SurgicalTechCST

Im just a little curious about what you said. If it's competitive and even difficult to get in in the first place, why are they paying sign on bonuses at all? I would think sign on bonuses would only be needed if they were having some difficulty to get anyone at all interested in a career, no matter how short or long, as an Air Force Nurse? (Asking as a former Air Force dependent, formerly completely enamored of the idea of joining the Air Force myself, and tried my damndest to do it, and a strong lifelong interest in the medical profession. I grew up in the shadow of Langley AFB, in Hampton, Va., And when my eyesight - and ONLY my eyesight at a 1/4 of a diopter over the -5.00 limit in 1975, kept me from enlisting during my otherwise perfect experience at MEPS, and acing the ASVAB, 3 years of AFJrROTC in high school and a written guarantee, signed, sealed and delivered, of walking in the door with one stripe on my sleeve - with all that going on, they said "No waivers, sorry." And gave me a bus ticket back home from Richmond. Anyway, I couldnt get in one way, so I married my way in Not quite the same, but that's OK. After 41-1/2 years of marriage, it would all have been a long ago memory for me by now anyway..but I still miss it. Also, I was going into medical, as I had no $$ for nursing school.)

Shame 5 years studying the rules and regulations of hard and fast, scientifically backed health care policies of the nursing schools and clinical sites, only to be interested in how to go about getting around them successfully, and becoming a health care practitioner who could have been done with school and a year into employment by now. And the clock keeps ticking while the costs involved keep going up. And up. And up some more. It's a highly competitive program, with hundreds of people lining up for a few jobs. And the clock keeps ticking......

Scary?? No - that's absolutely frightening.

I would very cheerfully bet any named sum of money that it would involve more time to ride the legal battlewagon through that sort of court fight than is available to the OP for any employment anywhere doing anything for anyone, merely by virtue of running out of employable lifespan. Not to mention an amount of money that would easily fund several full ride scholarships at any good 4 year university nursing program, public or private, urban or suburban.

I don't mean to sound obtuse, because I'm really not. Just a matter of lack of information more than anything, but I've read so many replies talking about snail-mailing paper letters home to parents, and it confuses me just a bit. The schools my children attended did that, but by the time they graduated high school, the general leaning was towards emailing parents with important information, providing that the parent had an actual email account. This being 1997 & 1999, the trend was definitely there, but the coverage wasn't. NOW, however, having been a substitute teacher for our local school system for a few years not that long ago, EVERYBODY, including the students, has at least one email account if not several. (I have four myself, and I'm now 60!) Wouldn't it be very much more efficient to send these types of notices to a designated email account that the parent has indicated for ALL their school communication? I know you used to be able to set them up to indicate whether or not they had been read, but I don't mess with stuff like that anymore, because for me it's just not that important that I know that. It's certainly free, as opposed to mailing costs, no paper is involved, and a template can be devised much easier than making a paper form letter, which will just as likely hit the "File 13" when it hits the home mailbox. As a former volunteer Clinic Assistant, in my kids' schools, which being part of an enormous underfunded urban system when they first started school, had NO nurse at all much more frequently than they DID have one. That was back when everything was done on paper, because there weren't other options yet in the mid-80's. But, since then, things have changed a great deal. Do they not allow you access to the email accounts, or is it a part of HIPPA of which I'm not aware to send such information over the email servers? It just seems like such a simple solution, I feel like I must be missing something very basic here that I should know. I can't offer direct solutions, but I suppose that asking that question is permissable here.

Ditto!!! AND after coming home from shopping, washing hands immediately. Also, I never put my purse in that seat where Lord only knows how many diapered backsides have been sitting, squirming, etc. I either leave it in the trunk of my car, with my cell phone and debit card and driver's license are in my pockets, or I drop the purse down in the cart and run the seatbelt through my purse strap to keep it from "wandering away" in someone else's custody! Safe from crime AND germs at the same time!

