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Caring for kids with leukemia, I did the nurse tech end of a lot of transfusions (vital signs). The exact procedures (tubing and all) are likely to vary from school to school and hospital to hospital. What matters most is to understand why each item in the procedure is done. That'll keep you from neglecting what matters. For instance, I wonder about checking the vital signs after 15 minutes and not checking vital signs until the end. Where I worked, we checked every 15 minutes for the first hour and, if necessary, every thirty minutes for the next hour. The one time I caught a reaction wasn't in that first 15 minutes. In that case, the temperature spike wasn't enough to stop the transfusion. Those kids absolutely had to have blood products. My experience was long ago, so others will know more up-to-date procedures. But the principle to know why you're doing something in addition to what always applies. Google 'reaction to transfusion' and you'll find links to numerous, credible sources. Here is what Mayo Clinic tells their patients: Blood transfusion Risks - Mayo Clinic --Mike

Take commuting into account, along with where you'd like to live. Seattle has one of the worst commutes in the country. Water on both sides force most commuting to be north/south and few arterial lanes have been added since the 1970s. Amazon's rapid growth at its South Lake Union location about two miles north of downtown is making matters far worse. Hating Amazon has become a new sport in the city. The city's traffic planners don't care about the traffic woes. Dominated by an ideology called 'traffic calming,' they want most people to use mass transit, however impractical that might be. Residential arterials, like the one I lived on, are getting cut back from four lanes to two to "calm" traffic, meaning make drivers angry. The city has blundered into light rail, wasting so much money that buses are starved for funding. When I moved away in August of 2012, some 175 bus routes were about to be removed or have their service cut back. That's despite the fact that the cost of bus tickets almost doubled during my last five years there. More and more bus commutes require at least one transfer which is really a pain in the damp, drizzly winters when it begins to get dark about 4:30. Bus service is so-so after the evening rush hour and ends almost completely after midnight, which can matter if you work odd hours like I did for a time. In short, wherever you work, make sure you have a sensible commute from where you live. Rent is rising rapidly in Seattle. That's one reason I left. When i worked at Seattle Children's in the 1980s, I had a nearby basement apartment. Commuting was a ten minute walk. That was nice. Seattle Children's is unusual for a hospital. It's in an upscale residential neighborhood. If you like kids, consider it. It's one of the top ten children's hospitals in the country. Most of the city's hospitals, clinics and the like are on Capitol Hill, just east of downtown. It's crowded, with dreadful parking and (I suspect) high rent. On the other hand, that's where top-notch care if given. If you love high-stress ER work, consider Harborview. It handles the city's major trauma. If you're interested in graduate work, look seriously into University Hospital. It's not only a part of the University of Washington campus, you can literally walk from the Health Science building where nursing is taught, into the hospital through a maze of corridors without going outside. No work/school commute. There's also a ring of suburban hospitals around the metropolitan area, so you might want to consider those. The Eastside (meaning east of Lake Washington) is more high tech. That's where Microsoft is. North of Seattle is more affluent and south is more blue-collar but that's a generalization. The really expensive homes are close to the water or at the top of hills. Take care where you live. Some neighborhoods, particularly those just south of Capitol Hill, have high crime rates. For all the hassles of living there, it's still an interesting place to be. In comparison, the small college town where I live now is boring. Nothing matters but football. Good luck with your job search. --Mike

