Mavnurse17

I feel that even state boards in the US can be predatory. Sometimes I peruse my state's disciplinary reports (they publish those for the public... not sure if other states do that too) and recently I saw a school nurse have their license revoked for "failing to follow up on delinquent immunization records." I'm a school nurse so I can attest that getting updated records is like pulling teeth sometimes, so for a nurse to have their license revoked completely for that makes me feel very nervous.

Welcome! As is tradition on our board, "One of us! One of us!" Just a forewarning that this specialty is wayyyy different than inpatient experience, but I'm sure you know that already. However, your inpatient experience will be very valuable. Take a day or two to orient yourself to the building you're in and who your contacts are. Principal, other admin, office staff, clerks, counselor(s), cafeteria staff (you'll want to be 'in' with them for the sake of your diabetic kiddos), etc. Know what the flow of your school is. If you can, run a report of which kids have chronic medical problems and which will require medication and/or procedures throughout the day. Familiarize yourself with your school and district policy as it relates to your practice. Get to know everyone, especially the people you will work closely with. I work really closely with my special education department and retrospectively it would have behooved me to get to know them before I just started showing up to ARD meetings. Oh yeah-- familiarize yourself with ARD and 504 meetings, because I had not a clue what those were when I started! It will take some time to feel fully comfortable and confident but every day is a new learning experience. Good luck!

More and more nurses are leaving the bedside due to raising job-demands and stress. I made it 13 months before I made my departure from the hospital. I work in the community setting at a school now. Not sure if it's my permanent 'home' in nursing but it did wonders for my mental, emotional, and physical health to leave the bedside. Don't feel defeated! You tried it and it didn't work out. No sense being miserable just to fill an imaginary quota most nurses they feel they have to meet before moving on.

Took and passed NCLEX on the first try in 75 questions back in May 2017. I LOVED UWorld and used it exclusively. One of my NCLEX questions even closely mirrored a question I had on one of the practice tests ? I can't remember what my practice test averages were but I think they were similar to yours. Good luck!!

Just some anecdote here-- I don't work at the bedside anymore, but at my old facility we couldn't do anything medication or procedure related without communication from the provider first. We couldn't even access the Pyxis for something as simple as a Tums without a provider signature (either physical or telephone authorization) and authorization from pharmacy. Per policy, we had to call--even at night-- if we felt in our best judgement it was prudent to hold a medication. Imagine calling an attending after hours to say "hey this patient has had diarrhea from the bowel regimen so can I hold tonight's senokot?" ?

This is bizarre to me. On the unit I worked on, everyone took turns floating based on when they floated last. So say you float one shift, you don't get floated again until everyone else has floated. New grads didn't float until after 6 months of independent practice.

I have dreams sometimes that I get to 0700 and realize I forgot to give a single medication all night ?

Can I sort of branch off here and ask a question r/t? I feel like I think in black and white when it comes to EMS calls. I know a sore throat doesn't need EMS and I know that cardiac arrest does needs EMS. But there are some gray areas where I think "hmm yeah they need to see a doctor but do I need an ambulance??" For instance, a staff member with what is considered a hypertensive crisis by numbers but they have only a mild headache and show no neurological deficits and are otherwise asymptomatic. I mean, yeah 180's/100's is nasty and I want them to be evaluated but in a situation where they aren't in distress... should I call an ambulance? I've called EMS probably 10 times in my 3 years of school nursing and only 2 of those have been true medical emergencies that paramedics intervened for. The other times, EMS shows up, takes vitals and says to the parent (for student) or staff, "it's your choice if you want to go to the hospital or not." So that furthers my questions of what really needs EMS and what doesn't. I feel dumb for asking this ☹️

