missninaRN

Got this in an email from the OK BON this week: "Effective January 1, 2014, Registered Nurses and Licensed Practical Nurses licensed in the State of Oklahoma must meet continuing qualifications for practice, by completing one or more of the following requirements within the past two years prior to the expiration date of the license: 1. Employment in a position that requires a registered nurse/practical nurse license with verification of at least 520 work hours; or 2. Completion of at least twenty-four (24) contact hours of continuing education applicable to nursing practice; or 3. Current certification in a nursing specialty area; or 4. Completion of a Board-approved refresher course; or 5. Completion of at least six (6) academic semester credit hours of nursing coursework at the licensee's current level of licensure or higher" Since I'm not currently practicing due to a disabling long-term illness, the only option that will be doable for me is the continuing education. I just not sure how to find CE sources that are fully accredited/accepted by the OK BON. I'm wondering if anybody else doing the CE option and/or can provide reliable sources for CEs?

I averaged 12 patients when I was working at my last agency. The agency did not consider travel time when scheduling my visits. I had patients up to 1 3/4 hours away from me that required daily visits and often drove over 200 miles daily. I was required to do an admission on a Saturday-though the patient's condition didn't warrant it, but the marketer had promised that I would. The patient was 1 1/2 hours from me and I was paid around $20 for it because I was salaried. It came out to about $4 an hour. I will never work at a for-profit hospice again.

I worked a long day yesterday. I went in early, stayed late, and barely had time to eat lunch. If one patient hadn't declined a bath, I would have still been working at 7:00 p.m. (Yes, the nurses are giving baths because we lost our CHHA last week. I pray every night that we get a new one and soon.) Shortly after getting home, my cell phone rang. It was one of our office staff who has a family member on our hospice service. The patient was in pain, couldn't have another dose of pain meds for a few hours, and she called to ask me to take care of it. This would have been fine if I had been the nurse on call. But I wasn't. Even if I was on call, the primary nurse is the LPN (I'm just the backup) and the proper way to reach the on call nurse is through triage. I admit that I was a tad irritated that my coworker did not call the after hours phone number we give to every patient and their family when we admit them. I don't know if she was just panicked or if she felt that being a company employee with access to the RNs cell phone numbers entitled her to call whoever she wanted whenever she wanted. So, I very nicely instructed her to call triage so that the on call nurse could handle it. Was I wrong? What would you have done?

Thanks for the link, will check it out. My community college doesn't offer it online and the online school I'm taking classes with right now doesn't have it either.

Some kind of stress management program/services for nurses. Maybe a package deal from a day spa specifically for nurses at a significant discount: a massage every week, aromatherapy treatments, yoga classes, organic/natural food discounts, etc. That would definitely get my attention.

I am down to my last few prereqs for my chosen online RN-BSN program through Southwestern Oklahoma State University. This semester, I'm taking A & P II, Dev Psych, and Public Speaking through Edukan. This summer I will be taking World Geography-also through Eduka- and, if I can find one, and online World History class. Edukan, for some reason, does not offer one. This would leave Stats for the Fall and then I'll be ready to start the nursing courses for my BSN in January 2011. I'm already accepted into the SWOSU and am applying to the RN-BSN program this month. I've googled "online World History" and gotten a bunch o history review sites but haven't found any classes. Has anybody taken an online World History class? An easy class is not important to me, but an affordable one is. Thanks!

In both the current hospice I work for as well as the one I was with previously, we were not permitted to carry O2 sat meters. As the post above mine explains, we will use O2 for comfort in terminally ill patients regardless of O2 sat readings. And, as a very experienced hospice nurse explained to me, the knowledge that a loved one's sats are below normal can be upsetting to the family, but there really is not a lot we can do to raise low sats when someone is actively dying.

Hospice-love it. More time with patients, less time spent charting, and having weekends and evenings off is great too. I was formerly on med surg Hated it. I hated being inside for over 12 hours, never seeing the sky, I ran the whole time, spent more time charting than on patient care, and never got to sit down for a meal.

I started in the hospital on the day shift, working 3 twelves. It was nice to have 4 days off every week, but it took some planning and paying attention to my physical health to ensure that I had the energy to enjoy my free time. Working 12 hour shifts for several days in a row can be very tiring, but lots of nurses do it and still have a very full personal life. I now work Monday to Friday, 8 hours a day. Not all nurses work in the hospital! I work for a hospice/home health agency. Since I am a hospice RN Case Manager, I am on call ever 3rd week. For us, call starts at 5 pm and ends at 8 am on Monday through Thursday and from 5 pm Friday night to 8 am Monday morning. I am an RN and there is also an LPN on call, who gets the initial calls and makes most of the visits. I only get called if she has questions or if a second patient has a crisis while she is out to see another one, which is very rare. Call doesn't really affect my life too much; I just need to keep my phone with me and stay in town when I'm on. I was never expected to take call when I worked Med Surg, but staff shortage was a constant problem, which meant we were often called and asked to come in on our days off. We could always so no. Our agency gives us all major holidays off with pay. In the hospital, we took turns. If you worked Thanksgiving, you'd be off for Christmas this year and would work the opposite schedule next year. I get 18 days of PTO my first year. I have to take sick days out of that as well as the paid holidays, so it will take a few years to reach the point where we can take an extended trip, but, since I don't work weekends, I only need 10 days PTO for a 14 day trip. I also don't have to take PTO for holidays if I don't want to; I can work some of those holidays instead in order to save up for vacation. Labor Day, Memorial Day, etc aren't that important to me to be off. As mentioned by a previous poster, it's somewhat easier to arrange your schedule for longer periods of time off without using PTO when you work 3 12 hour shifts a week. Not really. I was out sick a total of 3 days during my first 16 months of nursing and that was on a Med Surg floor. Good hand hygiene, universal precautions, and just plain old common sense are all key. I went to a community college and got my ADN for less than $15,000 total. That included tuition, books, lab fees, criminal background check, uniforms, insurance, vaccinations, etc. I used federal loans for some of it and got a scholarship from the hospital that hired me that paid for my final year (in exchange for working for them for a year). I'm now going to do an online program for my BSN that is also very affordable . To me, having supportive people in my life was essential to getting through both nursing school and that first year after licensure. It's going to be really important to you to have your wife on board with you on this. I do hope that the information you're getting will help her to believe that you can do this and get behind you fully. Best of luck to you and be blessed!

