Felder

Congrats! I too graduated in 12/15 and took my NYS boards on 2/11. Passed with 75 questions :) I had a very similar studying schedule (well, you studied a lot more than me, lol). I only worked with Kaplan for the review portion (both in class and online) and had very similar test results for trainers and qbank. I felt that the Kaplan review program was extremely helpful and that the Kaplan SATA questions were much harder than that of the NCLEX. All the advice you gave is great... Good luck, Nurse!

I am not positive if there are registry positions available but I would be concerned with being a new nurse who has not completed orientation. I think I would be better off I took a position and was offered a 3 or 6 month orientation assigned to a nurse vs taking a register or contracted position. Do you have any experience with a registry position? Also, thanks for your input.

So to tell you all a little bit about my situation I currently work as Career Firefighter in NY. I took this job a year ago while I was in my last semester of nursing school. At the time I spoke to my nursing department chair and asked if they would save me a spot in the program next year - as I was going away 8 months for the fire academy. Fast forward to August of 15 (after graduating the academy) and I am now 'on the line' working a rotating group schedule that averages 42 working hours per week not including OT and training. I did in fact return to school full time and after many sleepless nights and going right from the firehouse to the hospital/school I finally graduated 12/15... I did a Kaplan review and took my NY boards 2/11. I paid the 7 dollars and got my quick results Saturday and found out I PASSED! Before I got my dream job as a FF I always wanted to go into ED/ICU nursing (which is where I did my Capstone)... However, now that my schedule is already filled with working full time at the firehouse I am not sure I will be able to manage such an acute care setting. I was offered a position in December after one of my clinicals at a local trauma level 1 hospital in the "Interventional Cardiology" unit, or a cardiac step down unit. I could negotiate either a 24, 28, or 36 hour a week part-time employment... So my question is: What did you do with your RN license? Are there other options that work better for Nurses who can only take on a part-time nursing job? What did you learn along the way?

Have you taken a look at your Union contract? In that contract does it specifically outline that you are entitled to your previous position for xyz about of days? If not this one might be tough to fight - as hear say does not help you. In the same regard; you are a Union paying member so you are entitled to more of a representation than just being told you are SOL...

Agh... another 'me me me' person in the health care system. Did you ever stop and think; what does being a part of a Union do for US (as a whole, not the country - just in case you wanted to take that to the extreme as well)?