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I also just finished stats through WGU and was surprised at how quickly I was able to move through it. I have taken a stats class previously, but to be honest the class was a complete joke. I really cannot tell you a single thing I learned. What I found with this stats class that helped the most was watching the pre-recorded lectures on the modules (cohorts). I did do the course modules and made sure that I scored an 80% or better on each check point test. I also did the work sheets. After I did all of that, as a review I watched the master videos which helped to reinforce the topics. I will be honest, I didn't spend a ton of time on probability. I read through the WGU facebook page that plenty of people never even went over the probability section at all and passed the OA no problem. I didn't want to leave everything to luck, so I made sure I knew modules 10 and 11 pretty well and had some exposure to 12. In the end I scored almost 20 points better on the OA than the PA. I never had to call the math helpline, but I have heard awesome things about them and how nice they are. I think the most important thing is just to go into the class telling yourself you can do it. Positive attitude won't help you pass 100%, but it definitely plays a big role.

Hello, I was just going to give everyone a quick update. I started at WGU on the first of November and since then I have completed five classes. I wasn't quite sure if I would enjoy the online classes, since I saw it more as just being completely on my own and having no idea how to get through the classes. But I have been pleasantly surprised. Most of the classes have online lectures that are either live or pre-recorded which makes it feel just like an actual classroom. All of the course mentors have been very responsive to my questions. Another awesome resource that I would recommend to any one doing WGU is the facebook page. I have gotten so much good information and tips. It's like one big huge nursing class, where we are all trying to help each other survive and conquer. I definitely feel this program is very doable, but it can be very time consuming. Almost all of my days off are spent in front of the computer working on school. But it's reassuring to know that it won't last forever. Thanks again for all the help!

Thanks everyone for the replies. Unfortunately, while I would love to tell my hospital that each patient needs their own vial in their room, we are a rural hospital with not a lot of funds. I did tell my nurse manager about the idea of having at least 100 stickers with each vial since that's the maximum dose that could be given and she agreed with that idea. My unit is scheduled for a remodel sometime within the next year and we are going to try to go to bedside charting and I am going to mention the idea of being able to keep medications that are used frequently by the patient some how in the room (such as lotions, insulin, etc). I am going to keep brainstorming with my coworkers to try to figure out a better solution. Thanks again!

I have a question for those who use medication scanners and that administer insulin. At our hospital we have insulin that is given, but in order to scan it we have to scan these little stickers. We are supposed to get a new little sticker each time we have to give insulin, which for some patients that can be four or more times. Pharmacy are the ones that are supposed to be making sure we have these stickers, but its something that often gets overlooked. And I feel like it's sorta stupid to have to call Pharmacy just to print stickers, plus it's a time suck waiting for them to bring the stickers. What ends up happening is that the nurses take one sticker and put it on the underside of our badge so we don't have to get a new sticker each time. But this is against the rules. So my question is, how do you scan insulin at your hospital? Do you have any ideas that I might be able to bring to management to make this process go more smoothly? We mentioned just have a laminated card that could be taken to the room with us and can then be returned to the med room. But we were told that we need a new sticker with each administration to ensure we are giving the right medication.

When I work night shift I try to get up every hour and take a 15 minute walk. Sometimes you have time for this and sometimes you don't, but I find that when I do this it really helps to wake me up. We have a candy bowl on our unit and I only allow myself to eat out of it on weekends. I find that if I allow myself to even eat one candy from the bowl, it's over! Also, I always have healthy snacks like nuts to eat.

I currently work on a med/surg floor, but before that I went back and forth between an urgent care and primary care clinic. I have to agree that I think most nurses who work in urgent cares get frustrated because of your limited scope and not being able to use a lot of your skills. When I would go over to the urgent care the only thing that I could do that the MAs weren't able to do was start IVs, give insulin and give morphine injections. Other than that our jobs were the exact same. My friend who is an RN is currently working at that urgent care now and she is in charge of all the MAs and does just general administration stuff. She loves it, but she worked as a floor nurse for five years and appreciates the change in pace. For me I got frustrated because I wanted to develop my skills more. I also did no like being a new nurse and not working with other nurses (I was the only nurse at both places). I felt it was unsafe since often the providers were unable to answer my questions about things such as how to give certain medications.

