After taking practice A and doing the remediations for that the practice B exam was a lot easier. I was able to remember what I struggled with on the first practice assessment. This made the practice B go a lot better. I made sure to find a quiet place in the library between classes and was able to sit down and not have any distractions when taking the exam. I find pharm to be a struggle for me so overall I was very happy with the outcome of practice B. I still think that there are some things that I need to work on. I’m not sure if I was able to do so well because if it was, I just remembered some of the questions or if it was from doing the remediations. Regardless, I am happy with how this assessment went.
Author: ntriggs
Attaining and Protecting a Nursing License
For getting my nursing license I plan to take the exam in Massachusetts. After doing some research I found out that Massachusetts is not a nursing compact state which means I would have to reapply for a license for other states. The application process is fairly straight forward, and all of the information can be found on the Massachusetts government website. There is a link that lets you apply for licensure right on the website and tells you everything that you would need to get certified in the state. In order to get licensed, one needs to graduate from a board-certified nursing program, have passed the NCLEX exam, and to be of good moral character defined by the state law. In order to be considered good character you do need to submit a notarized criminal offense record information form as well as consent to a background check that is done by the Massachusetts Department of Family and Children. If something is found in the background check, you will be required to provide additional paperwork in regard to the findings.
In Massachusetts they have a program that is designed to help any nurse that may be experiencing any substance abuse impairment. It is a program known as SARP, Substance Abuse Rehabilitation Program, that is designed to help maintain the professional standards of nursing by monitoring participants’ ongoing recovery to make sure their return to practice is safe. When joining the program, the nurse is consenting to toxicology screenings, individual therapy, and monitored practice. These are all done with the goal to make sure the nurse is continuing safe practice. The program is voluntary, but it is designed as an alternative to disciplinary actions for any nurses with substance abuse issues.
When it comes to protecting my license from the commonly occurring legal issues, I am going to make sure I get malpractice insurance. Many of our professors and guest speakers have really emphasized how important it is to get this insurance. In most cases they said it has been the best money they have spent when it came to their career because it really protects you from potential legal issues. While one would like to think the hospitals would be the ones to protect us if anything was to happen that may not always be the case.
Post-Interview Reflection
After the interview with my dad, he gave me a great insight in what it means to be a leader in nursing. The number of working parts that need to come together to be a successful nursing leader were a lot more extensive than I first imagined. He told me that he would really made sure that he tried to take into consideration who he was working with that day and what those people’s strengths and weaknesses were while making assignments. He found that once he was able to know the people, he was really working with helped him to try and avoid conflict and made the flow of the floor was very positive. However, he did say that this wasn’t always an easy thing to do. There would be times when nurses wouldn’t be happy with their patient assignments or nurses were having a bad day and it would throw the flow of the floor off completely. He liked to say that “if one gear is out of place, the rest of the machine can’t run”. If he noticed that people were upset, he would try to make sure they could get some time to try and collect themselves to make sure that the patient is getting the best care possible. This could even be covering their patients for just 5 minutes while they went and got a cup of coffee or went and grabbed a snack. After this interview it gave me a new respect for my dad’s leadership skills. Before the interview I always knew he was a natural leader and people liked his leadership skills. Watching him do things like coach soccer games to becoming a captain in the Navy it was very clear that he knew what he was doing. This interview gave me an insight to how he made sure that the people he was in charge of grew to respect him as a leader. In regard to my future nursing career, I while make sure to apply some of the positive leadership skills I was able to obtain from my dad as he showed me that this was a very effective way of running a floor. I always had interest in becoming a nursing leader and after this interview it only has increased the want to become a leader and I now know some successful skills that can help me do so.
Pre-Interview Reflection
The nurse that I found to interview was fairly easy to find, it is my dad. My dad has been one of the charge nurses on a cardiac floor for 5 years. While I think that my dad has great qualities as a parent, I was able to witness his leadership skills when I was floated to the floor he worked on as a PCA. I was not expecting my dad to be the charge nurse when I arrived to the floor but when I did he quickly demonstrated his skills as a leader. The first thing I noticed was that he treated everyone on the floor as equals. Even though he was working with his son, he never missed a beat and treated me the same way he did everyone else. He made the staff feel that they were respected, and he wasn’t going to have favorites. The second quality I found that made him a good leader was his leadership style. He has a combination of an authoritarian and lassiez faire attitude. He allowed for the staff to do what they needed to get done for the day but if things weren’t getting done, he seemed to make sure that people were getting back on track. I could tell this made for the rest of the staff respect him and his leadership, so they listened to him and followed his instruction. While he is my dad, I am still excited to interview him and see him in a light I have not seen him before. I am interested to learn how he was able to get comfortable leading and taking charge of the floor, how he deals with any conflict that may have come up, what is the biggest challenge he has had to face while being a charge nurse. I have talked to him plenty about some of the experiences he has had as a nurse, but he never really talked about the specifics of being the charge nurse. I think that at the end of this interview I will have a better idea on what it took for him to become a charge nurse of the floor and a better insight on his leadership skills.
Pediatric ATI
Overall I think that this was a successful test attempt. I made sure that I was giving each question enough time to read the question completely and see what it was asking. I also made sure that I was in a quiet environment that wasn’t distracting. I do think that there were some things I still could improve on during this exam. There were a few times I didn’t read the options to the question fully which led to me getting the questions wrong. For the next exam I plan to make sure that I’m not only just fully reading the question but also fully read the options to the question to avoid simple mistakes.