Interesting topic. I've thought about this a lot as I'm a brand new parent of nearly 5 months. For reference, I've been a nurse for 4 years now and I'm in my mid-20's. I think being a mom was always something I thought about eventually being while growing up, but I knew I wanted to be married and have a degree and a career before doing so. In 2019, three weeks before getting married, we unexpectedly but joyously learned I was pregnant. Unfortunately we lost that pregnancy 3 days before we wed. Kids weren't on our mind before I saw those 2 lines, but once we realized we had one on the way (and eventually lost them) it was like something clicked in me that said "it's time now." So, 6 months after marrying, we conceived again - this time intentionally - and our son was born 9 months later. I think my motivation for wanting children is my own selfish desire to have someone of my own and love them unconditionally. I hope that my son will love me back, but making him to have someone to love me wasn't the drive. Upon deep reflection, I realize, too, that having kids was just something everyone does (I know it's not). I respect people that have children and I respect people that choose not to have children. As loved and wanted as my son is, it took having him to realize just how different life is for me now. Everything I do or don't do revolves around him now. I repeat: my son is so loved and wanted. But I realize now that I had more opportunity and potential to do whatever else I wanted with my life, perhaps accomplish more personally/professionally/financially, if we'd waited to have him. But then, he wouldn't be here and my life now doesn't feel complete without him. The thought is a double-edged sword.

I am super impressed that you toggle all of that (seemingly successfully given the circumstances) as a NEW GRAD. And I'm pleasantly surprised here that everyone agrees this is an egregious assignment. My first job out of school was on a cardiovascular progressive care (step-down unit) and your description of your shift sounds eerily similar to mine, except sub some of the GI drains for chest tubes from heart transplants or CABG's, or LVADs that needed dressing changes or other troubleshooting. I could only put up with shifts like that for so long before it really wore me down and I had to leave the bedside. When I tried to express how hard these types of shifts were to my coworkers, they'd all tell me to get with the program and power through it-- as if it was normal to have heavy patient loads, skip lunch, and stay late to chart on a regular basis? You've gotten good advice here. I do hope you can catch a break soon!

Communication in a multi-disciplinary team is a whole other language in itself. You don't think it'd be beneficial for there to be at least one lesson over what to expect and how to effectively communicate in these teams before a new grad hits the floor? For learners like me, learning theory before doing a skill is better than being thrown into it I.e. 'learning on the job.' Maybe I'm being a chump here but retrospectively I think it would've been nice to have a few practice SBAR exercises in a senior class such as capstone so I could have a baseline on that before finding myself fumbling on the floor 1 month into my career.

Yep, tried all this. We had an incident in the bathroom last week and the girl was sitting in a chair someone had rolled in for her; I kneeled down next to her and told her to deep breathe-- even demonstrated for her. She didn't even look at me. She was in her own world. I know attacks manifest differently for everyone and it's not uncommon to tunnel like that. Just makes me feel like my effort is futile. And after these failed interventions my admin look at me like "okay, what do we do now?" and insist on calling EMS.

I work at the high school level and there are a lot of students with mental health disruptions. I will be called to a bathroom where a student is having a full-blown panic attack. My question is, what do you guys say to students who are having these panic attacks? I don't know why, but all I can manage to say to them is "it's okay, you're okay, it'll be okay," which I know isn't therapeutic. I've tried the "name 5 things you can see, 4 things you can hear, 3 things you can touch..." exercise but it has never worked. Usually they just blank out and ignore me anyway when I do try to say anything meaningful to try and calm them down. Anyone have any tips on what I can say/do to help these students?

I think there absolutely needs to be some sort of lecture about communication in healthcare-- not necessarily how to work on yourself as an individual re: communication skills. When they taught us SBAR they said "make sure you give a really good background or else the physician will yell at you for waking them up and not knowing what you're talking about." And that's it. So understandably, as a new grad fumbling over my SBAR to an attending cardiothoracic surgeon at 4 am, I felt a type of way when I got yelled at. You do learn how to more effectively communicate with other members of the care team on the job, but I agree that it would be helpful to have some sort of baseline to build on-- one that's established in school.

I am at the HS level and deal with this on a daily basis. Kids will come to me for their attendance slip after they've already texted/called parents to get them. I have them sit in the front office and the parent will have to sign them out as a personal absence. I won't be affiliated with that absence if I'm not the one initiating it.