Kay's Caps is SO AWESOME when it comes to finding and having your old cap recreated for under $20!!! They have not only all their what they call Stock Styles," which you can see on their website catalog, and order right up front from their online order site, which is of course all safe and secure, like most everyone else's is, for less than the special caps price - I think it's about $12 or so - but still cheap at almost any price! This includes those organdy fluffy, pleated ones that look like cupcake liners turned upside down, and some with three sides to them! And some smaller versions of these standards - I can't imagine keeping something much smaller than what I had secure on my head! - but if that's what you need, they've got it. And, the special US Army and US Navy uniform hospital duty caps, too. When you were in the military branches, you wore THEIR cap, no matter what school you graduated from. You were an officer in the Army or Navy, and you wore their designated uniforms, including caps, period, on duty or not. And Kay's has them. US Air Force nurses wore the Army style, once the US Air Force became it's own separate service in 1948, but after a while, instead of plain white, they added a sky blue velvet stripe around the cuff of their caps, not to show rank like the Navy did with theirs, but to differentiate between them and the Army Corps nurses. Army and Air Force officer rank was shown with collar devices, just as everyone else in both those services. US Navy nurses showed rank with the size and arrangement of their gold over black velvet stripes. That's why you may see in older movies where different Navy nurses' caps look different. Back to Kay's Caps - when they created special designs for specific schools, of course they kept those patterns. Now, here's where it gets EXTRA COOL - when two other large companies, who also made caps, went out of business, due to the market for them hitting the bottom of the barrel, Kay's Caps bought them out!! And this was of course including ALL their patterns as well! SO - if the cap had originally been made by White Crown Caps (what a great name!) or by Fort Orange Caps, you can STILL get your cap remade. They have over 3,000 patterns in stock! For the same price. Shipping for one cap is the same, no matter which kind you get. But, of course they still do group orders, when needed, so if you think you want to get your own cap, there may be a few others of your coworkers who do too. So, check and see if Kay's will give a break on the shipping for ordering more than one cap, and shipping them all to the same address. Now, if your cap turns out to be one that originally included embroidered initials of your school's name, or a fabric stripe sewn on (see the "Nurse Betty" style cap in their catalog, with the wide gray stripe, to see what I mean) they do that too. BUT if your cap is supposed to have a velvet stripe applied on the cuff, whatever color, that's on you. Most fabric stores carry velvet ribbon, in many colors, so you can get it there and apply it yourself. Now, here's a secret every "Old School" nurse knows, for how to put those ribbons on, so they stay PUT, but are easily removable in order to wash the cap. KY Jelly! A smear of KY along the back side of the ribbon is all it takes to get it stuck on, and you can still wiggle it around a bit before it dries, in order to get it perfectly straight. Don't EVER use a hot glue gun!!! It's a disaster waiting to happen, believe me! You'll never get that ribbon off without wrecking it, and it can damage the cap too. The KY washes off just fine, and after the cap is air dried, and pressed flat again, if it needs it, with a warm iron, then you can start again with the same ribbon, or a new one if you wish, and KY it right back on the cap again! Leave it at least 24 hours to dry, and remember to put the ribbon back on AFTER you have buttoned the cap back in shape!! If you try to put it on the cap while it's flat, and then bend it round and button it back in shape, you can imagine what happens! It pops right back off again! Anyway, that's all I know (I think) to share about caps, getting them from Kay's, and taking care of those ribbons! Yes, I got my cap in nursing school, yes I wore it everyday of clinicals, no, I didn't wear it on the job, yes still have it, and yes, I am a cap collector and researcher!

There's one. It's about 2" thick. That's it! 53 lessons, one a week, for one year!

