guestng82

There may be a federal law that prohibits discrimination based on age by an employer, but it would not be discrimination for the BON and board of medical examiners to require the tests as healthcare professionals get older. If you can't pass because of physical or mental decline once you reach a certain age, then your license shouldn't be renewed, just like in the driving situation. It would probably never happen and especially wouldn't become widespread, but it would be a good idea.

While you may feel that higher insurance rates for older people and having to take exams and renew their licenses frequently is wrong, just consider that while your parents may have had clean driving records and were perfectly safe, you also have people like my grandmother who constantly ran her car into a large ditch trying to get into her driveway because her eyesight began to decline, but refused to stop driving. Just like that, you also have older physicians and nurses who are perfectly capable of performing their work as they get older, but you will have the remaining stubborn few who cannot perform their job safely. So you would risk public health and safety because others may feel that they are discriminated against? If I was older, I would gladly take a test every few years to ensure I'm competent to do my job, especially if doing my job improperly meant I could kill someone.

So glad this had a happy ending for you and that you could afford to have the surgery! I spent over $1,000.00 on my cat last year when she was very close to death, and she's fully recovered now. People at work thought I was crazy because I would even consider spending that kind of money on an animal, but when you've had them for almost half your life, they are way more than just pets... It burns my butt when I see people pay over $600.00 for a dog, but then won't even think about paying that or more for vet care. Don't worry too much about snapping at your son. Stress makes us react in bad ways sometimes, and he's old enough that he should understand if you apologize and explain why you did that. Hope your dog has a speedy recovery!

I realized that after I went back and read your comment again, but by that time, it was too late for me to edit my post. My apologies for the error.

Wow, okay, I spent six years of my life being molested by two men, so definitely not trying to shut women up about what they've suffered when I've experienced it as well. A comment was made that men are the ones causing problems, and I made a comment back. My response may not have been relevant to the discussion as a whole, but it was relevant to THAT comment. This whole thread has derailed into an argument that is going no where anyway so I guess I will just bite my tongue on anything else I would like to comment on for the duration.

My point being that women can rape too. Exactly what I said in the post actually... I guess I can expand on that and say that I was disagreeing with Ruby Vee's comment that men are causing all the problems by raping.

Women can be rapists too...

We have a nice little ER where I live, that the charge is based on your income, and you just pay a small deposit before you leave. Back when I did not have insurance and was only making ~29k a year, I went for bronchitis, and my deposit was only $25.00. My ER bill total was $350.00, and that included the physician bill, which was the most expensive part ($237.00). No physician would see me that day, and considering I had chest pain and shortness of breath, I figured I needed to be seen. The urgent care would have been over $300.00, due at the time of the appt. I love that place, and would go there when needed before the more expensive urgent care or physician's office here (I only went twice in four years). Now that I have insurance, I usually go to urgent care because it is usually less than $200.00. If I don't have that much in my HSA, then I go to the ER for the cheap deposit. Though, working in med mal has resulted in me avoiding most all medical care unless it's absolutely necessary.

I hope that they appeal the verdict and the sentencing. If they do, the appellate judges can give him a longer sentence if they feel the one already given is not sufficient.

You should come back to play. I need more people in my guild.

...where did you even get that photo from? I mean, was there a post or anything attached to it saying that he self-identifies as female or are you just posting random pics trying to prove a point? On an off-side, I wouldn't mind sharing a bathroom with him... :)

If you are within driving distance, your best bet may be to go directly to the school and try to talk to someone. Colleges aren't the best at returning phone calls.

Whoops, Elladora basically said the same thing I did in her post so I'll just wait for OP's response to that instead.

Lawyer fees generally average depending on your location, but a lot of criminal attorneys will charge a flat fee for the beginning of the case. If it ends before trial (plea bargain, dismissed, etc.), that is the only fee. If it goes to trial, they will usually charge another flat fee for the remainder of the case.

The way I learned to do resumes is to use the general statements that can cover most of what you do, but keep it as concise as possible. You would use the job interview to elaborate more on your duties and how they would tie in to the position you are trying to get. We had several sessions in our college courses dedicated to drafting resumes and landing interviews, and the instructors told us to keep the resume to one page (two at the max) and then do a cover letter to be more detailed about specific job duties, experience, etc.

