negatron

Hi, I may be one of the few lucky ADN RNs, but I secured a new grad PACU RN position at a HHC hospital in Queens, which is a level 1 trauma center and teaching hospital. I am a June 2016 ADN graduate, passed NCLEX and received license in July, started working in ambulatory surgery late August (multispecialty - spine, ortho, urology and more) doing pre-op/post-op, as well as circulating for certain procedures as a Perioperative Nurse. I thought this was wonderful experience that made me very confident in the interview with the hospital. I am enrolled into a WGU's RN to BSN program, as well have ACLS. And multilingual. Tried my luck and just applied to a few hospitals online (no connections - just a few months experience), and got a call back within 10 days, interviewed 2 days after - and got the call for an offer the same day. Take home message - get some experience if you're an associates RN wherever you can!

I used a combination of loans and working part time. I felt I had a really good grasp of anatomy and physiology 1 and 2 (actually had a retired MD and a surgeon as my professors) so I tutor those subjects to prospective nursing/medical/health sciences students. Also tutor a myriad of classes too but these two were the ones I enjoy teaching. There was never short supply of students who needed tutoring and wanted to pay at my college, plus I actually love teaching these subjects anyway! It was perfect as I could make the schedule that fits. Living very frugal and humble during nursing school helps too.

The only message that I got from this article is that children are expensive.

Pretty good, one thing I didn't see was the assessment for pain or complaints. Mostly pain. Checking their catheters if there are any, assess the lining and site for redness, erythema. My nursing professors had always stressed to check distal pulses bilaterally, meaning you have both of your hands on the radial at the same time to feel for symmetry, same for pedal pulse. Nevermind: saw you included pain haha ☺️

Well, if something goes wrong, there is a ton of liability lying on the table. And it won't be the nurses who get the heat, it's the surgeon. I'm not saying the yelling is appropriate but if you can think of it in their shoes, they are under immense pressure and stress to do what they have to do. Every second matters when a person is cut open and under anesthesia. They are yelling because they want their patient to live and not screw them up in any way..that's how i see it. Best advice i can offer is to not take it personally and develop some form of thick skin for these situations

Buffalo (tons of hospitals here) , rochester (strong memorial, highland hospital), syracuse (upstate medical) , Albany (albany medical center, albany VA), Binghamton, and all the community regional, county medical centers in between all that are hurting for nurses. If you don't mind venturing upstate for a hospital job for a while to get experience, i am almost positive you will find what you need. They tend to be much friendlier to adn nurses too. It does get really cold though...

I have a good friend about to graduate Nyu's accelerated bsn in January, and for what it's worth nyu langone prefers nurses from their programs over others.

Hey there, I've been following your progress through wgu since day 1, commuter! Congrats on getting your BSN. Just have a few questions, can i apply to wgu immediately after i finish my ADN (and start shortly after) , even before taking the nclex? I would love love love to start my bsn early and get it as fast as possible. I'm not sure what the rules are in general about this. Whichever the case, I've been pretty set on getting my bsn at wgu regardless, just wondering if i can start immediately after graduation. Thank you in advance :)

What type of jobs are open to new grads? Would there be anything in critical care? Operating room? Or would it be mostly medsurg/oncology?

I'm sorry to hear, but wish you best of luck with whichever route you take in your career

My gosh, that is such a huge pet peeve of mine. I personally do most of my learning in class so asking a redundant question that's been discussed and answered thoroughly can get really annoying and for the lack of better terms, disturbs my train of thought/learning. It's even more annoying if they're obviously on their phone texting and facebooking the entire time too. Don't ask questions if you haven't been paying attention. Save it for the end of lecture. Other than that, ask away.

I'm in an associates nursing program in nyc. I had a pretty good gpa, 3.98 prereq and did okay on my entrance exam (128 nln). Only have a year left till nclex. I'm not sure what bronx cc requirements are to get in, but I'm almost sure they have an entrance exam. Make sure you study well for that and blow that exam out of the water. I've seen students get in with average GPA but phenomenal Teas/hesi/nln score. I've also seen students with 4.0 get rejected because they're entrance exam was way below standard. All about balance and compensating for weak spots. Few schools allow repeating prereqs though, find out their policy on that. Just apply and see what happens.. Also, Generally, schools like bmcc and cuny schools in the city are very very hard to get into since everyone wants to be in the city. Cuny schools in the outer boroughs are a little easier from my experience

Thank you so so so much!

For me it's time and energy for a job, so I gotta live frugally for a few years. As a result, gave up independence and time as an adult in his mid 20s to make all this work. Small price to pay but hopefully worth it. Time is going by really fast anyway. :-) What did you sacrifice to get where you are now as a student nurse? Or didn't have to give up anything at all, which is cool too (lucky!) Sometimes it's these things that i think about during tough times in the semester that gives me motivation, knowing that a lot has been sacrificed to get to where I am now!

My nursing program actually uses the surface tablet for taking exams. It's actually pretty cool. I was thinking of getting one because of that. It was fast, and reliable when i took my exam, had no issues. And it's just the right size that i could probably use to read my large pdf textbooks from. The surface is essentially a really small Windows laptop if you get the keyboard with it! The Google nexus 7 is also pretty good too for the price now.

Oh boy. I was dreading seeing my first patient ever. We had to simply introduce ourselves, take our vital signs, and try to gather a health history if possible. It actually wasn't bad. I keep thinking back to that day and questioning why was i so nervous when there are a million things harder, more complex than taking vitals. Lol.. You may be given objectives. During your clinicals, have those objectives in mind at all times. Think of this as a job, not a social event. Get what you need and move on. For some reason, thinking this way really helped me the first clinical day. Lastly, remember to apply everything you've been learning, most importantly therapeutic communication, patient privacy, and their legal rights. Best of luck :)

Actually, if you want to *really* get a heads up.. Get a fundamentals success/rationale book, and/or saunders nclex book - any edition, and try your hand at some problems. You can just give your best guess. Make sure you read the rationales at the end. You don't have to go too crazy on this activity, the purpose is that It'll give you an idea of how tests questions are structured in nursing school! Doing this prevents the "shock" that many first semester students go through. Good luck, congrats on getting in :)

Yep, have a cardio III. The thing is.. we did use a dual stethoscope and i definitely did not hear anything. But she said she heard it loud and clear and said to just write down 120 over 80. I talked to my other classmates and the same story... Student doesn't hear anything but (same) instructor hears it clearly. Something tells me that she just did that so we don't bother the nursing home patients too long, as well as not worry them.

Thanks for responses. We haven't learned how to take a bp on any other limb yet so I'm stuck trying it manually. We are not allowed an automatic reading because our instructors want us to learn it manually first. We are taking vitals because we learned it in class and need to apply it in a clinical and/or real life setting. Taking vitals is mostly for the student's learning, as we are not documenting our findings in any real chart (yet)

Hey everyone, I'm new here and also new to nursing school! Does anyone know any tips on taking manual BP and vitals on the elderly? Specifically I've been having a lot of trouble hearing korotkoff sounds, finding radial and brachial pulses for my assigned patient - 86yo male w/ end-stage parkinson's. His radial and brachial pulses are weak and thready. And I just simply do not hear anything on sounds for blood pressure (I have a cardio III). I've been practicing on a lot of people successfully, but are limited on practicing on the elderly. I have no issue taking temperature, RR, apical rate for this specific patient. Any tips and/or tricks are greatly appreciated!!.. I'm at a loss of what to do in clinical.