isn't it like a full time job, minus the paycheck?

8/7/2008 10:36:26 PM

wut

8/7/2008 10:36:49 PM

The same way that people get through their classes???

8/7/2008 10:37:34 PM

except you don't spend 40-60 hours/week in classes, and if you want, you can take a lighter or part-time schedule to facilitate having a job.

8/7/2008 10:38:53 PM

suckin dick in the janitor closet for $5 a pop

8/7/2008 10:39:38 PM

Fine then, THE SAME WAY THAT PEOPLE GET THROUGH A FULL TIME JOB.
I have to say that the pay is NOT why people go into nursing.

My son has spent over half of his life in the hospital and in the care of some wonderful nurses. It is a very difficult job, but they will all tell you that it is harder to be the parent. So, if i can do it, they can do it. You just love what you do and see the end in sight.

8/7/2008 10:42:01 PM

Quote :

"isn't it like a full time job, minus the paycheck?"

yep.

Quote :

"I have to say that the pay is NOT why people go into nursing."

also true

8/7/2008 10:45:55 PM

And I don't mean to sound bitchy, because the nurses that have taken care of my son at Duke are phenomenal. But I have needed them for something and caught them dicking around on Facebook and MySpace at the nurse's station.

8/7/2008 10:47:59 PM

Why would anyone want to be a nurse anyway? That seems like the shittiest job ever.

8/7/2008 10:48:31 PM

Quote :

"Fine then, THE SAME WAY THAT PEOPLE GET THROUGH A FULL TIME JOB. "

except that a full time job pays the bills.

8/7/2008 10:49:41 PM

because its something they want to do?

8/7/2008 10:50:21 PM

they steal catalytic converters

8/7/2008 10:51:35 PM

Not all students work a paying job. Nurses aren't the only one that go through internships that do not pay -- teachers. We somehow make it. A lot of us work ourselves to death or just borrow.

8/7/2008 10:52:07 PM

how would you borrow money to live on for 2 years with no income?

8/7/2008 10:56:17 PM

Quote :

"Why would anyone want to be a nurse anyway? That seems like the shittiest job ever."

try job security amongst other things

Quote :

"I have to say that the pay is NOT why people go into nursing"

my mother made 80k last year granted she has been a nurse for 20 some years.. I'm sure 80k is nothing to you guys but she is very happy.

8/7/2008 10:59:33 PM

Quote :

"how would you borrow money to live on for 2 years with no income?"

The same way that most college students do. I only worked 2 out of the 5 years that I was in college. And those two years that I worked were VERY part time and for very little.

8/7/2008 11:02:30 PM

Yeah, nurses (at least RN and above) actually make decent pay. Nothing to write home about, but they do alright.

^ ah, see, I had the USMC paying for school and books, plus a monthly stipend, plus I worked 25 hours per week (give or take some), plus my dad helped me out...so I didn't have to borrow money. I didn't know you could just borrow 30, 40, 50k or whatever to cover living expenses for a period of time like that with no money coming in (still not sure I believe that!)

[Edited on August 7, 2008 at 11:06 PM. Reason : asdfasd]

8/7/2008 11:03:04 PM

Quote :

"how would you borrow money to live on for 2 years with no income? "

i'm borrowing money for THREE years with no income

8/7/2008 11:03:51 PM

nurse anesthetist is where its at.. but requires more school and involves a lot more liability if you fuck up

8/7/2008 11:05:06 PM

Quote :

"how would you borrow money to live on for 2 years with no income?"

figure it into your nursing school loans.

[Edited on August 7, 2008 at 11:06 PM. Reason : PA is where it's at.]

