Quiller

So... I live fifteen minutes from work and we do shift change at 0600-0700 and 1800-1900 (depending on your position). There's a Walmart, a Kroger, a Sam's Club and dozens of restaurants less than ten minutes from the hospital (and I live fifteen minutes from work). Every day between 0600-0800 and 1800-2000 it looks like the businesses near the hospital announced some kind of discount for wearing scrubs (they didn't despite my constant prayers) because that's nearly all you see. It's pretty clear that a good deal of the staff are running errands before if after work. It's actually my favorite time to shop because people getting ready to go to work are in a hurry and don't want to small talk and people just getting off work are exhausted and don't want to small talk.

I can't find the group. ...nvm. lol.

I haven't heard from them in a few weeks and I'm starting to get antsy and paranoid. My mind is like, "Remember that facebook post you made 9 years ago? When you were holding green beer? Maybe they found it and deleted your application."

"Telemetry units have designated monitor techs who do the 'watching'.... they'll let you know if anything hinky is going on." Whoa now. I work PRN as a monitor tech while I'm in nursing school and I can honestly tell you...that's not always true. Every night I'm looking at 30-50 strips (a full tele floor plus random tele patients from other floors I was assigned) and I miss things...probably because it's not humanely possible to watch 50 strips simultaneously. Then, as with all hospitals, when things go wrong with one patient, they go wrong with like four patients at once. I can't call four people at one time and the floors I'm watching have the exact monitors I look at on the floor for the nurses to see. I prioritize. I'm going to call a nurse whose patient suddenly developed a second degree block (which is hard to catch if you're just looking at the monitor in passing) before I call the one whose patient went into afib (because that's pretty recognizable). I'm going to call in someone that has a run of vtach before I call for someone who took the leads off. So...if it's a rhythm that's going to kill them, I'll call when I see it. If it's a rhythm that's different than normal, I'll call after I finish the lethal rhythms but that may be a few minutes. If a patient on a cardiac floor changes rhythms at the same time as a person on a non-cardiac floor and both changes have the same acuity level, I call the non-cardiac nurse first. Depending on how full the units are and who's working, it can be awhile before I call.

Was he asking for the student's medical history or the history of how he came to be in your care? I'm a medic in nursing school and I can honestly say, of all the times I've responded to a high school, I've never expected the school nurse to know the students medical history off the top of their head. To be honest, I'm just happy if they have the student in a place where I'm not pushing through 800+ kids in the hallway; having vitals done and paperwork printed out is a huge bonus. ^_^ But I apparently am "too nice" and there are a lot of EMTs that are straight out a-holes to everyone. If it makes you feel any better, they probably go through life looking at everyone like they're an idiot and have a massive superiority complex that I'm sure has led to more than one failed relationship. I once refused to put a 16G in a kid (literally, he was maybe 14) that was having pseudo-seizures and I was told that I was being "too empathetic" by a medic that looks at everyone like they're an idiot. When he found out I was going to nursing school he was like, "Oh, good, go spend time with your people." Sorry, I don't believe in torturing children?

I get my ADN this May as well. =D I also hope to pursue CRNA and I'm going to ICU. I know for a fact that the school I want to go to will ​only accept ICU experience and you have to have at least a year in it. They're not picky as to what kind of ICU you're in though. Why don't you check the qualifications for the CRNA programs in your area and see what sort of experience you have to have?

I got an email from HR at Hermann NE earlier this week, this is after I got the offer letter and whatnot, saying that New Hire services would contact me 2-3 weeks before my start date to begin the rest of the hiring procedures.

Does anyone know of any nursing student / general student online support groups? I'm having a lot of social and financial issues that are affecting school but I find myself unable to talk to people at school about it. It's not because they're not fantastic, I just have trouble putting how I feel into words when I'm looking at someone. Anyone know of an app or forum or online group I can join?

Sure.

So I recently applied for a similar position at a different Hermann and was wondering if you could tell me more about the hiring and interview process?

Both. My tablet allows for handwriting but has an attachable keyboard for when I want to type. I predominantly write because, once written, I can remember it without reviewing versus typing where I have to check my notes.