I worked on a neuro med/surg floor for 16 months with pt load of up to 7. I didn't find caring for neuro patients to be any more stressful than the medical patients (pneumonia, COPD, GI bleeds, etc). What I found stressful was the constant flow of discharges and admits associated with neuro patients. Most of our healthy, uncomplicated laminectomy and ACD patients were discharged within a day after surgery and our surgeons did several of these surgeries each week. That took a lot of time away from patient care, which is always stressful.

Your post reminded me of the RN who mentored and trained me in hospice. She works 60-70 hours a week, both as clinical coordinator of a hospice and DON of a LTC facility. She has more nursing knowledge than the rest of her staff combined and has been known to take on call 24/7 for months on end. And she's 72 years old. With no plans to retire.

I started nursing school when I was 43 years old. I excelled in my nursing clinicals and ranked at the top of my class on every exam. By my second year, I was being paid by the school to tutor underclassmen and assist the faculty during clinicals checkoffs. I finished school with the highest scores in my class and was selected by the faculty for an excellence in nursing award at graduation. I passed the NCLEX on my first attempt with 75 questions and began my nursing career on a busy med surg floor that specializes in neuro patients. I started on the day shift-something unheard of at my hospital-and was off of orientation and on my own taking care of up to 8 patients for 12 hour shifts. I ran with the "big dogs" and kept right up with them. Those experienced nurses, by the way, were all in their late 30's to 50's and they knew their stuff. I'd trust them with the life of any member of my family. Very few of the "young still in their prime" students in my class even graduated. A few did, and they are great nurses, but age does lend itself well to things like time management and critical thinking. I'm now 47 years old; I've been licensed for close to 2 years. I feel like I am in my prime. I do yoga, pilates, take walks, eat a ridiculously healthy diet, and sleep really well. My patients do not suffer due to the fact that I'm pushing 50. In fact, because I look very young for my age, some of them have expressed concern that I was too young to care for them until they learned my actual age. I did leave the floor behind a few months ago. I don't like being inside without a glimpse of the sky for 13 hours straight and I don't need the excitement of acute care. I'm now in hospice nursing and hope to advance in this specialty for the remainder of my career. My personal goals include finishing my BSN, starting a Master's program by my 50th birthday, obtaining certification in pain management, holistic nursing, and researching the use of integrative medicine in palliative care. You'll notice my plans do not include retiring when I'm 50, although a ten year career in nursing is better than none at all. I expect to eventually be an educator and mentor and when I finally do retire, I will volunteer in free clinics, train as a SANE nurse, and do missions nursing. There is a lot more to us older people than you think. I smile to think of how you will view yourself when you are older. You'll see what I mean someday. Our age does not limit or define us. Only our minds can do that.

I CLEP'd Humanities with very little prep time. I think it is doable if you are already very familiar with a wide variety of art forms, musical styles, and literature. My childhood was steeped in those things. My father is a musician and orator and my mother an artist. I also had a natural tendency to explore the arts. I have not mastered any area of the arts with any depth, but I had a good understanding of the basics. Get your hands on a CLEP prep book and take the practice test for Humanities and see how you do. I think that would be the best way to gauge how well you will test on it. Way to go on all of your other CLEP exams! It's a great way to earn college credits on the cheap, isn't it?

I've only been in hospice nursing for 2 months, but one thing I know for sure is that terminal cancer is painful; controlling the pain of terminal cancer patients is one of the greatest challenges of comfort care. The fact that the POA didn't want the staff to "overdo it" and wanted the pt to still be awake enough to be conversant tells me that, if he got his way, this patient died a needlessly painful death. That was terribly unfair to her. I find it disturbing that the ability to give her a good death was offered but rejected by the person with the authority to make decisions in her best interests. I'm afraid that, if I had been a staff nurse at that hospital, I might have shown my frustration with the POA too.

Tewdles, do you make all nursing visits on those 12-15 patients, or do you also have an LPN? I'm just trying to figure out what to expect at my new job. (I also need to learn to assert myself with my new employer so I don't end up in a situation similar to the one in which I now find myself.)