It was actually a total of 53 lessons - 52 if you don't count the first "introductory" lesson, where they talk about who they are, what they are going to do for you, what kind of person makes the best kind of nurse, study skills, etc., etc., ad infinitum..... For approximately one year, if you do one lesson per week, take the quizzes and exams on time, send things right back in the mail, etc. And this is to BE a Practical Nurse, from scratch. You got quite a good deal starting out to be an LPN! But, then you have to consider the inflationary effects on $375 in the later '70's! I went to LPN school myself at 20, after my husband got out of the Air Force, and we moved to his home state of Indiana. I got into a program called CETA, which was almost like the Pell Grants but better, in that it not only paid for all school expenses, books, tuition, uniforms, caps, shoes, a quarterly allowance at the school bookstore for supplies, but also paid you minimum wage to go to school! You filled out a timesheet every week, just like a job, and turned it in to the school office, and I got a paycheck in the mail the next week. It was great. I have no idea what all it would have cost out of pocket, because this was at a Vocational-Technical College, and I didn't bother looking at it at the time. We moved to Indiana after he got discharged from the Air Force, and had a hard time finding work in the middle of noplace where his family all lived. So, we got pretty broke pretty quick, but found our way out of it in time. I found out about CETA, and the school, and his brother-in-law got him work at the Union trucking warehouse he drove out of. So, we did OK. My husband and I married one year after I had graduated from high school (Class of '75) the end of July, 1976! He was a 20 year old two-striper in the Air Force, and I was 19. My plans made early in high school to join the Air Force collapsed completely after spending the last two years in high school in the AFJRROTC program, doing three years work in two, becoming that Corps first female officer, having the first all girls drill team, etc. I went through the recruiter that contacted me after taking their entrance exams, the ASVABs, and acing every section but one, losing only one point on the other. Got as far as MEPs, in Richmond, VA to go in. Was supposed to go to Basic Training with one stripe already on my sleeve. Got sworn in, then started the Physicals. The very last part - after going through absolutely EVERYTHING else (!) - was the eye exam. I was nearsighted, and we all knew it, but I had no idea that I would test at ¼ of a diopter over the limit! No such thing as LASIK yet, of course. They even sent me to a private, civilian ophthalmologist to see if he could get me any closer to the high limit. He couldn't do it either. So, back I went, paperwork in hand, and ended up getting a medical discharge on the spot. And a bus ticket back to home on the coast, where I lived and grew up. On the Chesapeake Bay. In tears all the way. Longest:cry: bus ride of my life. ANYWAY, back to the subject at hand - my husband and I got engaged six months later, and married the following July! At his rank, even including the new allowances he got for being a married Airman, for housing and his food, we only cleared a little more than $8,000! For the year! And I worked off and on, part time. Knee surgery after we married, in a military hospital - free at that time - kept me out of the labor force for about six months. But - we had a nice little apartment that included all utilities except phone for $145 a month. Besides car insurance, plates, gas, and groceries, we had NO expenses. We owned the car outright, since I had bought it from my mother with my own money I made waiting tables. No bills. Nada. Zip! And we paid our rent with the money we got for his BAQ - Bachelor Airman Quarters is what that stood for - and was part of that total. The Commissary was awesome - the base grocery - sold groceries at their cost, plus a very small margin, and they had bag boys working at every register, who worked strictly for tips. They were falling over each other for those jobs! I made sure to tip them generously, since I had waited tables in high school. Anyway, we didn't have kids for three years, so every penny we made was pretty much our own to do with as we pleased. But looking back on that money now, it sure doesn't seem like much. But, at the time, since we had so few obligations, what we had was pretty much all ours! It was a ton of fun, and I almost wish we could go back there now. But that means we'd have to relive the past 40 years! If we could do it with knowledge of what was to come, I'd almost agree to it! We'd sure know what to avoid the second time around!