I am not sure where you are with this situation, but I just wanted to give you a little bit of encouragement. In my experience and in talking with other nurses who went to other schools, nursing school is frustrating. I feel like a lot of nurses all wish that their teachers had been more specific with content or even just communicated better. I know in my program I would get so frustrated that we would suddenly have papers or projects that were due within a few days and it would cause so much stress all because the teacher forgot to put it on the course guide. BUT we made it through and I do feel like all the effort was totally worth it. I write all of this to say that just know transferring to another school may not get rid of all your problems. Good luck with whatever you decide to do! Keep us updated!

I would have to agree that Priority, Delegation and Assignment was awesome! It helps a ton with figuring out what tasks can be given to another RN, LPN and then aides. It's not a very big book either, I did all of the questions over a month along with other questions from Kaplan. I did all of Kaplan's qbank and trainers. Overall, I do think that Kaplan's questions were harder than the actual NCLEX, but just having access and exposure to all those questions was great. It can be super overwhelming trying to figure out which resource to go with, but I think you just need to pick something and start studying. If after a little bit you discover you don't really enjoy that resource (that was me with Saunders) then just try something else.

I am currently working in a rural hospital and I am really enjoying it. Our CNO has already talked to me about which area I would be interested in cross-training to (I mentioned ER). We have people that actually work all units, ER, MS, OB and ICU. We do have OR and that's another area that they have asked if I would be interested in cross-training to. I don't think there are a lot of hospitals that would be so eager to cross-train. Our hospital is part of a much bigger company that has larger hospitals, so we also have a lot of resources and educational opportunities. That was something I was little worried about with working at a small hospital, but it hasn't been a problem at all. I recently spoke with an HR recruiter from another hospital who said that she loves hiring rural nurses because they have a general knowledge of a lot stuff. I will say that some of the biggest downers working at a rural hospital is that we don't have a case manager and we only have two social workers so sometimes you get to do their job too!

I have had three different jobs in various health care areas and each one had one or two sheets of paper with interview questions on it. Overall I didn't feel that the questions were very hard. Just a lot of "tell me of a time you...resolved conflict, made a positive change, blah blah". One did ask me to rate my proficiency at certain things such as med administration, IV starts, blood draws, patient education, etc. In all interviews they ask other nurses and aides to join in the interview and ask me questions as well. I liked this because a lot of times the nurses and aides are better at answering job specific questions than the managers are. Just keep practicing your questions and I am sure you will do fine! Good luck!

My favorite is when the narc seekers get admitted and then when I don't give them the big D right away because the doctor hasn't ordered it, they say things like "wow I thought nurses could just do this stuff. I didn't know you had to get a doctor's order for every little thing".

I have been a nurse for just a little bit over a year and took NCLEX last August. It was very overwhelming for me at first to figure out how to study. I tried a lot of different approaches, sticking with the main two of reviewing content and doing a million questions. I had access to Kaplan through my school, so I did a lot of questions. I tried to review content through Saunders (yellow book) but would just end up falling asleep. After doing that quite a few times, I finally just gave up and stuck to just doing questions. I saved the tests 6 and 7 from Kaplan until the last few weeks before I took my exam. I think I actually took test 7 maybe a week or less before my exam? I also used NCLEX RN 10,000 because I didn't want to use up all the Kaplan questions real fast and then just be doing repeats. Priority, Delegation and Assignment was another book that I did questions from in the last month before taking my test. I loved that book because I felt like it really made you think. Overall, I think doing as many questions as possible was the best method for me. And my advice would be to not wait too long, but just try to develop a good study guide and good study habits. If a long the way you find that it's not working, don't be afraid to adjust. Good luck!

I am starting in November as well! I have 37 credits to take. Going to be taking sociology, stats and biochem first. Is there a FB page for the WGU nursing program? I saw the main FB page, but I thought that there was one specifically for the nursing program.

Hi Everyone, Thanks so much for all your feedback. In the end I decided to go with WGU. I did look into a couple schools that said (without saying it officially) that they may not accept classes transferred from Aspen because they aren't regionally accredited. Like I said, they didn't say it officially. I wonder if it makes a difference that I would be going for my BSN instead of a masters degree? Once again, thanks for all the advice and feedback. Good luck to everyone navigating the big wide world of online schooling!

I was sorta afraid of that with Aspen University. I guess a couple hold ups for me with WGU is that pass/fail grading. I don't know what I would like to do beyond bachelors, but I do know I do want to continue at the graduate level. Which means that it's hard for me to research to know if whatever program I might want to go into would accept transcripts from WGU. The other thing that I am not sure about is how classes are done. I like having dead lines and structures, so I am afraid that other than the six month deadline that it might stress me out to do school this way. Feel free to offer any input, I would gladly listen! The price of Grand Canyon is a little high, but I guess I am attracted to the structure of their program. Thanks in advance for any help!

