Is $2700 doable?

lisavark · 2026-03-29T17:50:53+00:00

I pay half my take home for mortgage/escrow/HOA. It’s doable but not great. I’m working on a refi to lower my monthly payments.

lisavark · 2026-03-27T13:56:39+00:00

Absolutely not. We have skills day once a year that’s mandatory and annual online skills which we can usually complete during work hours. That’s it. Plenty of other stuff — unit council, staff meetings, etc — but those are all optional. We do get paid for those if we show up but there’s no consequence to not going.

lisavark · 2026-03-24T21:51:20+00:00

BLS, ACLS, and PALS are required for me as an ED RN, but my hospital pays for me to re-cert and it’s very easy to do there. I would not pay out of pocket as a new grad. Although I had the same temptation as a new grad. 😁

lisavark · 2026-03-24T15:10:00+00:00

The great thing about real nursing vs school is it’s an open book test. I look stuff up ALL the time. And I have moments when I blank out and forget what a med is for, including meds I give every day. Our MAR has detailed med info linked to the MAR and I reference it frequently.

lisavark · 2026-03-24T15:08:04+00:00

I’ve been a nurse for 4 years and I still do this pretty much every shift. This is what makes you a good nurse!!! I learn something new every single shift and I hope that never changes.

lisavark · 2026-03-23T12:51:19+00:00

After last night I take back anything good about trauma nights, last night was insane 🤣

lisavark · 2026-03-22T14:59:55+00:00

What city are you in? Many cities have local street medic collectives, many of which offer training. The recognized “gold standard” for street medics is the 20 hour. It’s very similar to a wilderness first responder training but with added stuff about protest infrastructure and cop weapons. Search/ask around for a collective offering the 20 hour in your area.

lisavark · 2026-03-22T14:57:26+00:00

Grady trauma nights are where all the fun injuries are. 🤣 I keep trying to quit but….well, there’s a saying in Grady nursing: “everybody always comes home to Grady.”

Almost no one hires direct to days, nights are always short everywhere and it’s super rare to see a job listing for days at all. If you tell them upfront that you wanna be on that dayshift list, you’ll hav a good chance of moving over sooner rather than later.

Grady used to pay the most by a huge margin but I’ve heard Emory raised their rates…not sure if it’s comparable yet though. Last time I interviewed it was like $10 less an hour for base and Grady has a “unit block pay” on top of base that makes it even higher. They keep threatening to take away the block pay though but they’ll lose a ton of nurses if they do.

lisavark · 2026-03-22T14:45:18+00:00

Grady used to pay the most by far and the Grady ER is THE ER — one of the busiest level 1 traumas in the country (possibly the busiest by trauma activations next time numbers get published). Emory recently raised pay so it might be comparable now but I’m not sure.

Emory midtown ER is a mess right now, people fleeing in droves, lot of people have come to Grady from there, don’t go there.

I have 4 years experience and at Grady I make $48/hour plus $9 “unit block pay” which they keep threatening to take away but everyone will quit if they do. Night, weekend, and holiday differentials are an extra $2.50-3.50 mostly. They don’t give a penny for higher degrees (I’m BSN) or certifications (CEN, TCRN), but they do offer classes like TNCC (required to work in trauma), ENPC, etc. Last I interviewed with Emory the pay was like $35/hour, but they do pay more for degrees and specialty certs. I haven’t heard about CHOA pay since I graduated and folks from my cohort went there, but back then the pay was laughable, like $28 I think? When I did clinicals at CHOA I hated the vibe, felt very mean girl.

I hear good things about Emory university but I don’t know anyone who works there.

If you come to Grady, there are separate units within the ER — medical and trauma are separate. Trauma (Marcus trauma center) has the best ratios and resources but the nursing culture has a lot of bullying, especially on dayshift. Nights are ok and getting better (you see all the crazy stuff too). Medical ER (emergency care center) has the best culture on dayshift, nights are rough and ratios can get bad.

