student doing a report please help me answer these question!!!

Yankee in TX · Oct 14, 2003

1. Depends on the title: I believe LPN is 1 yr plus prereq"s. I have an ADN & when I went to school it was for 2 1/2 yrs, BSN is for 4 yrs. Advanced degrees are longer.

2. I am agency & I make $ 37.00 per hour in ICU/CCU/IMCU, no benefits.

3. Care of complicated, multisystem problem patients. Misc other duties. This could go on forever.

4. History???

5. Very important. Without a nurses eyes & hands on care the MD's would not be able to take care of "their" pts. As a RN , I see the pt ( not as much as I would like ) much more than the MD does.

Good luck with your project.

Blanche · Oct 29, 2003

1. The education needed is an Associates Degree in Applied Science. That should take 2 years but usually takes 3.years There are Diploma programs in hospitals They take 3 years, or Bacholar of Science Degrees, 4 years. Nursing courses may say they are a 9 hour course (18 hrs of study per week) But are more like an 18 hr course(36 hrs of study required per week) And reality shock is significant. Nursing is an Art and a Science. If you aren't in LOVE with nursing you'll never stay the full course.

2. Salary, unlimited. There is a severe nurse Shortage. (for the above reasone) Many offers will be made before graduation. Listen carefully and DO NOT take the first offer. It has to be a good fit or the nurse is miserable, not able to work at maximum capacity.Nursing is not just another job, it is a profession,with all that implies. :eek:

mattsmom81 · Oct 31, 2003

1) Nurses have different levels of practice, from LVN to RN, as mentioned...plus can go on for a Masters and even Doctorate. Many Masters prepared RN's work in advanced practice roles as Nurse Practitioners, Clinical Specialists, Nurse Anesthetists, and as faculty in nursing school.

2) Salary varies but basic RN salary is comparable roughly to that of a teacher. In my area LPN's start about $13 hr and RN's about $19 hr. We make more $$ if we work shiftwork (nights) and have advanced certifications in a specialty. Nurse practitioners start at about 80K a year I believe...more than a basic RN. Same for anesthetists.

3) Nurses care for ill patients in hospitals, supervising assistants as well as providing direct care. We work in hospitals, long term care centers (nursing homes) schools, insurance companies, public health, doctors offices, and in the home (visits to homebound patients in their own homes).

4)Nursing as a profession is very fond of our history...Florence Nightengale is the founder of modern nursing and is a favorite nurse role model for political activism in improving the state of health of the public.

5)Nurses are the foundation of health care...and are the largest group of healthcare workers a facility employs, because we actually oversee all the work performed that gets sick people 'well' again. The doctor makes decisions on how a patient will be treated medically, and the nurses provide expert nursing care. A nurses' primary role is to be an advocate for the patient within the healthcare system. It is a very important but often unappreciated role. We hold a license which can be revoked if we do not meet our duties to our patients, and there are many laws governing the practice of nursing, which varies state to state.

Hope you got all your questions answered here and good luck with your project! :cool:

Blanche · Nov 4, 2003

Well said, I think that just about covers everything. Nursing is a good career, a liflong effort, a progresing and progressive profession. It also needs you to love it, and be able to let it go when you are home with your family. Nursing like medicine is an ART as well as a SCIENCE, as Florence Nightingale said.:roll

NurseByChoice · Jan 3, 2004

How is this different from asking a friend to write your paper for you? Do you have an honor code at your school? If there is, you're breaking it. Not to mention you are loosing your chance to develop critical thinking skills when you go about your assignments this way. If you can't do this assignment yourself, you can't do the next one and so on until you learn how to do it yourself. Take charge of your life--research it yourself.

If you want to showcase a nurse's personal perspective in quotes, you can do that here. But the broad impersonal questions you are asking are meant to be researched from a variety of places and answered by you, citing the sources of that information.

Here's a start for your research:

http://www.ana.org American Nurses Association

You'll find all the information and links you need there. Or just google the topics in your questions.

Plagarism is more than copying words, it is copying ideas.

Furthermore, critical thinking involves being able to evaluate and verify the sources of your information, so this is not the place to do it. I could tell you that anyone over the age of 16 can just take a 50 question online test to become an RN and you could believe me.

Now go to a reliable source like the one above to find out if that is true.

brent · Jan 25, 2004

Lighten up NurseByChoice! This person IS doing research for their paper. If you are doing a paper about nursing, why not ask a nurse.. Duh!