I happen to have the text from this program. It is indeed a course for "Practical Nurses." I'm not sure exactly what the procedures were at the time regarding licensure for Practical Nurses as opposed to Registration for RNs. The copyright date is 1945, right around the end of WWII. Practical Nurses, the vast majority of whom worked in Private Duty nursing for acute cases, taking care of new mothers and their babies for the first couple of weeks following delivery, or caring for chronically ill adults, children or the elderly, did not spend a great deal of their time working in hospitals. They are described here as working primarily in patient's homes, doctors offices, and small sanitariums which generally didn't have training schools for nurses. With the extreme nursing shortage that existed during the war, when hospitals were vastly understaffed and up to 80% of all hands-on nursing care was provided by Cadet Student Nurses and Red Cross Volunteer Nurses Aides, I imagine that there were ample amounts of work available for Practical Nurses to take on in private duty work, both in patient's homes and in hospitals. There is a "Pledge of the Nurse" in the front of this book. It bears little resemblance to the "Florence Nightingale​ Pledge" (not written by or even for Florence Nightingale, but in her honor) taken by all RNs for decades, other than it's a promise to conduct oneself in a professional manner in regard to interactions with patients, their families and doctors. It says, and I quote: "I pledge solemnly and in the name of God and my own conscience to perform faithfully all the duties that fall to a responsible nurse. I promise to live in Loyalty toward the physician; Helpfulness toward the patient intrusted (sic) to my care; Compassion toward all afflicted men, women and children; Honor toward the society in which I live, the homes which I enter, and the calling which I have chosen." And it says, at the top of the first page following that pledge, "Practical Nursing ... a Respected Career" Tah dah! There's the proof. It's a pretty thick volume, about 2" thick, with hardback covers, but it's laced together through two sets of grommets, and actually tied together on the back, and I noticed in going through the beginning pages of the program, where they explain "who we are and what we will do" and "who and what you should be and expect from us" etc, and so forth, they mention several times about "...The lessons as we send them to you." So, this book is gradually assembled by the student, as the lessons are provided over time. They give 20 "quizzes" and something they call "three honor examinations" as well, so they don't just send you lessons and leave it at that. This book appears to be complete. It contains all 53 lessons, the last of which discusses the fact that you have now received the last lesson, and will be getting your certificate after completing the final exam. No other paperwork that might have been sent to the student. It was a very interesting read a couple of years ago when I got it from eBay. If you happen to come across one of these books, it might be worth it from the standpoint of historical education, and just general curiosity!

