DierkyBrewster

Most of the places I go to to drug test ask me “Is it observed?” And I usually just say yes. Sometimes they observe, sometimes they don’t. Either way we should probably be telling them it’s supposed to be an observed test.

If you’re enrolling in ARNAP you will probably be meeting with Tonya, who would end up being your case manager. She’s over the whole program and I’d a very wonderful lady. She’s very understanding and always seems to be on your side when the rest of the board seems against you. I do not have bipolar, but I have major depressive and anxiety. I see a psychiatrist who prescribed my medications, and a counselor for my therapy sessions. I am in Southwest AR, close to the Texas line. Message me if you’d like to stay in touch!

I am on cloud 9! It’s been 6 months since I have held a position as an LPN. 6 months of mooching off friends and family to afford this damn program. Living with my sister and her family plus my own children in a small 3 bedroom house filed with 8 people! I got hired yesterday at a facility that was more than willing to look past my history and work with the ARNAP program I am enrolled into, and I am SO grateful. I don’t care if this is the most awful job on the planet (it sure doesn’t seem to be) I will go to work every single day with a smile on my face! The only thing I have anxiety about is my upcoming court date in August that may or may not end in a conviction for a felony that I hope doesn’t affect my license status (my case manager is hopeful for me, as is my lawyer). But I’m trying not to think of that right now, because I’m EMPLOYED! Just letting everyone know, you CAN find work while enrolled in this program, it may take a while and finding the right employer, but they are out there! Just be up front and honest in your interviews and let them know how worth it you will be to them in the end!

I’m having to live with my sister currently! It is AWFUL. I luckily was just hired for a company and am SO grateful, they were more than willing to abide with the ARNAP requirements. There IS work out there! Yes it took 6 months, but I’m finally going to be able to work as a nurse again. Glad to find someone in the same program as me! Maybe send me a message and we can be facebook friends to keep in touch and swap advice/stories involving our recovery. ?

So, I got caught diverting narcotics at my job last year. Even got charges pressed against me for it which I’m still dealing with (court is in August). I got accepted to do the ARNAP program through my state board back in February. So far I have tested once a month. I missed a check in today... and I missed one the first or second week I was in the program. I have an awful memory and multiple alarms to try and remind me of all the things I’m required to do. 8 support meetings a month, that I’m required to document each time I go, regular therapy sessions (with documentation of them provided every 3 months), monthly personal reports to submit, random drug testing, daily check ins, and my license is still on a voluntary hold until my 90 days is up and they decide if they want to reinstate it or not. I have to do this for 3 YEARS. I know some have it worse, so I can’t complain too much. I’m mostly just irritated I can’t have a glass of wine a couple of times a week to relax with because apparently we can’t even drink alcohol! Even though my DOC was definitely not alcohol *eye roll*. For the most part I’m doing okay with the program. It’s just something that must be done if I want to be a nurse, and I truly do. I love nursing. And if I can complete this program, in 3 years I will have a clean license with no restrictions and no indication that this ever happened on my record. (My nursing record that is. I’m sure background checks will have a field day with me when I try to apply to jobs I’m the future... but that’s a hurdle to jump at a later time) Good luck to everyone in the same boat as me! I really hope we can all be successful!

Wow.. I can only hope to get as lucky as you did. Thank you for the reply

I’ve been working as an LPN in LTC the last 5 years. I’m 28 years old, wife, mom of 2. Love LTC, love my residents, loved the job honestly. I have Rx’s for Tylenol 3 and norco, for chronic migraine. I have had these scripts for years, since probably 2010. Never abused them. Only took them as needed. That sort of changed last year when my mom got diagnosed with cancer.. I got very depressed and started self medicating. I started going through my Rxs quicker and quicker. Tolerance kept getting higher and higher. That’s when I started diverting at work. Don’t get me wrong, as scummy as I was/am, my residents still never went without. They got their scheduled narcs. They got their PRNs they requested. I was mostly just wasting meds and forging a 2nd nurses signature, signing out PRNs that weren’t asked for, when the page would get full and had to start a new page, would write in a number less than what was actually there and take the difference. This started probably around April if this year. My mom passed away last month and it sent me over the edge. I stopped being “careful” with my diverting, and basically just got desperate for more meds. This is ultimately what led to me getting caught. As soon as my administrator called and told me what they had discovered and that it would have to be reported, I called and spoke with a nursing attorney, who advised me to self report. He even called and spoke with the executive director of the state board on my behalf and helped me submit the self report form. He says this would be the best way to potentially keep my license without restrictions. He also advised me to start seeking out counseling or meetings to attend now so that it looks like I’m setting myself on the right path early on. I’m currently on day 7 of not taking any sort of opiate. I am just so, so scared. I had just found out this month that I got accepted to RN school starting in January, I feel like that is in the toilet now. I will never be able to work in LTC again. And I feel like I can’t show my face in my super small town ever again. The facility I worked for is a staple to my community. They are in attendance to any big event, and I feel like I can’t show my face around them due to all the shame I feel. So now my entire family will be suffering for this. All my previous coworkers already know everything, I guess administration told everyone. I’ve been getting “thoughts and prayers” messages from some and have even been blocked by a couple of them. I’m so scared the law will be involved and I will get arrested... I’ve been crying for 2 straight days. I don’t know what’s going to happen or what to expect. This is the absolute worst thing that has ever happened to me. I have officially hit rock bottom. Can anyone who has been in this situation please offer some support or advice? I feel like I’m drowning.