I'm also a night owl and I *might* be able to help with that aspect. I'm going to preface this with the fact that I'm a paramedic in nursing school and I've been a paramedic for 7 years. I've worked mostly 24 hour shifts in the prehospital environment but I do work a 16 hour hospital shift about twice a month so I'm not super concerned about endurance. Either way, I don't get sleepy until about 3am. Being anywhere before 8 is a personal triumph for me (and one of the reasons I'm really looking forward to being a nurse because night shift is going to be awesome) but the hospital I work at starts my shift at 0700 and, when we start clinicals in two weeks, they're going to be at 0630. What I do is... I have a 4 door car, Ford Focus to be specific. I pulled out the bottom part of the backseat and then put the top part down so that it's just one long compartment that integrates the trunk and the space that was the backseat. It's just the right size for an air mattress or several sleeping bags, whatever you like. I set up the car, drive to the hospital the night before, set my alarm, drink a dreamwater and 1.5L of regular water and... I'm always on time. 4 things if you're contemplating my method: 1. The hospital I work at and the one I'm doing clinicals at both have free parking in a safe area. 2. Do not drink dreamwater unless you know how it will affect you. I used to take a combination of benadryl, melatonin, milk and whiskey that, first of all didn't kill me, and secondly, despite being pretty much the highest safe dose of benadryl and melatonin, only knocked me out about a third of the time. Dreamwater knocks me out in about twenty minutes. 3. Pulling out the backseat is remarkably easy in most cars and it's pretty easy to put back in. 4. Wrinkle free scrubs is a must.

That would actually be a wonderful course for anyone going into medicine to take. Part of me hopes our nursing program goes over something like it but the rest of me is already daunted by what we are covering and dreading another test on pretty much anything. While some people acknowledge the difference in clinical skills between a specialist and general physician, many people are completely unaware of the difference between an ultrasound tech and a staff member briefly trained on it's use. I actually don't think lay people care but it would be advantageous to all medical fields to have a better understanding of what everyone actually does. Or at least the difference between a firefighter and EMT since fire and EMS are two completely different systems that are only merged in 30-42% of US cities depending on the reference you check. Big hint, one of them fights fires, the other one has trouble getting mortgage loans and supplementary health insurance because banks think paramedics and EMTs should have the same job turnover rate as police and firefighters when, as medical personnel, EMS has the same turnover rate as nurses and doctors..which is substantially higher. Health insurance and disability companies literally do not have a category for EMS and don't understand when you say things like, "I understand the doctor wrote 'light duty' on my paperwork but we don't really have 'light duty'. The bare minimum to come to work is the ability to lift 150lbs off the ground and walk a quarter mile carrying a 30lb bag. No, I don't fight fires, I'm a paramedic, but if I was trained as a firefighter, I could probably do that with my shoulder a lot easier than I can do two minutes of compressions...More importantly, what fire-free ocean wonderland do you live in where a firefighter with a bad shoulder is still able to work effectively? Do they politely ask the fire to calm down? Princess wave to it with the hand attached to the good shoulder? Can you just send me the disability insurance I've been paying for so my shoulder can heal and I can go back to work and cancel this useless excuse for a policy? I literally have the most common shoulder injury for my field which you'd know if we were recognized as a field by insurance and healthcare and the subsequent accident, injury, illness and disability statistics done." And that conversation is how my shoulder went from, "Wear this sling for two weeks and take an anti-inflammatory." to, "We ordered a brace for you but you're still okay to work light duty." to, "You're at that point where it can go either way. You either need to rest it for six weeks or you're going to need surgery."

I'm an avid e-book reader... recreationally. I had some luck using the e-book that came with my statistics course access but was not passing History when I attempted to use an ebook with it. A lot of that is because 50-55% of my study strategy came from the post-it note website. Post-it notes and e-books aren't quite friends yet. I do, rather ironically, use a tablet for handwriting lecture and supplementary textbook notes. Due to the fact that I have Scribd and Kindle Unlimited accounts, some of my supplementary texts are ebooks and since I can just screenshot something and put it into onenote have caused some delays in comprehension that I'm not fond of. I've accepted ebooks and love reading them when I have a few spare moments to curl up with Stephen King but I much more prefer physical textbooks.

I have a FB for keeping in touch with family and one specifically for work and school. There is nothing on my work / school FB that can't be shared in a court of law / with my mother. I personally like it because it means I have a FB presence if you're looking for me but it's designed to be watched with the shrewdest of eyes.