The operative word here is "survivable." Just what is "surviving?" A $200,000+ house, a new car or two every couple of years, shopping at the most kitschy, designer supermarket around for a lot of high-dollar gourmet, "organic" food (Is there such a thing as "inorganic" food?), designer labels in the seams of clothing, purses, on cosmetics - that is NOT "surviving" in any sense of the word. Surviving is living in the town with the highest unemployment rate in the country in the deep, dark depths of Reaganomics, getting "trickled down on" while standing in line outdoors in all kinds of weather for surplus commodities the government hoarded and then doled out with an eyedropper when it was feeling especially generous - cheese, giving it the name, " The Cheese Line" and cornmeal, butter, beans of various types, and whatever else happened to be sitting around. It's spending 1/3 of your husband's net income of $178 a week on rent for an old house without air-conditioning or central heating - there was a space heater in the living room - and too old to even have closets. Mortgages were not being written for anyone who couldn't put down 30% and pay 17% interest. No, that's not a typo - I said 17%. Federally subsidized apartment complexes had two year waiting lists. It was when there were NO jobs, because even the jobs working at the grills and fryers at McDonalds were manned by laid off auto workers - same at Wendy's, Burger King, etc. It was where a woman with experience and good references, was hired to be a prep cook in a brand new restaurant, and was suddenly and completely without cause, FIRED because, as she was laughingly told by the manager, she has a husband who was working to support her, and they were hiring a MAN to replace her! And there wasn't a doggone thing she could do about it! Just like that! You're outta here!! Companies who would take on the business of helping you work out a family budget for your household, and negotiate with your creditors, while distributing reduced payments for you, for a fee of course, were flourishing. It was doing without a phone for four years because the local phone company refused to accept an out-of-state phone company as a reference in lieu of a big fat deposit, claiming that the largest phone company on the Eastern Seaboard at the time "wasn't reliable enough" to be used. It's budgeting $40 per week to feed four people - 2 under the age of 3, (21 months apart) diaper the two of them (no, without your own washer and dryer, cloth diapers were NOT cheaper) and with every penny accounted for on a calculator before reaching the cash register. (No, coupons didn't help, since nobody put out coupons to be used on plain label generic food.) Surviving was living with your husband and two children in a homeless shelter when you had no place else to go when a busted gas line in the street managed to fill YOUR house up with gas while you were out grocery shopping on a Friday afternoon with both your kids, and the "landlord" was a bank in Indianapolis, over an hour away, and unavailable on a Friday evening. It took a week to dig up the street, while all the windows in my house were open in February to air the place out; replace the line, restore service, then refuse to relight your furnace because the heat exchanger had a "crack" you could put your head in. Then, getting the landlord to approve the expense to be taken out of rent so you could get it fixed. On the neighbor's phone. Long distance. Collect! It was standing in endless lines to prove you have the right to a few food stamps to help feed your kids, then endless more lines every month to prove you still do, then yet another line to collect those books of paper stamps to use while other people sniffed and looked down their noses while you sorted out the food from the non-food, the eligible from the ineligible, in the cart while you waited in the seemingly endless Friday night lines; then pay with stamps what you could and pay with cash what you couldn't. And there was NO junk in my cart. There was fruit, vegetables, meat, cereals (not junky presweetened crap) and plenty of milk and juice. No chips, no pop, no cookies, no ice cream except for birthdays. Home baked cake for birthdays, homemade cookies for treats, and my one concession to junk was Kool Aid in the summertime. If I decided a Pepsi might be nice, I gathered up a little change, put the kids in the stroller, and we walked to the gas station down by the corner and got one - two on a good day, saving one for tomorrow. It was pulling the shades on the sunny side of the house in the boiling summer heat - the Midwest gets just as hot, if not hotter, than many other parts of the country, with 90°+ and 90%+ humidity - keeping open the windows and shades on the "cooler" side, setting the box fan on the coffee table, covering the sofa with a sheet because it felt cooler than the upholstery; stripping the kids to t-shirts and diapers, me to shorts and a tank top, and watching TV (no cable) in the afternoon, and them napping there in front of the fan. Me too, if it was tolerable. Spending half a Saturday at the laundromat, washing and drying, sorting and folding all the week's laundry. If i could manage it, maybe saving back a buck and getting a hamburger and drink at a drive thru on the way, to sit and eat while I waited for the washers, a treat that I didn't have to cook or clean up after myself, beyond throwing the empty wrappers or cup in the trash! THAT IS SURVIVING. Above survival was getting close to the end of that horrible era, my husband getting a promotion AND a $2 an hour raise, a transfer to Indianapolis for which we had 10 days notice (!), which was paid for in terms of moving vehicles, but not in terms of the work - he and I did all that ourselves, alone. I had all the clothes put away, and the kitchen unpacked and put away, the boxes broke down and stored away before we went to bed that first night! We had found an apartment with central heat and A/C, and I swore that if I had to make payments on it, I was going to run that Air Conditioner 24/7 and be COMFORTABLE for a change. The whole bill, at the end of the first month, was HALF what the other company had been charging us without A/C! I saw that total, and burst into tears. I could actually go shopping for name brand groceries IF I wanted to! And pay cash for them, without any sorting, or getting sneered at by that group of people who couldn't get food stamps for themselves. My kids didn't have to wear "Hand me downs" from cousins if I didn't want them to. But, we still had a gathering a couple of times a year to swap kid's clothes and stories. We took several vacation trips over the years that were very memorable, both with and without the kids. They had a good time, because they got to stay with cousins, or even go with them on their trips! And it's important for couples to have their own times together. Even at our best time, we saw $60,000 combined income for a few years. Before taxes, and after our kids were in high school! Being a CST doesn't pay too shabby either, especially if you are a Traveler. Unfortunately I couldn't do that (Traveling) more than a few years. But we did enjoy it. We didn't get in over our heads either, when we bought cars, or our house. I think the common expression is "living within your means." We didn't buy more house than we needed, or at the high end of what we qualified for either. Never bought a new car, but well-cared-for used cars. We don't have a mailbox full of bills every month either. The house payment is less than what many pay in rent, and our cars are paid for. Other than the cost of daily life, we have no other "bills" to speak of. We pay cash, we drive older cars - our newest car is a 2000 Mercury Sable, with 196,000 miles in it. It's actually "my" car, since I bought and paid for it myself, but we just use whatever suits the purpose at the time, because that's how we've always done it. We have two others - a GMC truck for hauling stuff around, including ourselves because it is a very comfortable ride; and a compact car that my husband calls "The Commuter Scooter" because it gets great mileage and he drives about 40 miles one way to work five days a week. Oh - what does he do? He's a mechanic of course, and keeps all those vehicles in functional running order! Since I've become disabled, we haven't had too many occasions for going out. I haven't been out my front door since I had surgery the week before Thanksgiving. Dreary? Perhaps. But I keep myself mentally occupied, which is enough to pass the time. I think surviving is mostly a matter of perspective, more than anything. What is merely surviving for one may be living high on the hog to someone else who has had it a good bit worse. It just depends on your starting point.