Sometimes I wish we could go to something like this. I would gladly pay the tax it would bring than the $400 a month insurance that I can't even afford to use because the deductible is $3,300 and the total out-of-pocket is $6,600. My employer claims they pay for my insurance, but once I opted into it, they sure dropped my paycheck as fast as they could to cover the payments... If it wasn't for my HSA, I probably wouldn't be able to go to the dentist or get my vision checked each year.

If you're a new member, you should really take time to learn about the website before you post to it, especially when it's a self-righteous post about a profession that you have no clue about. There are many non-nurses on AN who understand that this is not our profession, and it's not really our right to judge how these nurses vent or cope with the stress of their job, especially when there is no way for us to understand what that stress is. I absolutely enjoy lurking on this site and reading the posts. I mostly use it to help me understand issues that come up in my med mal job and educate myself so that I can actually understand the meaning behind the medical records I work with on a daily basis, but the humorous posts are a lot of fun to read as well, until people like you come along and try to ruin it. So please, sit back and lurk as well so that you don't give the rest of us non-nurses a bad name around here on AN.

In my earlier comment, I meant to add that it's funny how in med mal cases, there's so much of the "if it wasn't charted, it wasn't done", but on the flip side, in our worker's compensation cases (where we represent the employers and insurance companies), we have so many employees who try to claim back, neck or shoulder pain so many months after a work accident. When there is no mention of this in the records, they claim that they told all of the physicians, nurses, etc. who assessed them, and the HCP's must have just forgotten to put it in the chart. It's amazing how many judges will allow that and render judgments in favor of the employees for these complaints.

Sorry about that!

Yes, thank you. You are way better at writing that than I am. All of our clients are coached to never say they don't remember something or didn't do something. They're told to always say what they would normally do in the situation if they did not remember the patient or the specific visit. It's amazing how many physicians we have who just don't write anything in their ER records. So many assessments are left blank, and on the rare occasion that they testify, what else can we do? They're not going to straight up admit that they didn't do anything so we have to rely on that they did do it, but they just didn't document it.

Please see RiskManager's response to my comment right below yours. She explained it a LOT better than I can. I'm not that great with words. Basically, we do not use this defense often because our doctors are rarely deposed. But we do have instances where the documentation just doesn't exist, but our insured is adamant that they did it. So they are told to rely on the "just because it wasn't documented, doesn't mean it wasn't done." I've worked here for almost six years, and we've only gone to trial once and only had maybe four or five of our clients deposed. The trial was for a deceased doctor who left his assessment almost completely blank. It's not much to go on, but when you have nothing else, it's something at least.

I work in a med mal defense firm, and my boss pushes the exact opposite: just because it wasn't documented, doesn't mean it wasn't done. It comes up in depositions a lot, especially where we have assessments from our ER docs that were essentially left blank. A lot of them will later say that even though the form wasn't completed, they still did it, etc. and that sometimes they don't have time to complete the chart, especially in an emergent situation.

Have you considered becoming a nurse paralegal instead? I work at a medical malpractice defense firm, and we are required by our clients (the physician's insurer) to have a nurse paralegal on staff. The nurse paralegals we use do not have any legal training; however they review our records, give opinions on whether they think our insured physicians met or breached the standard of care, whether we should settle the case or proceed with trial, let us know the key issues, and the "smoking guns" that the other attorneys could use against us among other job duties. Some that I've worked with have written position papers, etc. for us that we submit to the Medical Review Panel for the panelists to render an opinion on whether the standard of care was breached (I work in Louisiana so our judicial process in med mal cases is a bit different than any other states). It's a very interesting field, and you could contact med mal defense attorneys in your area to see what you would need to do to become a nurse paralegal. The one we currently have on staff only works for us to supplement her income. She also works as a nursing instructor at one of the local colleges.

This could have been a blanket advertisement posted in many different ad sections where they just easily substitute nursing for any other profession.

Out of all the schools I went to (three total), we never had a school nurse. If you were feeling sick, they sent you to the office to call your parents. My brother has Von Willebrand disease, and I am supposed to be tested soon for it as well, and both of us had horrible nosebleeds as kids that would freak all the teachers out and definitely get us sent home for the day! I assume that wouldn't have happened if we had school nurses. It definitely would've made my mom happier. :)