8/7/2008 11:05:52 PM

Quote :

"except that a full time job pays the bills."

my cousin is a single parent and nurse, she gets by just fine

8/7/2008 11:11:35 PM

^^salary.com has PA's starting at around 65K and nurse anesthetist's starting above 100K. don't know how accurate this is

[Edited on August 7, 2008 at 11:13 PM. Reason : ^^

[Edited on August 7, 2008 at 11:15 PM. Reason : i dont know why i am even talking about this.. it has nothing to do with the thread]

8/7/2008 11:12:56 PM

^^ no, i know that nursing pays ok.

i am asking how people manage to work a full time job for 2 years without receiving a paycheck.


i mean, yeah, if you go into nursing straight out of highschool and your parents keep you under their wing, paying for everything, i can see that. if your parents aren't so generous, or you wanted to enter the career later in life, i don't see how you'd do it, unless you could, in fact, roll $50k or so into your school loans to cover living expenses during that time.

^^ does the father pay child support? if he makes any money at ALL, he's probably covering all of the costs of the child, and maybe some extra money in her pocket.

[Edited on August 7, 2008 at 11:21 PM. Reason : asdfasd]

8/7/2008 11:19:46 PM

There are plenty of college students in general who are able to borrow enough in student loans to go to school without working a job. You figure your living expenses into the loans as someone said earlier. My best friend from HS went to Wake Forrest without a dime in his pocket or a job and borrowed enough to go for 4 years. He may be up to his eyebrows in debt now that he's out of school, but he still managed it without a job as a student.

8/7/2008 11:31:56 PM

^^ way to drag child support into everything for no reason

she lives in a trailer: she's not fucking rich off the child support

[Edited on August 8, 2008 at 12:35 AM. Reason : my grandparents helped her pay for nursing school]

8/8/2008 12:35:09 AM

^^^ interesting point.. seems like there are tons of variables but my shit ass father didn't pay for shit and him and my mom separated before she went to nursing school...

[Edited on August 8, 2008 at 12:51 AM. Reason : ugh]

8/8/2008 12:42:05 AM

Quote :

"Why would anyone want to be a nurse anyway? That seems like the shittiest job ever."

I'm seriously considering going into nursing, so I'll offer my two cents:
- You can have a lot more direct patient interaction
- You like taking care of/helping people
- There are lots, and lots, and lots of options for deriving great satisfaction from one's job. There are direct care options, educational options, public service opportunities, etc.
- You can get a job just about anywhere

Quote :

"^^salary.com has PA's starting at around 65K and nurse anesthetist's starting above 100K. don't know how accurate this is"

NA is about right. I wanna say that after she graduated with her masters, she was pulling 110K. Now that she and her husband have three kids, her schedule is something like (3) 36hr shifts a week for x number of weeks, and then a week or two off.

8/8/2008 12:43:26 AM

geez that is a rough schedule working but great time off. I think that there are a lot of schedule options for RN's but three 12 hr shifts a week or so is the norm.. still allows for great time off but I can only imagine the stress and length of the 12 hr shifts

^who is she?

[Edited on August 8, 2008 at 1:05 AM. Reason : or did i not read thoroughly]

8/8/2008 12:55:20 AM

Quote :

"I'm sure 80k is nothing to you guys"

douchebag, pilgrimshoes and amsterdam thank you for reading nothing but their posts

8/8/2008 1:03:35 AM

hu? i was not trying to be condescending.. i should of just not generalized when i posted that

[Edited on August 8, 2008 at 1:08 AM. Reason : ehhh]

8/8/2008 1:06:26 AM

come on

you can do this

8/8/2008 1:09:24 AM

in smaller cities RN's have a harder time finding work because they are expensive

8/8/2008 1:11:16 AM

^^dude I'm fucking trying .. ahha

8/8/2008 1:13:39 AM

my wife is a nurse (BSN, RN) and she's now in grad school at the UW for her CRNP (nurse practitioner). having been with her the entire nursing school and now 5 years of RN practice, I feel qualified to answer this:


clinicals are not a full time job, Duke... its just an extended lab, that happen to be 8 hour shifts.

you dont do it 5 days a week, it's mixed in with other classes, and you dont have clinicals for the 2 full years.

by the way BSN is a 4-year degree like any other BS degree, although a lot of people tend to get as a second degree, so they only have to go for 18 - 24 months. the "Diploma RN" program at tech colleges is a straight-up 2 year program for high school grads... a lot of hospitals (and all research jobs) require a BSN...