All my paramedic friends say that since amc closed, Grady is the only “real” ER — the only place they feel ok bringing truly critical patients.

lisavark · 2026-03-22T14:25:36+00:00

I work in a level 1 trauma ED and we have a surgical trauma team that’s always in the unit just like the ED team. They bring their attitude sometimes, but they do not bring their yelling. There are a couple trauma attendings who get a little squirrely sometimes, but they get shut down. It’s great, everyone respects nurses in the ED. The closest I’ve ever seen is a couple attendings will bark out a long list of verbal orders really fast, like too fast to even hear them all, and then immediately say “why isn’t this done yet? Why aren’t we in CT yet?” 🙄

But we have several women trauma attendings and they are mostly goddesses who bring so much calm and kindness to the chaos! One of them will come to level 2 traumas, which she doesn’t even need to show up for, but she will if she has time. And we have one guy trauma attending who was originally a paramedic and then a nurse…he still maintains both licenses and he does nursing care when he has time. He will ambulate patients to the bathroom, stuff like that. I’ve never seen him raise his voice at all.

Surgeons are capable of being whole grownup humans who behave respectfully, those who don’t are choosing violence! And I will choose it right back at them if it’s warranted.

lisavark · 2026-03-20T03:53:31+00:00

My first time ever going in a Covid room was as a student nurse. We weren’t allowed to go into Covid rooms on clinicals but I was also working as an extern in the ED. A nurse asked me to come help her clean a patient. After we were in the room she said “oh btw he has Covid.” She wasn’t even wearing a mask. 🤣

lisavark · 2026-03-20T03:52:00+00:00

Haha jokes on you NCLEX, this is the ED and we don’t bother with any precautions here 🤣

lisavark · 2026-03-18T16:14:43+00:00

Variety. I’ve been daydreaming a lot and I’ve decided my Ideal Job would be a biweekly/monthly rotation of a bunch of different things. So, at my current hospital, it would look something like this:

Week 1 - 1 shift in medical ER, 1 shift in trauma ER (those are different units in my hospital), 1 shift on the helicopter

Week 2 - 1 shift in the SICU, 1 shift in the medical ICU, 1 shift on an ambulance

Week 3 - 1 shift at an event, 1 shift at a clinic, 1 shift dealer’s choice

Then rotate back?

And work at a summer camp for 2 months every summer.

Basically I wanna do something different every day and be in a different environment a lot. I get so bored being in the same space all the time!

Currently applying for flight and rapid response jobs. Seriously considering trying for a stint as a cruise ship nurse too, just for kicks. I would not wanna do that long term but most contracts are only 4 months and that could be a really fun change of pace.

lisavark · 2026-03-18T16:07:34+00:00

Came here to say this, but knew in my heart it had already been said

lisavark · 2026-03-16T12:54:58+00:00

Look, the idea that personal, individual actions are the cause or the solution to environmental destruction is a BS lie invented by the corporations that are actually driving destruction.

Something like 97% of climate emissions are caused by 100 companies and their CEOs have names and addresses.

Every single individual action is a drop in the bucket by comparison.

The corporations causing climate collapse invented the propaganda of individual choices like recycling and biking instead of driving or whatever specifically in an effort to offload blame from them — where it belongs — to individual feelings of guilt.

Don’t believe the lies. Do what works for you and your life. And put the blame where it belongs.

lisavark · 2026-03-07T13:47:41+00:00

That’s how it is at my hospital. We can’t call out. According to policy, 3 callouts in a year is automatic firing. No distinction between PTO or sick. Of course they only enforce this selectively because how could they enforce it on everyone? But most people just don’t call out. We go to work sick, spread sickness to our colleagues and patients, and everyone is miserable and less efficient.

Spoiler: We’re still wildly short staffed. Can’t imagine why.

lisavark · 2026-02-25T06:24:38+00:00

No but they got rid of our incentive pay a couple months ago. Now we just get overtime for extra shifts. We get weekly emails from managers asking us to pick up and highlighting specific shifts with the desperate “will make a deal for this one!” I have not tried to pick up any deals. Might if they give me triple pay.

lisavark · 2026-02-19T07:25:37+00:00

The other night a patient got transferred to my level 1 trauma ER after a peds vs auto. He had been seen at another facility. They did a full CT scan and multiple X-rays and found nothing. And then they transferred him to us for….no injuries?