Sounds like you're finding all that reading intimidating. Perhaps I should share an experience of mine from the tenth grade. There's been some confusion about which of our mid-year semester exams would come in the morning and which in the afternoon. I got it wrong and showed up prepared for a math test. With all my classmates pouring over their biology books, I realized I was in trouble. I hated biology so much, I'd planned to do my only studying between the two tests. Fortunately, one of my classmates came to my rescue. With but ten minutes until test time, she loaned my her handwritten notes and I began to read through them as fast as I could. They were absolutely marvelous, summarizing everything we'd covered that mattered. If she hadn't been the prettiest girl in the class, I'd have probably kissed her. I kept reading until our teacher dropped the test in front of me. Then I shifted into answer mode, blitzing through the test while my short-term memory still recalled what I'd just read and skipping when I didn't know an answer. When I finished, I returned to the start and managed recall some more answers. Last of all, I made educated guesses on what remained. When we got our tests back, I'd gotten a B grade for that ten minutes of study. I was quite happy. I would NOT recommend that as a study technique. What I would recommend is what my friend did when she prepared those notes. When you read those chapters, create handwritten notes of what matters. Do the same with your class notes. After each class, rework you notes into something more legible and complete. Study through those notes repeated throughout the semester. Don't be an idiot like me and put studying off until the last minute. Review, review and review. Each time you do, you'll learn a little more and move through the material a little faster. Then the night before your test, you won't be overwhelmed looking at those seven chapters. You'll simply review those already oft-reviewed notes. Also take note of what your professor said about 'critical thinking.' She doesn't want you to just spit back what is in those chapters. She wants you to look at the material from various angles so you really understand it. Test yourself on all those angles. Prepare for tests by giving yourself tests. That seems to be the real key. Here's an article based on studies about what techniques work and what don't. You probably don't have the time for all the techniques, so pick what works best with you: How To Study: The Best Ways To Get The Highest Grades based on this article: '+windowtitle+' Notice the additional links in that second article. My hunch is all that 'delayed retrieval practice' and self-quizzing (including answering questions in the textbook) primes our minds to see this material as important and thus makes us remember it better. Last minute cramming won't do that. Best of luck!

Ah, so it's the hospital lawyers who're interested in seeing how much harm or good you'll do their side. From your remarks, I gather you have no dogs in this fight, meaning that you don't care which side wins. That makes demands on your by either side all the more frustrating. In my one occasion testifying in traffic court, I was happy to be there because I wanted to help the defendant. I might offer one suggestion from someone who has been there not merely as a witness but as the plaintiff in a copyright dispute in a Seattle federal court that went on for some 16 months. Legal disputes can exhausting and include a lot of hassles that you dislike. You can be pushed about at the whim of lawyers and a judge. You may end up feeling used. A lot that happens may seem unnecessary or even unfair. Let that get under your skin and you'll get even more angry, frustrated, and exhausted. Don't let that control your emotions. Do what you have to do and let it go at that. In my case, the other side was hoping to win by exhausting and intimidating me. I could handle the intimidation. I knew how weak their case actually was. But I had to be careful not to be exhausted by the endless delays. You think you have problems, but they were nothing like mine, which costs hundreds of hours of my time. In my case, for much of the dispute I was representing myself and thus not getting a penny for the considerable time I was investing. (I do have some legal training, so the usual rule about not being your own lawyer did not apply.) In contrast, the Manhattan lawyer I was fighting was probably billing his client, the Tolkien estate, about $400 an hour. If I'd let my mind dwell on that, I would have gotten very angry. In the end, I won and one major factor was all the patience I'd shown. In your case, that exhaustion isn't about the legal dispute itself but in its impact on your present work and personal life. Testifying may mean lost income and missed sleep. But the principle is the same. Don't let this dispute wear you down. Resolve to do what you have to do and don't try to control what you can't control. Getting angry about this and how unfair it is for weeks and weeks will do you more harm than the mere time you spend giving testimony, should it even come to that. In short, don't dwell on this. Minimize the harm this does to your life.

Testifying is not up to you. As another poster has mentioned, you can be subpoenaed and forced to testify. If you were someone important, say a politician or rich, the judge might be differential about your time. But as a nurse, he's unlikely to care about the trouble you'll be caused, 60-hour weeks or not. That said, lawyers have a principle that they should only ask a witness a question when they know what the answer will be. That's to ensure that their client isn't hurt by testimony. That factors into who they call as witnesses. As RiskManager has noted, its rarely to your advantage to voluntarily meet with plaintiff lawyers. Don't talk with them, and bringing you in to testify is a risk. Do talk with them and you only increase your risk of being forced to testify. Even worse, having heard what you saw and heard outside the courtroom, they're likely ask questions in ways that distort what actually happened, leaving your frustrated and feeling used. Lawyers are often clever that way. I know one legal assistant who spends hours pouring over the other sides emails, looking for something that, rightly and wrongly, can be used to influence juries. If you're tired and sleepy, there's no need to hide that. But don't let that spill over into hostility. You could then be treated as a hostile witness and face a barrage questions phased in ways you won't like. Simply answer the questions as briefly and clearly as you can. The less you say, the sooner you'll be able to go home. If you don't remember, say so. Also, remember that if your nursing notes are a major factor in the lawsuit, you may be called on to testify about them. Be prepared for that. Court trials can move slowly, so if you are forced to testify, you might find yourself doing a lot of waiting around. Come prepared for that. You might call the court's clerk in advance to find out what you can and cannot do while you are waiting to testify. In your case, your first question might be, "Is there a nap room I can use?"