no matter which school you go to, Tech College for "Diploma RNs" or University for BSN, Nursing School is an extremely fraternal experience. I likened it to military boot camp. they even had some (minimal) PT, but really i'm referring to the mental and emotional stress. Nursing School is rough. No Joke.

and there are things called "student loans", i'm sure you've heard of them my wife also had a part time job for most of her BSN program... admittedly it was doing bio research within the school of nursing, so it was very convenient and meshed with her program. I dont know if she could have done as well with an unrelated job.

its hard work, but not because you're "not getting paid"... it's hard work that you do, because it's something you want to do as a life career.

people who are "Just looking for a paycheck" dont go to nursing school. its way too competitive to even get in.




[Edited on August 8, 2008 at 1:26 AM. Reason : ]

8/8/2008 1:18:59 AM

yeah man that's the problem now.. need nurse's but not enough space to educate them

8/8/2008 1:23:00 AM

the problem is not "space" so much as theres a real shortage of qualified nursing instructors. no one wants to be an instructor

theres a lot of burnout in nursing.

theres a lot of disgruntled nurses, which leads to the fact that there is an extremely high percentage of people who have RNs, but are not working in a hospital or clinical setting.

theres a related concept, epecially in hospitals, where an entire floor gets a reputation of "eating their young"... meaning they throw the new grads into miserable positions and causes many of them to quit

the problem is that many hospital nurses are extremely overworked, understaffed, denied resources -- and put in positions where they have to make sacrifices that put their patients -- and their license -- in jeopardy.

It's like a bad joke. the hospital policy will say shit like "no more that 2 ICU patients per ICU nurse"... yet they routinely have to take care of 4 patients in a 12-hour shift, because the hospital is perpetually understaffed. and then the amount of paperwork and ridiculous bullshit they have to do on top of it.

nurses dont have the protection doctors do, with the AMA and insurance..... nurses are on their own, and if they fuck up (or dont CYA), they can get hauled before the nursing board and stripped of their license. the AMA protects doctors. whereas the ANA prosecutes nurses.

theres also often an antagonistic relationship between doctors and nurses in many hospitals.

all in all though, becoming a nurse was the best thing my wife has ever done, and has given her professional freedom. she just avoids "floor nursing" at the hospitals.




[Edited on August 8, 2008 at 1:35 AM. Reason : ]

8/8/2008 1:33:21 AM

Yeah I think that with "space" I was including the lack of instructors to teach. Do you happen to know how much instructors are making now? for example an instructor at Wake Tech? Is that a reason why there is a shortage?

8/8/2008 1:37:39 AM

^yeah, i know what you meant: space as resources in general... i was just clarifying for people who aren't so familiar.

as to instructor salaries? i dont know. at Universities, teaching the BSN program, they are all PhDs who are also RNs, or CRNPs, so they make as much as any other university prof or instructor ... at Wake Tech? i suspect that they make less than what they could make at a "real" nursing job.

its all so relative, of course. my wife can make 80K/year just as an RN after 5 years experience. but she tends to do research work. if she did floor nursing she'd make around 70K or more if she took odd shifts. you can make way more if you play it right and do "travel nursing" you get above salary plus per diem plus housing

but this is in Seattle which is largely unionized. however nurses from California come up here and say nurses here have it "really shitty." apparantly the unions are stronger and the CA State laws really protect nurses more than most other states.

the problem, i think, is that by the time you can become a nurse instructor, you're cynical and jaded, and you dont feel like getting up in front of a bunch of students and lying to them.

theres a serious disconnect between what is taught at Nursing Schools and what a nurse actually DOES in a real job. some of its almost ludicrous. my wife thinks that its designed purposely to be obscure and convoluted just to stress the students out.