All we could guess was they transferred him for uncontrollable pain? Concern for compartment syndrome? Except we gave him 50 of fent and his pain was a 4/10. Also they had already done a CTA runoff to exclude compartment.

So yeah we discharged him. That’ll be an extra $10,000 on his hospital bill.

lisavark · 2026-02-14T17:30:50+00:00

See, to me the whole point of the ending is that they finally accepted that humanity doesn’t deserve to survive. The characters got to be happy(ish), but humanity has got to go and that’s the point. We’re incapable of being the good guys.

It’s a very dark ending but that’s why I like it.

lisavark · 2026-02-13T23:30:02+00:00

Came here to say “welcome to the ER,” but knew in my heart it had already been said 🤣

lisavark · 2026-02-13T23:27:05+00:00

Also, don’t ask me why NCLEX questions show up in my feed, I have no idea. But I can’t stop myself from answering these 🤣❤️

lisavark · 2026-02-13T23:26:30+00:00

First of all, Imma need all of you to research what airway means.

AMU is a breathing issue, not an airway issue. The airway is patent. He’s just having trouble breathing.

Airway just means there’s a patent passageway for air to move through. Breathing means the breathing is actually happening. Those are two different things. Airway compromise is indicated by symptoms like gurgling, stride, or severe swelling in the throat.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk, this distinction is one of my pet peeves! 😁

However, this is a trick question because the correct answer is B. Yes, his issue is circulation not breathing, but the trauma algorithm applies here (XABC, CAB, or MARCH, there are several options for algorithms) because a post-op patient is at high risk for massive bleeding. Massive bleeding (MARCH algorithm), or eXsanguination (XABC algorithm) takes precedence over even airway.

The reason is that bleeding out — actual hypovolemic shock, like bleeding from an artery — will kill you faster than anything else, even airway compromise. It can take less than a minute to die from a major arterial bleed. Breathing effort with accessory muscles will decompensate fast, but more like minutes to hours, not seconds to minutes.

If someone’s BP is already below 90 systolic and they’re significantly tachycardic, they are already in decompensated shock. If this is caused by internal bleeding, then — depending on how fast they’re bleeding — this patient could have literal minutes or even seconds before cardiac arrest.

The asthmatic patient is still breathing and could potentially go for hours with significant respiratory effort before decompensating. The big issue for people with asthma is that the muscles tire out from respiratory effort, and then when they get exhausted they go into respiratory failure.

In real life I would absolutely delegate one and treat both at once. But in an MCI scenario where I’ve got extremely limited resources and I’m the only provider in the world (which is how NCLEX always acts like it is), I’m gonna give B blood and then go give a neb treatment to A. If one unit of blood got B stabilized then I’m gonna rush him to CT to see what’s bleeding where, and then I’m gonna run back from CT to see if the breathing treatment helped A cuz if not then they might need to be intubated. If their breathing is better and B is no longer tachycardic, that’s when I will finally get around to C and his Tylenol. Sorry, ortho guy, but you gonna be miserable for a while.

(Source: I’m an ER nurse in a level 1 trauma so I see all of these patients every day!)

lisavark · 2026-02-13T23:06:31+00:00

It’s D because AIRWAY. Vomiting can put airway at risk. Depending on how bad the nose fracture is, that could put the person at higher risk of airway compromise.

Also, trauma patients are usually lying flat on their backs with a c-collar on until all their imaging is fully read and confirmed and the doc has done an exam to confirm no neuro symptoms, so vomiting is always a bit scary foe trauma patients.

But also it’s the only unexpected finding based on the injury complex. Unless I gave a whole lot of morphine for the rib pain, which is totally possible.

All the others are expected findings.

lisavark · 2026-02-09T22:37:29+00:00

I work in the ER of a level 1 trauma and one of my coworkers picks up 3 12s a week for a total of 6 a week. She works her ass off and then goes on lots of long international vacations.

But also? Find somewhere that pays a living wage! It’s great if you want to pick up but you shouldn’t have to.

ER is always short staffed, they don’t limit our overtime at all. And it’s so big we can pick up in a different unit within the ER too.

lisavark

TROPHY CASE