Don’t Write Off Community College to Start a Nursing Career

By Karen Roush, MSN, RN, FNP-C, AJN clinical managing editor

KarenRoushMy daughter is about to start her nursing career. She’s got all her prereqs out of the way and she’s waiting to hear from the half-dozen colleges she applied to. Among them is the community college where I started my career 35 years ago. That’s right—a community college that confers an associate degree.

I hope she gets in.

Community colleges are seen by many as the bottom of the ladder of desired schools of nursing. Not only do they offer only a two-year degree, but they’re not seen as being as selective as four-year colleges and they don’t have the big name professors.

But community colleges can and do produce great nurses. Programs are rigorous, so a more liberal admission standard at the onset doesn’t necessarily change the caliber of student who graduates at the end. And once they graduate, they must meet the same standards as students from four-year schools to attain licensure as an RN—everyone takes the same NCLEX. At the time of my graduation, my school had a 98% pass rate, one of the highest in the country.

Community colleges even have some advantages over a lot of four-year programs. They may not have the big names—but really, how many of those big name professors […]

2016-11-21T13:05:07-05:00March 26th, 2014|career, nursing perspective, students|12 Comments
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Three Nurses and a Doctor Go Sailing – Some Notes on Communication Style

Julianna Paradisi, RN, OCN, writes a monthly post for this blog and works as an infusion nurse in outpatient oncology.

Untitled from the series, Pareidolia. Charcoal and graphite on paper, 12" x 9," by julianna paradisi Untitled from the series, Pareidolia. Charcoal and graphite on paper,
12″ x 9,” by julianna paradisi

There’s an old joke about the personality differences among nurses of different specialties. It goes like this:

A medical–surgical nurse, an ICU nurse, an ER nurse, and a doctor go sailing. The doctor stands at the bow of the boat and shouts to the nurses, “Trim the sail!”

The med–surg nurse asks, “How do you want it?”

The ICU nurse replies, “I’ll trim, okay. But I’m doing it my way.”

The ER nurse shouts back at the doctor, “Trim the sail yourself!”

ICU style. The joke is a generalization, of course. However, I was a pediatric intensive care nurse once upon a time, and I have to admit that the ICU nurse characterization resonates with my own experience. Like the nurse in the joke, I always have an opinion, and rarely mind sharing it. In the ICU, if another nurse, a physician, a pharmacist, or respiratory therapist didn’t agree, conversation ensued. My colleague, equally opinionated, would state her or his position. Data was consulted, […]

2016-11-21T13:05:08-05:00March 24th, 2014|career, nursing perspective|2 Comments
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Some Florida Inspiration for Nurse Admins and Execs

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

Zander Zander

A pep talk on being open to possibility. While it was cold late last week in Orlando, Florida (ok, maybe not so bad at 64 degrees and sunny blue skies, but cold by their standards) the audience at the opening session of the annual meeting of the American Organization of Nurse Executives (AONE) was definitely warmed up after listening to the engaging keynote speaker, Benjamin Zander.

Zander is the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic and a professor at the New England Conservatory of Music. You may be thinking he was probably a bit stuffy and formal, but you couldn’t be more wrong. Zander is, at 75, a dynamo, strolling up and down aisles, exhorting the audience to be likewise expressive, waving arms, smiling and connecting.

His message was to be open to the notion that everything is subject to change depending on how one frames it. He challenged the 1500 listeners to “stand in the realm of possibility.” His message is that everything—the rules, perceptions, games we play—are invented and can be changed. He maintains that every situation can be dealt with three ways: resignation, anger, or recognizing the possibility. […]

2018-03-28T10:26:54-04:00March 17th, 2014|career, nursing perspective|1 Comment
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When the Preceptor’s Attitude Is a New Nurse’s Biggest Challenge

FirstPreceptorIllustrationHere’s the start of “My First Preceptor,” the Reflections essay in the March issue of AJN.

“Manage your day,” she told me, not for the first time, as if it had been my fault that one patient crashed yesterday just as my second one returned from surgery with a new set of orders. I could not be in two places at once, keeping track of two critical patients, making sure each one received the care she needed at the moment she needed it.

A new critical care nurse has a lot to worry about. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, even when you’re actually doing a pretty good job. A preceptor can play a crucial role in helping a new nurse find her or his footing. As one might expect, however, some good nurses are not good preceptors. In this essay, the author describes her struggles to deal with the time pressures of her new job, along with her preceptor’s constant admonitions and disapproval.

This fraught nurse–preceptor relationship reaches a crisis point against a backdrop of life and death struggles. I won’t try to summarize what happens in the essay, since different readers may interpret it differently, depending on experience and temperament. But it’s definitely worth a read.—Jacob Molyneux, senior editor

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2016-11-21T13:05:14-05:00March 12th, 2014|career, nursing perspective|6 Comments
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Preventing Delirium, The Luxury of Time, Things We Get Right, More: Nursing Blog Roundup

By Jacob Molyneux, senior editor

Here are a few recent posts of interest at various nursing blogs:

karindalziel/ via Flickr Creative Commons karindalziel/ via Flickr Creative Commons

In the throes of nursing school: An intriguing little pastiche of a poem (does it qualify as a ‘found word’ poem?) can be found at a newish blog, adrienne, {student} nurse, in a short post called anatomy of a bath. In another post, she makes the following observations: “In nursing school, you are not driving the train…You absolutely must keep telling yourself that there is nothing wrong with you.”

Preventing delirium in the ICU: At the INQRI blog (the blog of the Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Institute), a post summarizes some recent research on implementing a “bundle” of practices to increase mobility and reduce sedation in the ICU, all in order to prevent patient delirium, which is known to have many short- and long-term negative effects.

The luxury of time. At Love and Ladybits, the author gets a tantalizing glimpse of the quality of care she’d be able to provide if she had more time to spend with each patient. Of course, this “alternative reality” can’t last, but perhaps it can serve as a touchstone of sorts during more […]

2016-11-21T13:05:16-05:00March 7th, 2014|career, healthcare social media, nursing perspective|1 Comment
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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