[Edited on August 8, 2008 at 2:08 AM. Reason : ]

8/8/2008 1:44:30 AM

we have a friend who is getting her LPN (as a stepping stone to RN) at North Seattle Community College. like Wake Tech, more or less...

all year, this friend of ours had a nursing instructor who only has her BSN (no Master's-level), and isn't especially experienced.

apparently, this instructor is a really shitty teacher. she can't ever answer "why" or "what if" questions that are even slightly outside the preset curriculum path. gets all indignant and tries to make the students look stupid for asking questions.

the woman also suggest to the class they read this one book about how AIDS is a scam, that was written by some microbiologist back in the mid-1990's who has been thoroughly discredited by the entire scientific community as a crackpot, and had every single point in his theories debunked on a case-by-case basis.

im like, where the fuck do they get these people??

generally speaking, this is typical of the general problem with "diploma nurses" opposed to BSN programs at universities: the quality of the program and the instructors .... I mean, really, where do you want the nurse taking care of your sick parent, or child, to come from? Cartaret County Community College's 2-year diploma program? or the UNC School of Nursing?






[Edited on August 8, 2008 at 2:10 AM. Reason : ]

8/8/2008 1:56:35 AM

Been a nurse for 2 years now, so there are a lot of questions to address:

first:
nursing clinicals for most programs are 2-3 days a week.

for example my particular program had us in the hospital from 6am to 1pm on fridays for the first semester. From then on we were in clinicals on thursdays and fridays from 6am to 1pm.


most of the nursing classes were monday thru wed. a lot of those classes were 3 hours long.


it depends on the program but many of us in my class had time for a part-time job.


the accelerated BSN programs -- yeah you have to borrow money to live off of. Its pretty much your life for 14-18 months.

Quote :

"And I don't mean to sound bitchy, because the nurses that have taken care of my son at Duke are phenomenal. But I have needed them for something and caught them dicking around on Facebook and MySpace at the nurse's station."

Its called a break. Nurses are entitled to them. However there have been many shifts where i havent had time to drink water or even pee. Forget about the 30 minute uninterrupted lunch that i was entitled to. Most nurses have to eat on the run because they are too worried about their patients to not at least watch the monitors. Nurses are nurses, not servants or handmaidens. unless your kid's monitors are screaming or he's about to die, cut them some slack. by now i am sure you know where the ice machine and the linen closet are.

Quote :

"I'm seriously considering going into nursing, so I'll offer my two cents: - You can have a lot more direct patient interaction - You like taking care of/helping people - There are lots, and lots, and lots of options for deriving great satisfaction from one's job. There are direct care options, educational options, public service opportunities, etc. - You can get a job just about anywhere "

I hope you are joking or at least not as much of a bitch in person as you are on here.

Quote :

"It's like a bad joke. the hospital policy will say shit like "no more that 2 ICU patients per ICU nurse"... yet they routinely have to take care of 4 patients in a 12-hour shift, because the hospital is perpetually understaffed. and then the amount of paperwork and ridiculous bullshit they have to do on top of it. nurses dont have the protection doctors do, with the AMA and insurance..... nurses are on their own, and if they fuck up (or dont CYA), they can get hauled before the nursing board and stripped of their license. the AMA protects doctors. whereas the ANA prosecutes nurses."

dont know where your wife works but in my ICU staffing ratios are 1:1-2 depending on patient acuity. there are a few level 3 acuity patients from time to time but no nurse has actually had to care for 3 patients during a shift. If we dont have enough staff for our current patient acuity we will close beds. also there is malpractice insurance available for nurses.

yep, nursing school is tough. it was WAY worse than my BS from state. if your average in a class is below a 87.5 ( a C on the 7 point scale) you fail the entire program. if your test average was that low you fail the class even if you made 100's on all the papers and projects. studies show that students incapable of maintaining a C average will not pass the NCLEX. Nursing school is designed to be tough so that the strongest survive. only the best students will be able to go head to head with an irate doctor.