Leadership Interview: Pre-interview
The nurse that I found to interview was fairly easy to find, it is my dad. My dad has been one of the charge nurses on a cardiac floor for 5 years. While I think that my dad has great qualities as a parent, I was able to witness his leadership skills when I was floated to the floor he worked on as a PCA. I was not expecting my dad to be the charge nurse when I arrived to the floor but when I did he quickly demonstrated his skills as a leader. The first thing I noticed was that he treated everyone on the floor as equals. Even though he was working with his son, he never missed a beat and treated me the same way he did everyone else. He made the staff feel that they were respected, and he wasn’t going to have favorites. The second quality I found that made him a good leader was his leadership style. He has a combination of an authoritarian and lassiez faire attitude. He allowed for the staff to do what they needed to get done for the day but if things weren’t getting done, he seemed to make sure that people were getting back on track. I could tell this made for the rest of the staff respect him and his leadership, so they listened to him and followed his instruction. While he is my dad, I am still excited to interview him and see him in a light I have not seen him before. I am interested to learn how he was able to get comfortable leading and taking charge of the floor, how he deals with any conflict that may have come up, what is the biggest challenge he has had to face while being a charge nurse. I have talked to him plenty about some of the experiences he has had as a nurse, but he never really talked about the specifics of being the charge nurse. I think that at the end of this interview I will have a better idea on what it took for him to become a charge nurse of the floor and a better insight on his leadership skills.
Pharmacology ATI
Out of all the CAT adaptive exams we are going to take for this course, the pharmacology exam was going to give me the most trouble. For this exam I felt that for not being too confident in my pharmacology knowledge, I think it went fairly well. I was able to sit down and focus on the assignment at hand for the most part. With the number of questions, I had to answer I felt myself towards the end not having 100% focus on the assignment and it led to many stupid mistakes. Some of those included answering the math questions. For questions I typically get correct on these exams, I found myself making mistakes like missing a decimal or miss typing the number for the answer. A second test strategy that I felt went well for this CAT exam was I went through some of the old slide shows we had from pharmacology to try and shake off any of the old cobwebs and did a quick refresher. While I was skeptical at first to do it because I figured it might not be the most helpful thing ended up really helping me answer some of the questions.
For the next adaptive quiz we need to take, I have some positive takeaways from this exam to use. Having an environment that allows me to sit down and really focus on the questions and not be distracted by outside factors really helped me do well on this exam. Along with just even skimming over some notes or some book chapters can be very beneficial. Finally, I need to make sure I am giving myself a break if the exam ends up being long. Towards the end I was getting frustrated with the fact that it wasn’t ending which led to me not paying attention to what I was doing and just submitting questions to get through them. This ultimately led up to me making more work for myself.
Adult Med Surge ATI
After completing the first adaptive ATI quiz, I did better than I was expecting to do. Overall, I was able to finish the quiz in 76 questions. I felt that there was a good amount of the questions were fresh in my head from trying to complete some of the other ATI assignments and even some from our other courses we have taken throughout our time here. However, the ones I got wrong either completely stumped me or I made silly mistakes that I shouldn’t have. While doing the remediations for the exam it was very evident I did not spend enough time thoroughly reading some of the questions and ended up getting them wrong. For the next CAT exam I am going to make sure that I really read and pay attention to the question and all the options available before selecting am answer and moving onto the next question. I think this will help improve my score overall next time and it will help me to avoid making mistakes.
Career Development
A skill that the nurses had in the movie that I believe I need to continue to work on and improve is talking with families. So far in our course work we haven’t really focused too much on emotional intelligence which is a difficult skill to master. I think that this skill is one that needs to come with practice and practice. One of the patient populations that we as nursing students at UNE is the man who the nurse must drive hours into the desert. this nurse has to face many different barriers of care. There is nothing for hours around this patient make it difficult to get to him in the case of an emergency or provide care overall. This nurse also needs to be ready to do things that a nurse would not have to do in a conventional nursing role. The nurse’s humility is shown by her giving care in the first place. To give this patient care they had to drive hours just for one patient.
After the guest speakers from the career services came and spoke to us it gave me different things to think about when going in for a job interview. When it comes to standing out from the crowd of applicants, I like to make sure I have questions prepared. I’m going to make sure that the hospital aligns with my values as a nurse so having questions ready for the interviewer will make sure they do. One of the strengths I plan to show interviewers is my punctuality and making sure things are done on time. When it comes to “challenges” I think I would describe it as a slight lack of confidence. I feel like I do not know as much as I actually know sometimes and that makes me question what I do from time to time. In order to work on this challenge I will make sure to continue my education as a nurse making sure that I’m staying up to date with the latest practices. I think this will make me more confident as a nurse and improve my practice overall.
Prepare for Transition
As we get closer to the end of nursing school it is nice to begin to look forwards to the next chapter of my life. I am most excited to be able to finally start practicing and use the knowledge we’ve spent so much time learning. While it is exciting to start that new chapter in our lives, it is definitely making me very anxious. The idea that I will be practicing as a nurse on my own and not with an instructor still hasn’t fully hit me yet. As I finish up the school year, I hope to celebrate with friends and family. They know how hard every one of us has worked the last four years hopefully making for a fun celebration.
With this being our last semester, it may be hard to maintain focus and stay on track. To make sure I do that I plan out my time. I plan to go through the syllabus for each class to make sure I can plan out the work for my week. Going week by week will help me be able to keep track of what needs to get done so I don’t miss any assignments. My goal for the semester is to make sure I don’t turn in assignments late. The nurse logic 2.0 modules will help me get ready for the NCLEX by giving us some good ideas on how to really use and apply the clinical knowledge and reasoning that we have been building on for the last two years. As well as making sure to go over really focus on priorities. Overall this semester is a very exciting time for us as students, the need to stay focused and on track is an all time high.