So I have been researching online schools for what feels like forever. Every time I think I have found a school I want to attend, there seems to be a road block. Currently I am trying to decide between Aspen University and Grand Canyon University. Both offer discounts through my employer. Aspen University is much cheaper, but the fact that they aren't regionally accredited sorta scares me. I talked with a recruiter who said that I should research what schools I would possibly want to transfer to after getting my bachelors, but the problem is that currently I have no idea what area I want to go into after. And I don't want to rush into a masters program. So it's a little hard to do research for future programs and whether they would accept credit from Aspen. Grand Canyon offers a 20% discount to me through my place of employment and has all the good accreditations. Ultimately my question is, are there students out there who have been able to transfer credits from Aspen to other graduate programs? I don't want to get a degree from Aspen and then feel stuck, that I would have to attend their school if I wanted to get a graduate degree. Any help any one could provide I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks! PS: I looked in Western Governor's University and they want me to retake a lot of classes such as some science and math classes. No go for me!

Hey LoliLolly, I want to share my experience and hopefully it will help. I was hired right out of nursing school to be a patient educator at a family practice clinic. They wanted me to mostly do diabetes education, but since I didn't have a lot of experience or knowledge I couldn't go on to be a certified diabetic educator. Any way, I was the only nurse who worked in the clinic, all other clinical support staff were MAs. It was really hard at first because I didn't know where my place was. I didn't have a true job description and my managers hadn't had a nurse working in the clinic for so long it's like they forgot what a nurse could do! So I just made my own description and list of duties. One thing that I did do was a lot of patient education. Depending on how well the MAs are trained, they usually do not provide very good education just because they themselves haven't been educated. I had my own office (within the office) where patients could set up appointments with me to just learn more about pretty much any medication disorder, but I did a lot of education on diabetes, hypertension, high cholestrol, being over weight. I also had cooking classes where people could come and sample food from healthy recipes. The other thing that I did a lot of was educating the MAs. A lot of doctor's offices are using MAs a lot more and while at times it is frustrating, in the end they aren't going away and I wanted to make sure that they were providing the best education to the patients as possible. Every other week I had a meeting some with where we discussed a certain disease process and I answered (tried any way!) any questions they might have. Other things that I did was take walk in appointments for things such as flu shots, IMMs, teaching patients how to give self injections for things like lovenox or insulin, blood pressure checks, etc. I also filled in for the MAs when needed. I also took it upon myself to check for expired medications and supplies. I wasn't at that clinic for very long mostly because I felt as a new grad I wasn't advancing in my skills very much. Before I left I was also educating the doctors on what nurses could do and trying to get more patients to come to the clinic for things such as dressing changes. I hope that things are looking up a little bit! Education for everyone was definitely the name of the game for me!

I am a new grad nurse (passed NCLEX in August) who has been working in a primary care clinic for the past eight months. After a lot of thinking and praying, I decided to interview for a new grad position at the hospital. I got the job and accepted it. It's a very small hospital and I will be working nights on med surg. I am sorta freaked out because I haven't assessed anyone for almost a year and I haven't touched my stethoscope except to do manual BPs. So my question is, what advice do you have for me? It can be for anything ranging from what to supplies to bring with me, how to manage doing night shift, or what guides or books you would suggest bringing with me to work. Anything will help, thanks!

Not sure if you were able to find a hospital job yet, but this is actually my last day working at a primary care clinic. My goal was always to work at the hospital, but I couldn't get them to look at my application at all! So I took the clinic job because they were actively pursuing me and I just wanted to have a job. While working at the clinic I kept applying for job openings at the hospital, but kept getting rejected. Finally, after eight months of working at the clinic they did interview me when I applied for a new grad position. Once they interviewed me, the process went fairly fast. I don't regret working at a primary care clinic because I got a lot of experience doing education which I feel will only benefit me at the hospital. But I do feel that as a new nurse and what my goals are for my career that the hospital will hopefully be better suited for me. Were you able to find a hospital job or did you go for the clinic job?