Quote :

"generally speaking, this is typical of the general problem with "diploma nurses" opposed to BSN programs at universities: the quality of the program and the instructors .... I mean, really, where do you want the nurse taking care of your sick parent, or child, to come from? Cartaret County Community College's 2-year diploma program? or the UNC School of Nursing? "

generally speaking you can kiss my fucking ass! there are a few good reasons why i chose my ADN program over jumping through various hoops to get my second BS degree. BSN degrees are heavy on theory. the clinical experience gained in ADN programs is excellent. do you want a nurse that sat on their asses in class longer or the nurse whose program had them out there on the floors learning first hand by experience. Ive seen the BSN/ABSN students on the floors and i was less than impressed with their skills and their professionalism. when i applied to my program i was one of the top programs in NC with the highest nclex pass rate. the only classes that stand between me and my BSN are community health and nursing research......and i have NO desire to do nursing research. So i will take my time with my BSN. laugh at the 2 year program if you want-- that 2 years is actual nursing curriculum time... if you add in the 2 years it takes to get the prerequisite classes to even get into nursing school.......guess what you have the equivalent of a 4 year degree. dont you think for a second that a BSN student had 4 years of nursing core curriculum. They only have 2 years of nursing classes.

and no hospital in the triangle REQUIRES a bsn for hire as a staff nurse. the nursing shortage is too damn bad for a hospital to shoot itself in the foot like that.


As for traveling: i am an ACLS certified critical care nurse with 2 years of experience -- i can pretty much go anywhere and get a job. in fact, my recruiter should be calling today. i am looking at getting a second job as a per diem nurse for some extra $$$


*behind every doctor is a skilled intelligent nurse that saves their ass*

8/8/2008 9:10:26 AM

Quote :

"*behind every doctor is a skilled intelligent nurse that saves their ass*"

not to be a dick, but save it.

8/8/2008 9:12:20 AM

i was directly quoting a facebook group title.


yes, i am a bit punchy today. residents.... gotta love em


there are too many misconceptions about nursing. There are too many comments in this thread that poke at a sore spot in the nursing community.

[Edited on August 8, 2008 at 9:19 AM. Reason : .]

8/8/2008 9:14:54 AM

i didn't mean the grammar, i meant that i didn't want to hear about how you think nurses are better than doctors.

8/8/2008 9:16:33 AM

i dont recall making any statement of that kind.

we work as, or at least try to work as a team.



we question the doctors all of the time. why is this medicine ordered, is this an appropriate dose, wait this patient is allergic to this medicine etc...

who is at the bedside for 12 hours monitoring the patient and intervening constantly to keep the patient from "crumping". Its our feedback to the doctors that enables them to write their orders. And it is the nurses responsibility to ensure that the order is safe to carry out. Because lemme tell you the response "i was only carrying out doctors orders" ain't gonna hold up in court.

8/8/2008 9:29:58 AM

Quote :

"I hope you are joking or at least not as much of a bitch in person as you are on here."

I don't think you're one to talk.

Based on your posts, you seem like a cunt.

8/8/2008 9:50:47 AM

There's a reason I didn't respond to that

8/8/2008 9:52:03 AM

Quote :

" "And I don't mean to sound bitchy, because the nurses that have taken care of my son at Duke are phenomenal. But I have needed them for something and caught them dicking around on Facebook and MySpace at the nurse's station." Its called a break. Nurses are entitled to them. However there have been many shifts where i havent had time to drink water or even pee. Forget about the 30 minute uninterrupted lunch that i was entitled to. Most nurses have to eat on the run because they are too worried about their patients to not at least watch the monitors. Nurses are nurses, not servants or handmaidens. unless your kid's monitors are screaming or he's about to die, cut them some slack. by now i am sure you know where the ice machine and the linen closet are."

brainysmurf IFTMFW!

[Edited on August 8, 2008 at 10:11 AM. Reason : ""]

8/8/2008 10:11:27 AM

^^^ takes one to know one i suppose

judging from many many of your posts you need to clean the sand out of your mangina.

and this is the internet, i dont have to be nice.

however, if one is nice to me i will return the kindness.

but i have no reason AT ALL to be civil to ^^

[Edited on August 8, 2008 at 10:13 AM. Reason : whoo someone was faster]

8/8/2008 10:13:18 AM

the same way people get through grad school

8/8/2008 10:19:28 AM

because nurses are fucking insane

8/8/2008 10:24:04 AM