I loved pediatric oncology. The emotion risks were great, but there's no satisfaction like beating leukemia in a child and realizing that they've got a rich and full life before them. One patient I cared for as 10-month-old baby now runs three nail salons.

Thanks to Dr. Google: "The Material Services Department at UI Hospitals and Clinics provides a comprehensive selection of patient care products in a cost-effective, efficient and convenient manner..... Our four divisions include: Processed Stores, Mail Services, Shipping and Receiving, and Linen Services. Our 90 full-time employees include storekeepers, mail handlers, sewing machine operators, supervisors, and clerical staff." https://www.uihealthcare.org/materialservices/ ----- In general, it's the "material" a hospital needs apart from drugs and perhaps instruments. Think bed sheets, IV bags, patient gowns and, at that hospital, processing the mail. Hospitals vary in what they include. This could prove a good first job. They'll have starter positions where you'll be taught what you need to know. Work hard and stay with it and the job will look good on your resume. (In the cold, cruel world, you need to have had a job to get a job.) Show a willingness to learn and be flexible. If you do, you'll get the chance to move on to something that pays better and by the week rather than by the day. Some hospitals will even cover all or part of the costs of further education, such as LPN training, for their staff. Best of luck.

Stage actors have a similar rule. They don't wish someone good luck. They tell them, "Break a leg." Wishing bad luck is thought to bring good luck. There's a rationale reason. When others in a hospital, including Admitting and the ER, hear that a nurse has uttered the dread "Q" word, they set about to correct that deficiency. "Quiet huh, well we'll give them something to do."

From your remarks, there's a bit of uncertainty as to whether you're being asked to be family court to testify in some family dispute, to serve in some professional role as part of your work in family practice orthopedics, or to just do jury duty. If it's a family dispute, the the real issue may be whether you owe those involved your presence there, meaning can you help settle this dispute in a way that's good for your family. If so, you might ask yourself if that's more important than attending one class. Would not attending strain family relations for years in the future? If it's professional testimony, perhaps of something you have seen, then you have a professional responsibility to attend. And if that is the case, by all means tell your nursing professor. It'll impress her and show her you had a professional life before nursing school. Find some other way to make up for not being in class. If it's just jury duty, ask for a hardship exemption, include a note from your professor, and offer to serve at a later date. Whether you get that exemption depends on the court's ability to fill slots. When I tried to get one, pleading self-employment, I got nowhere. At that time, filling jury slots in Seattle/King County was so difficult, only being on my death bed in an ICU would have gotten me off. ----- One suggestion Courts move very slowly. if you have to go for whatever reason, bring school work with you because you're likely to spend quite a bit of time waiting. Also, if the judge won't let you study in his courtroom, ask to remain in the lobby and get called. If it's jury duty, you'll just have to grit your teeth, pay attention and hope the trial ends quickly. If you're there for testimony, it may be brief. The one time I appeared in court for testimony, my role took five seconds. I did it to lighten the traffic ticket of a guy who'd hit me. His life was falling apart. Out of work, his wife had left him, taking their baby. His brother had tossed him out. Getting him a fine reduction of $100 seemed the least I could do for him even though he'd hit me, being there took most of an afternoon, and paid only $10. Sometimes you just have to do what is right. Also don't forget the opportunity for a little income. When I did that jury duty, I was only paid $10 for each of two days even though each took up most of my day. The court did its best to get me to bus there, but I found out that if I drove I not only saved time, the court paid me car mileage, which was far more than the microscopic pay for jury duty. Good luck whatever happens.

You illustrate a point I try to drive home to young adults who have been indoctrinated with anti-car propaganda. Outside big cities, a reliable and inexpensive car is often a necessity. It saves you valuable time. It lets you live where the rent is cheap. It lets you shop where the prices are lowest. It lets you take jobs almost anywhere, including better paying ones that more than cover car costs. And it your case, I makes your clinical assignments far easier. Options: 1. You might spread the word about your situation among friends, family, and at church or like institutions. Lots of people today have older vehicles they hardly ever use. One might be happy to loan that spare car to you to tide you through to graduation. 2. Talk to your school advisors about your situation. It's unlikely that you are the only nursing student with this problem. Perhaps they can come up with a way to pair assignments, linking a student with a car with one without. Remember, there is a solution to your woes. so don't despair. Keeping plugging away until you find it.

