What to do about DNP and flu shot?

Nurses General Nursing

Updated:   Published

I am finishing my MSN soon, and had thought that I would get my DNP. However, I am second guessing this after a big ordeal from my school about me not taking a flu shot. My hospital does not require it if I wear a mask. I hate to put the time and money into getting a DNP, and at some point be required to take a flu shot to work in nursing. I WILL NOT. I will change careers. I’m not looking for pro flu shot comments here. However, I am looking for advice and useful information on what you think the future holds in this matter. I also have an MBA, and can just as easily go into a DBA program.

Specializes in Adult Internal Medicine.
4 hours ago, aheld said:

I’m curious what you think one flu shot per year is going to do to you, in terms of “harming” your body.

Most likely a coin flip between 1. I got the flu from the flu shot or 2. I never get sick. Or worry it's goign to make a grown adult autistic. Or GBS.

6 Votes
2 hours ago, BostonFNP said:

Most likely a coin flip between 1. I got the flu from the flu shot or 2. I never get sick. Or worry it's goign to make a grown adult autistic. Or GBS.

Aren't you aware of "all the DEATHS" that are caused by the flu shot????????

2 Votes
Specializes in New Grad RN.
3 hours ago, Horseshoe said:

Aren't you aware of "all the DEATHS" that are caused by the flu shot????????

Lol. Thank you for this. Happy Friday!

2 Votes
On 2/13/2020 at 11:05 AM, KatieMI said:

I know I risk to direct conversation into entirely different area. Sorry if it happens, but...

The thing is, despite of the avalanche of "nursing research", "nursing diagnosis", accent on EBM in schools and so forth at the present time nursing as it is in the USA remains clearly anti-science at large.

A typical nursing education involves 1 to 4 years in college or university. The shorter the program (as they are for LPNs), the closer they are to good old-fashioned nursing which was mostly based on old wives' tales and haphazard instructions. One year is not enough even to prepare students to the level of mental discipline and ctitical thinking required for understanding of basics of EBM, especially counting for the initial level of the students. And the first thing these students hear the first day they hit the floor:

- all right, newbies, now listen: this is not your school. Forget everything you got from there and do as you're told from now on.

They are "encouraged" to ask questions but we all here know what does it mean in real life.

2 or 4 years programs try to make semblance of teaching "science". But while pressuring into students' heads gazillion of facts, they do not place them in context. Critical thinking is rarely required. Students learn that b-blockers slow heart down and even how they do it, but they are not able to answer a simple question: what will likely happen with blood pressure if patient on nonselective b-blocker gets a flu with high fever? They know everything they supposed to know about inflammation and b-blockers, they just cannot make connections.

And they hear the ****ed phrase above the day they hit the floor at the first time.

Then there comes the first job and those jokes about "what nursing school did not teach me, part 1". What those enormous books are all about? Research, evidence, critical thinking, analysis? Nope, they are about fineries of placing bedpans "the way we always do it", policies, schmolicies, lateral violence and finding ways to speak with nutty docs at the middle of the night. And, above it all - "safety", "advocacy" and "doing my job as a nurse". The totally wrong, incredibly mistaken concepts beaten into the medulla oblongata of every novice nurse.

A nurse tears the phone apart all night long while "taking care" of a healthy as a bull young patient who got a bad case of influenza A. Patient is tachycardic, tachypneic, feverish, has chest congestion, heartburn and nausea. Minimally elewated lactate and WBCs of 17 with 60% lympho. He wanna sleep and for that reason is kinda slow. At that, the nurse subsequently activated:

- code sepsis

- code stroke

- code ACS

She made over 20 calls overnight demanding this and that to be ordered "as per protocol". If she couldn't wheedle what she wanted from one doc after being explained why the test was not needed, she immediately went to badger someone else and then was sitting at the patient's neck squeezing out of him that "mandatory" urinalysis. The total cost of absolutely useless tests done in just 12 h was over $5000.

Next morning the patient was doing significantly worse after being dragged around the whole place the whole night long plus being dropped from the stretcher in CT scan.

I got the management onboard. The nurse literally did not understand what was her fault: it was for "safety" and "alertness", she was "just advocating for the patient" and "it was her job to alert providers and made appropriate suggestions because in SOAP "P" stays for "plan". The nurse was not new. I wish those $5000 would be taken from her salary to the last red cent.

After that, anybody is suprised that an a nurse who "believes" in utter antivaxx nonsense works in ICU, that MSN prepared nurse was looking on this forum about "some evidence" related to how exactly much doors of the restrooms must be left apart (there was such topic a couple of years ago) and that thinking, brainy, knowledge-thirst nurses run from bedside as fast as they can?

