TraumaRN1983

I just started the CRNA program at Westminster and there is a married couple in my class. We are just in the didactic portion right now so we are all taking classes together, but when we rotate to clinical sites next year they may not be able to go t...

I work in an SICU. For our cardiothoracic patients there are 3 acute care NP's who round with the CT surgeons in the morning, answer questions regarding floor patients and ICU patients. 2 of the NP's just work nights and there are often the first one...

I am currently working in an SICU at a level one Trauma Center, where we also have an MICU that I have floated to a couple times. Brett already pointed out a lot of differences, which I would agree with. In my SICU we see a lot of cardiothoracic pati...

I currently attend Westminster and I have one classmate out of 18 who has only PICU experience. In my interview they said they preferred adult, but like nike0777 said, you'll be way ahead when it comes to pediatric rotations! Having only PICU experie...

I would take the SICU position. First of all, SICU is usually considered the best kind of ICU experience for many CRNA programs. Also, an SICU at a large teaching hospital is one of the best kinds of experience. I know this because I worked in an SIC...

Last year we had one of our interns write in the chart: Please D/C foley Jug to bedside for urination Gee, do you think he meant plastic urinal? :-) My co-workers and I still have a good laugh over that one!

I have worked at OHSU for almost a year and a half now and during that time my fiance and I have lived in Marquam Village, which is an apartment complex about a 5-minute walk from OHSU. It's not the best-looking apartment complex but is it very conve...

I work at OHSU and I agree that it is fairly difficult to get into our ED department as a new grad. There is an ED internship program here but it is pretty competitive. You can inquire about the internship program well in advance of graduation and fi...

I have been living in Portland since Jan. 2007 and I work at Oregon Health and Sciences University (OHSU) up on the hill. If you are looking to work for a very large, academic hospital, OHSU is great. We get some of the sickest most interesting patie...

I graduated in December 2006 and started my first job on a very fast-paced intermediate care Trauma/Emergency General Surgery floor in January of 2007. I had two different preceptors, neither of which were good matches for me and left me feeling inco...

I had a 16 year old male patient who had just had a hemicolectomy. My unit secretary tells me that my patient just called and asked to have his "surgical socks" taken off. As I am walking toward my patient's room I realize that he is probably talking...

I once had a female patient who had been in an MVC and had to have a trach for several weeks before she could be decannulated. So a few days after the trach was removed, I took a phone call from her boyfriend who was calling to check in on her. He as...

I live in Portland, Oregon and as a BSN I started at 27.09 (I believe the starting rate for ADN's is 25.09). I work at a large teaching hospital and the evening shift differential is $2 and the night shift differential is $6. We also have what we cal...

I live in Portland, Oregon and as a BSN I started at 27.09 (I believe the starting rate for ADN's is 25.09). I work at a large teaching hospital and the evening shift differential is $2 and the night shift differential is $6. We also have what we cal...

This email is for all nurses within their 1st year of practice.. I am writing a paper for my nursing issues class (I graduate in May) and I need your prospective.. Please give me your honest opinion! 1. Why did you enter the nursing profession? Onc...

I work in a Trauma/Emergency General Surgery unit and on day shift we usually only have 3 patients. Sometimes we become short-staffed at 1500 when 8-hour day shifters leave and we often have to pick up one additional patient. On nights, our nurses ar...

I just graduated in December and I am currently on my 6th week of orientation and I still feel like I am missing "the big picture." I too feel so focused on tasks that I often miss important things and it scares me. I think that being a new grad is i...

I agree with VivaRN, starting out as a new grad is really rought just about anywhere you start. I am currently working on a Trauma/Emergency General Surgery Floor (Highly stressful), am on my 7th week or orientation and am due to start on my own next...

I am taking pathophysiology this semester, and it was a fairly hard class. I don't know what other classes you will be taking along with it, but I was taking med-surg with it and med-surg definetly required a lot more time and effort. I found that ha...

I am now in my junior year of a BSN program, and my first semester in the program (last Spring) I had Health Assessment, Fundamentals, Fundamentals and Health Assessment Lab/Clinical, Pharamacology and Health Promotion, and I think all of those class...

I don't know how other nursing schools work, but at my school we have a definite shortage of instructors and more students that want to be in the nursing program than there are spots for them. At the hospital I do my clinicals at, I have two instruct...

After reading many of these posts, it seems to me that most of the nurses who posted on here view nursing students as a burden and that being a preceptor for me is mentally exhausting. I am an RN nursing student in my last year, and it has been my ex...

I agree that the format of tests in nursing schools is definetly different than in other classes. A lot of the questions on our tests are similar to the format they use on the NCLEX, which is questions that make you really apply what you know rather ...

The way my nursing program worked was that you could retake any pre-reqs you weren't satisfied with and the grade you got the second time was the one that counted (unless of course, it ended up being lower than the first time). So if you got a C in C...

I took pharmacology last semester, and for our class we didn't have to do any math, we just learned all the different types of drugs, their mechanisms of action and side effects and so on. Pharmacology truly is a lot of memorization, I thought, so y...