I see that - thanks for pointing that out.

Just a thought - make sure she knows his "alias" name as well. Just so it won't slip past as if coming from someone else. Although, i seriously doubt he would ever follow through on his threats. If he knows anything about it, he would also know they would require some kind of background proof, and since he has never been your patient, knows THAT would be easy to prove also. Glad he's gone! Take time - even 10 minutes is enough sometimes - to take care of YOU! There's been a great deal of good quality advice given in a lot of these posts about doing that. I can tell you from personal experience of having had my much loved, successful career snatched away from me for good and all, by a body which is rapidly deteriorating from several serious physical conditions I can no longer have "fixed" anymore, that taking care of yourself spiritually and emotionally is absolutely critical. Even a few minutes here and there is worth many times the effort involved in making that happen. My best wishes to you as you move forward in your life and your career. I wish you only good things. Best regards - Shari

Typical egotistical, "I am God's gift to women" blowhard who thinks you're all that and a bag of chips UNTIL you reject his unwarranted, unwanted advances, and THEN you suddenly become all the mean, nasty, unpronounceable things I simply won't repeat by writing them here! He's a single/divorced middle aged man with a Superman complex, and is trying to use his self-appointed male "superiority" to threaten and frighten you into giving him anything he can get from you. DO CALL THE COPS RIGHT NOW if you haven't already, and get them to advise you on the best way to get this man out of your home immediately. Not having a written, signed lease agreement isn't going to help you, but it won't help HIM either. He's got nothing in writing to back up any claims he could make. And one picture of one liquor bottle does not an investigation make. Do not even attempt to "verify" with him that he doesn't have a key, because he probably does, and he WILL LIE ABOUT IT. Count on it, and have the locks changed immediately. As in have the locksmith out there now. Or when he (the creep) leaves, waiting and ready to go to work, the minute you say go. Even before he's completely out of the premises. Get a restraining order against him too, to establish a legal paper trail to keep him away from you. Good luck with everything, and keep us posted on how it's going!

One thing I have not seen anyone mention is if the four year BSN and EVERYTHING else it encompasses is so absolutely essential to becoming a desirable, hireable, useful, essential "walk in the door" entry level model nurse, then where do all the RNs with BSNs in their portfolio fit in, when they can walk in to almost any university nursing program with a Bachelor's Degree in ANY other discipline, from Engineering to Zoology to Education, and in 12-16 months, walk in to the Pinning Ceremony and walk away with said BSN? How much of that 48 months of time spent in Pre-Nursing and actual Nursing education is essential to becoming a good, basic bedside care nurse? Agreed, many of the basic education courses - English Comp 101, the college maths, Physical Education electives, Psych and Soc electives, make a good, well rounded, educated holder of the Bachelor's Degree, but it seems it really only takes 12-16 months to make a nurse out of them? Because that is what is happening all over the country. My daughter just did it a couple of years ago. She got her BSN in 16 months in a local, highly respected University program, associated with an equally highly respected hospital clinical program (the only facility with which they associate, although her clinical experiences were divided up amongst several different hospital-owned and run programs, including a Free Clinic run for the benefit of the chronically homeless, etc.) So, how about it? Just how much of that University level, four year focused BSN program is really focused on turning out good nurses? Apparently if you walk in with the right prerequisites already covered from anywhere else, as long as some are not more than 10 years old, and a few others no more than five, you can take one more year, or maybe 16 months more, and turn it into a BSN. YES, I already have done the math, and yes, I see that when you add up all the numbers - 4 years for the first degree plus the additional time to make a BSN out of it equals at least five years, or five years and four months. My question isn't about the total time involved, but the actual time it takes to create an actual functioning bedside care RN.