I do not know what to do with all that. Individual education works (for above case, I managed to explain the nurse why hat she did was wrong from B to Z, as A was kinda right thing to do (she noted symptoms, after all). It took 1.5 hours and $3.50 or Starbucks coffee. But I am one of the very few providers who does such things.

I grew up with a girl who has been an ER nurse for a while. She went to a program that is very expensive and kind of known as the place where you can go if you don't get into the other programs. Anyways, she's always posting anti-vax articles and sharing things in support of nurses who refuse flu shots. It really baffles me honestly. She was not very... academic in school when I knew her. To put it bluntly, she was kind of an idiot. It appears as though she still is and it scares me to know that if I have to go to the ER she could be in charge of my care. To be against evidence-based practice is, in my opinion, to be against the foundations of the profession. If everyone provided care based on their personal beliefs, we'd all be screwed, and to pick and choose which evidence you'll support and which you won't is walking a dangerous line.

6 Votes
Specializes in Former NP now Internal medicine PGY-3.
On 1/29/2020 at 6:49 PM, Travelingon said:

I am finishing my MSN soon, and had thought that I would get my DNP. However, I am second guessing this after a big ordeal from my school about me not taking a flu shot. My hospital does not require it if I wear a mask. I hate to put the time and money into getting a DNP, and at some point be required to take a flu shot to work in nursing. I WILL NOT. I will change careers. I’m not looking for pro flu shot comments here. However, I am looking for advice and useful information on what you think the future holds in this matter. I also have an MBA, and can just as easily go into a DBA program.

Stop reading antivax blogs and go work as a secretary with your MBA

3 Votes
Specializes in Former NP now Internal medicine PGY-3.
On 2/8/2020 at 1:17 PM, Banana nut said:

I didn't pay for my degree it was all free. I love my work and I love critical care. And i love not getting my flu shot

If I was a patient and new my nurse didn’t get a flu shot I’d refuse that nurse. ESP if I was in the ICU or had some chronic lung disease or immuno suppression. Idk why anti Vax people go into healthcare. It’s a free country to do what you want but putting patients at risk to feel like a special snowflake is sad.

suprised the physicians don’t raise a stink about it. I bet if the pulmonologist knew you were A festering antivaxxer they would oust you from the unit

7 Votes
Specializes in CRNA, Finally retired.

Yeah, that's where I go for my nursing information....People magazine. Those actresses are pretty dang gum smart. It's so depressing that someone with so little mentality is working in an ICU where the patients are so fragile.

8 Votes
Specializes in Psych, Addictions, SOL (Student of Life).

I get a flu shot every year - it used to be because I had to get one. In Los Angeles County the Department of Health and the Department of Mental Health Require it. We also offer free flu shots to any person who comes through our doors.

In 2012 I joined the ranks of the immunocompromised when I had sever gastro-intestinal issues that lead to my having 18 inches of the transverse and descending colon removed. Shortly after that I was diagnosed with type 2 DDM. This was discovered when I had wound healing complications from the afore mentioned surgery.

I too would refuse care from a nurse who had not had a flu shot. I don't want to get that sick again. Everything I get takes longer to kick. I do a lot of holistic stuff but I balance that with the interventions that science has proven to be effective.

So I agree that if the OP has an MBA he/she should just go use that. Probably more money in that than nursing anyway.

Hppy

7 Votes
Specializes in Dialysis.
On 1/29/2020 at 6:49 PM, Travelingon said:

I’m not looking for pro flu shot comments here. However, I am looking for advice and useful information on what you think the future holds in this matter.

I'm wondering if you've found what you're looking for. I still stand by my comment that it's totally up to the school, not any of us. Just curious

2 Votes
Specializes in Former NP now Internal medicine PGY-3.
12 minutes ago, Hoosier_RN said:

I'm wondering if you've found what you're looking for. I still stand by my comment that it's totally up to the school, not any of us. Just curious

Probably didn’t I think he or she was just looking for affirmation

3 Votes
Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.
On 2/16/2020 at 3:29 PM, Hoosier_RN said:

I'm wondering if you've found what you're looking for. I still stand by my comment that it's totally up to the school, not any of us. Just curious

On 2/16/2020 at 3:42 PM, Tegridy said:

Probably didn’t I think he or she was just looking for affirmation

OP visited the site 2 hours ago, but hasn't responded to this thread since 2/5. I'm guessing we won't get follow up, most likely because OP wasn't told what she wanted to hear, here or by the school.

6 Votes

This article references a large study demonstrating a 630% increase in influenza viral shedding by vaccinated individuals who have received the flu vaccine compared to those who had not received the flu vaccine.

https://www.naturalnews.com/2018-01-30-flu-vaccine-bombshell-630-more-aerosolized-flu-virus-particles-emitted-by-people-who-received-flu-shots-flu-vaccines-actually-spread-the-flu.html

2 Votes
+ Add a Comment