I work in a primary care office and I actually do very little referrals or prescription refills. I work with a lot of MAs and they do almost all of those things. What I spend my days doing are scheduling one-on-one patient education sessions on things such as hypertension, weight loss and diabetes. I am the lead clinicl nurse so I am in charge of supervising the MAs. I also do a group class with another RN on healthy living. I am the only nurse in my office though, and with being a new grad, I don't really enjoy that aspect of it. There's an urgent care across the street and for a while I would float back and forth between the two, but then they hired a full time nurse to work there. I was a little disappointed because that is where I got to do caths, wound care and IVs. In the end I decided that working in a hospital setting might be better for me just starting out as a new nurse. But if you know you're already interested in primary care, I would say go for it. For me, I haven't quite figured out what area I am really interested in so I want to explore a little bit. Good luck!

I second what nursefrom cali said. That's the same technique that I use and it's super helpful. Even though they can still kick a little bit, if the parents help to hold their arms it works every time for me. With the bigger kids I have the parents give them a hug and tell the parents to hold tight. Sometimes with little babies I have the moms distract them with a toy. And even though the kids may scream and kick, I do give them something like a sticker so they can see that going to doctor's office isn't all bad. Oh and I just love it when parents tell their kids that if they're bad they will have me give their child a shot...

I currently work in a clinic (though this is my last day, going over to the hospital) and I am the lead clinical nurse. I don't touch any referrals and I am very happy about that. Our clinic works a lot with MAs so they do all referral management types things. If you want to try to get in at a clinic, you might try volunteering to teach classes. For example, we do healthy living classes here and I have had several people from the community volunteer to help with it. My clinic is a primary care clinic and we are just minutes from an Indian reservation so we like all the help we can get.

Not sure if this situation was resolved yet or not, but I wanted to share my thoughts on the matter... I was in the same situation as you. I work in a primary care clinic where there's a lot of stuff happening, and it's just too unethical and drama filled for me. I debated a lot about leaving, because my coworkers feel the same way. I interviewed for a hospital job and got an offer very fast, the whole process went a lot faster than I was expecting (it took about 2 1/2 weeks instead of a month like I thought). Any way, so I accepted the job and right around the time that I was going to tell my supervisors that I was leaving, three other people also gave their 2 weeks notice. At first I felt really guilty because I know that it means others have to pick up the slack. But then I thought about why those people were truly leaving and the main reason is because of my supervisors. That gave me the courage to give my two weeks notice. That and the fact that my boss was completely unethical in a confidential situation that I was involved with. I sat down with quite a few of my coworkers and explained my reasons for leaving and in the end they were very supportive. In the past I have thought about staying at a job because of my coworkers and whole misery loves company thing, but I know that if my coworkers were given a better work opportunity they would take it! And I would want them to be happy and even though I might be jealous that they are getting out, I would be supportive. You might feel guilty because of your coworkers, but ultimately this your career and your life. You have to make good decisions for yourself because no one else can make them for you. You can do it!

I work in an underserved rural primary care clinic. We have two full time doctors and one part-time doctor that also works in administration. We have hired an OB/GYN but she doesn't start until the summer. I am the only nurse in the clinic who actually does nurse care (there are two other nurses, but they are in management and asking them to do stuff is sorta useless). Our providers usually have MAs that they work with, one screens and gives medications while the other one works with referrals and does patient education. We have an MA that her only job is to work in the lab. Across the street we have an urgent care clinic where there is also only one RN and three PAs, depending on their schedule. The RN usually works with two other MAs.

I experienced the same thing as I float around to different providers at a primary care clinic. It's true that each provider is different and it can get a little confusing at times. We have found that if we keep a sheet in our screening room right by the computer it's super helpful. For example, we ask every patient if they have had any signs or symptoms of depression, but sometimes it's easy to forget at what age you start asking. Or at what age to start asking if they smoke or use tobacco. These ages are taped up by the computer so it's easy to locate and catches your eye before the patient leaves the screening room. Our well child checks include running a report through ASIIS to see what imms are due, checking to see if they have had a lead level completed, hemoglobin or urine sample. Each of our doctors likes these things to be done at different ages. For our diabetics we are checking to make sure their imms are up to date, they get a glucose check at each visit, shoes and socks are taken off at each visit and they get a yearly foot exam. If someone has back pain and hasn't seen this provider before for that compliant, we will get a urine sample. And we get a urine sample with any type of urinary symptoms. We also don't swab patients unless the provider asks because we found that majority of the time our nurses and MAs were jumping the gun and wasting supplies. If you see OB patients that's a whole different list of things that need to be done. For our providers that see OB patients we have a list of everything you should be checking on and at what weeks (for example when the patient should have a tdap shot, when they should have had their GBS completed, what is include in a first time ob visit). But most of these lists are provider specific. Good luck and don't worry, soon these things will come to naturally