Sorry, but good sense isn't discriminatory and any of us can spot the exceptional situation when a male nurse is a weakling and female nurse is strong. And if it's that easy, why walk on tippy-toes? Why regard being chosen for a job because you're best suited for it as bad? Why regard when someone else is chosen for that reason as bad? Why be blind to such obvious realities? When I worked nights at a children's hospital, the night supervisor would sometimes get me for a transport to the hospital's morgue. They were larger children, now wrapped in a shroud. She was six-inches shorter than me and had back issues. I didn't relish the actual task, but I was happy to help her. Lifting would put her back at risk. I could easily lift a child without straining. It didn't bother me in the slightest that she'd picked me because I was the only guy on night shift nursing. She'd also picked the most competent for the task. Unfortunately, in our poor, muddled society, we often confuse discernment, which means meaning making decisions that make sense, with discrimination, which draws lines that have no rational reason for them. The result is a lot of unnecessary anger that does no one any good. ---- One thing that men in nursing might teach the women is to not be so easily insulted. All Nurses is filled with examples of that. Try a website for mostly male professions and you'll find far less of that. Part of growing up as a male is learning to take criticism, laugh at it, and keep your cool. If you can do that, you get respect. If you can't, you don't. This funny scene from Gran Torino illustrates that perfectly: And it's a cultural thing. Badly reared, men are thugs. That's one reason why inner city minority males murder each other in such high numbers. They haven't had a Clint Eastwood as a father to teach them otherwise. At the slightest insult, they blow up. You see that in this scene from Grand Torino. If you haven't seen the movie, the plot centers around that Asian gang trying to recruit the boy and Clint's efforts to prevent that. It's a masterpiece, showing how a sensitive topic can be handled with humor.

Size and upper-body strength is perhaps the only differences that matter. When I worked on an adolescent unit, some of our patients were huge high school athletes in to get a mangled knee fixed. As a 5' 10' guy, I was nervous walking them to the toilet. I coped by being ready to stop their fall the instant it started. Once they were going down there was no way I could stop them. I can't imagine managing that as a 5' 2" and 110-pound nurse. That and perhaps embarrassment issues with some male patients. ------ Why were these interviewers asking this question anyway, much less expecting him to talk for 10 minutes on the topic? I can't imagine a guy who hates women choosing nursing as a profession. It'd be like someone who hates chocolate getting a job in a chocolate factory. I can imagine the opposite though. Were they looking for reasons to reject him?

You're right. Kids can be amazing. I once cared for a boy of about eight who'd saved his little brother from drowning in a lake. When he reached his little brother, he realized that he didn't know how to hold his brother and swim to shore. So he dove down, lifted his brother up on his shoulders, and walked to shore with his head beneath the water, leaving him unable to breathe. In the process, he swallowed some water and was in overnight for observation.

I wouldn't worry. What you experienced is so common, the Germans named an entire literary movement after it, Strum and Drang, meaning "storm and stress." In common use today it means a time of emotional turmoil. Sturm Und Drang | Definition of Sturm und Drang by Merriam-Webster Sounds like you're beyond all that now and should have easy coasting until perhaps many years from now when you hit the next common bump in the road, a mid-life crisis. I missed the first but did have the second. If this bouncing around comes up in an interview, call it what it is and tell them that you're beyond all that and eager to learn what they offer.

Discomfort is normal when you're dealing with a patient whose situation is new to you and whose troubles may be difficult to handle. That's not the time to panic. That's the time to be objective. Can you list actual situations that might arise with this toddler that you lack the training to handle? Take out a sheet of paper and create two columns. Head one, "Problems that might arise." Head the other, "What I would do." If for every problem, there's a response you have been trained to handle, there's no reason to fret. And if there is a problem for which you don't have a ready response, can you get the training to handle it ASAP? Only if there are issues that are beyond your training, should you be concerned. And even then are you should ask yourself if there would be enough time to summon medics who can handle those issues and transport this child to a hospital. You don't have to handle everything imaginable. Remember that in this case you've got two quite skilled parents to consult. Bring any questions you have to them and always keep handy a contact number for them. Remember too that you're new and establishing your first habits as an LPN. There's no more important habit to establish than a spirit of 'can do' confidence back up by an eagerness to learn what you need to know for each new situation. Run away this time, and you may find yourself running away again and again. Hang in there this time, and in six months you'll be surprised at all the hard stuff that's become easy.