I am an fairly new LPN (graduated in 2014) who currently works in LTC. I have been at my facility for over 2 years and I make decent wages. $17.50 to be exact, and with the rotating 12 hour shifts ibalso get around 10 hours of overtime on each check. The money is great. But the hours, work, regulations, and upper management politics have stressed me to the max, causing major burn out. I'm on anti anxiety meds, BP meds, and the last couple of months my bosses have been on top of me over small errors (nothing threatening pts, mostly documentation related) and have put me on a 90 day probation period. I'm only 25 and I feel 55. I've been in LTC a total of over 5 years, -'d have missed so many holidays and family events I can't even keep up. I haven't been able to return to school to persue my RN because this job overwhelms my life. I'm supposed to work 6-6 but the majority of the time it ends up being 5:30-7 or 8pm. I'm just tired of it. Not one but two opportunities have came up for new jobs. Both of them are your typical 8-5, mon-fri jobs. One is in a Pharmacy, 0 direct care, mostly computer work and dealing with insurance. The other is a specialty clinic for geriatric pts. The hours are great, and NO holidays?? I have never had a job where I didn't have to come in on holidays. And I would be able to go back to school too. Both of them sound like great jobs, except I would be taking a major pay cut. I would only be making $13-14 an hour. Without my overtime that I'm used to. My husband works too, but makes even less than that. We relied a lot on my income. And while I know that we would be making enough for our bills to be paid, we won't have a lot of wiggle room whatsoever. I guess what I'm asking is if you were in my shoes, what would you do?

Hey everyone! I'm an LPN currently working at a LTC facility. I'm very "comfortable" in my current job, meaning I have my routine down and no surprises throw me off too bad, I can do my job very efficiently. I've been here for about 2 years. I have an interview next week with a local dialysis center, and taking this job makes me nervous... Mostly because I'm afraid of change. I'm so used to my day to day in LTC (although a hectic, time crunched day it is) that I'm afraid I won't do well in a different field. Does anyone have any advice on comparing the 2 careers? Should I take the dialysis job over the LTC job if it is offers? My current job is about a 15 minute commute, the dialysis job I would have to commute roughly 30 minutes (rural areas... Gag) And I know my LTC is most likely the higher paying of the two... But has no 401k and very expensive insurance. The dialysis job has amazing benefits....I just don't know what to do.

That's fine by me! Lol Wow, people are unreal!

In my charting I did write "resident was showing signs of distress and breathing heavily" and "resident would not awaken to verbal stimuli, had to be touched to arouse" which I guess could seem like more of an "incident"? But I also quoted her saying she was having a bad dream. So I don't get it. If I were a family member and a nurse called to tell me my mom had a nightmare.... Idk. So dumb.

Yeah. It was hard to pick my jaw up off of the floor.

You will be very surprised on how much you will learn in LTC. I have dealt with everything I can think of, from PICC lines, dressing changes, trachs, peg tubes, access ports, colostomies, urostomies, not to mention learning how to deal with emergency situations because sometimes you are the only nurse available in an emergency situation. It's a great foundation for learning and growing your nursing confidence!

Depending on how well you know your doctors, and depending on what needs to be ordered is how I determine whether I write my own orders or not. Technically, no, we cannot just write orders. The facility I work at has one doctor for about 90% of the residents. He's very laid back and is one of those doctors that actually would rather the nurse take charge and offer suggestions to him for the residents. His number is in my cell phone, I can usually text him if it's before 10pm and get a quick response for an order I need, but after 10pm, if it's something that can wait until the morning, it waits. If it's something like a dressing or I believe a R may have a UTI, and I KNOW our MD well enough to know that if I explained the situation to him this is exactly what he would order, I will go ahead and write it. I will also fax him a notification of what happened/is happening and the orders that i wrote so that he is not in the dark on the subject.

I am so tired of how nit picky LTC can be. It's really taking a toll on me. I'm sure I'm just reading into it too much, but I SWEAR my facility is trying to push me over the edge and either fire me or make me mad enough to quit. They attempted to write me up for 4 different things today. Of those 4 things, only one of them I admitted was understandable. We work 12 hour 6-6 shifts, and a R came back from the hospital around 5:30am and I asked the oncoming nurse if she wouldn't mind initial dosing the R's N.O. Antibiotic along with their other 6am meds. She agreed, but apparently also decided to tell the admins that I did not I.D. the med even though the R came back technically on my shift. It's dumb, but whatever, I take responsibility for it. However, the other write up I had to sign was RIDICULOUS. I was passing 8pm meds, and a R was hard to arouse and mumbling and had rapid eye movement in their sleep. I got the R to wake up, and she was startled and said she was having s terrible dream where she couldn't wake up. I sat with her awhile and talked to her and she cheered back up. It was all fine, but I went ahead and charted what had happened anyways. Well I guess it fell back on my because the facility went through the charting and wrote me up for not notifying the R's family about this "incident". The R had a bad dream! I mean, it's crazy! They expect us to chart/notify/jump hoops every time a R blinks funny! I think I need to begin looking into a different field. Although being only an LPN that can be difficult. (Sigh) Sorry, just looking for some ranting space!