report with a whole patient history included. At most you might get "they're a diabetic" but during shift to shift report nobody lists off the 10+ dx most residents will have. So, start googling! I went from being "the dumb new grad" many years ago to being promoted to unit manager after 3 years--because I asked questions and didn't get defeated. The learning curve is very steep, but it's not impossible. Don't give up!

Dang, I make $24 as an LVN. I kinda thought it would be a bigger pay grade jump!

A facility I worked at previously decided we couldn't use our own equipment. They bought 2 Dynamaps to be used for 120 residents. :facepalm:And the medaides commandeered them for 95% of the shift so it was just ridiculous for them to be threatening nurses with writeups for using their own stuff. They never calibrated them either. My current facility--one dynamap in the whole building that works (~100 residents...) but they don't have a policy on the books about using your own stuff. I just have a little ol' walmart special.

Email the testing center at elcentro and tell them you need to take the HESI but can't get a date and they will let you know how to register for an alternate location

This waiting game is terrible! I can't believe it's going to be October before we even begin to find out

Not everyone works doing that type of patient care, though. I don't think working on a critical floor of a hospital would be appropriate to have a therapy dog - but a NP in clinic would probably be all right, or a school nurse maybe. Anyway, we have "Dog Day" where the staff bring in their dogs at the rehab center I work in, the residents absolutely love it and the nonverbal residents light right up. There is a volunteer team that brings therapy dogs every few months but it's very sporadic - and the residents seem to enjoy meeting our dogs more, even though they're not always as well behaved and can get a little rambunctious (maybe that's why.)

When I was a newer nurse I did have issues with CNAs reporting things about my residents to other nurses "behind my back." One in particular refused to learn my name, she would call me any name in the book from down the hallway and if I did not respond to it she would immediately go to another nurse and tell them that she had "tried to tell her about it but she is ignoring me." A year into working with this person on a near-daily basis (my unit manager refused to move her because she was a 'good aide' despite residents complaining about her rudeness all the time) she still did not know my name, and she finally did it RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME (went up to another nurse and was whispering that "She just won't do anything" about something she had NOT told me about) and I told her that if it was too difficult to learn someone's name that you see every day and cannot read my name tag with inch high letters then I did not feel safe with her assigned to my unit. I see it now as well as a treatment nurse - the CNAs will tell a nurse something, it may be an inopportune time and the nurse doesn't do it right away and they feel as if they are being blown off, or the nurse may go assess and feel that it's not an emergent issue, and if the CNA doesn't think what they did was "enough" or didn't fix the situation then they will go around telling everyone that the nurse would not do anything, and then they use this to justify not reporting future issues because "Why should I waste my time when she never does anything?"

Hi, I was thinking about applying. Do you know how many points on average people needed to get accepted?

I took my HESI at a 3rd party company, I did have to pay more but it was pretty last minute so I am okay with that. Scored a 92% overall which is great but I don't think I'm going to get in this time around because even with that I only have 25 points. I am going to take the HPRS classes this fall and hopefully with that and another support course it'll be enough. Pretty disappointing though.

I'm getting everything in last minute but hopefully will be done on time....I have 20 points but I take the HESI on Saturday, so I guess it depends on how well I do on that. Does anybody know the cutoff for the bridge program?

I'm in the same boat with you all. I find it so frustrating and disheartening that every school seems to have so many different requirements and make you jump through so many hoops. I'm already a nurse, I feel like I've proved that I am at least competent in that and that I have passion and the ability to be successful in this field. It kills me to know that the teenage girls in my pre-requisite classes who have nothing to do but study are starting the RN program in the fall, whereas having to work full time and go to school full time is too much for me to do and still get straight As. B's apparently are completely worthless and I can't afford to retake these classes or go to trade school again...I just feel trapped in my inability to advance my education, and it seems like a real shame that so many are in this situation.

I live 5 minutes away from Baylor in Old East Dallas. I like it but it IS kinda sketchy at times... I think Lakewood, Junius Heights, M Streets, Lower Greenville, Uptown, White Rock are all places you should look - but look in person. If you want to live in the Suburbs, Garland and Mesquite are a 15 minute drive from Baylor.

I'm looking into the program at Tarleton now, thank you. I also have applied to NCTC because although I am below the cutoff for traditional applicants, the cutoff for bridge students is lower, and I am a whole point above that cutoff. So...we'll see? I know if they give me a chance to take the Kaplan I'll probably be okay because I tend to do well on standardized tests. In fact it looks like I won't have to take the TEAS for Tarleton because of my SAT score