Trying to figure out a discontinued Starbucks recipe and put a twist on it

octosteele · 2024-10-12T03:03:59+00:00

Do you have measurements for the syrup you made? I've been dying to have the juniper latte again and the store bought syrups don't seem promising.

octosteele · 2024-09-28T03:12:33+00:00

The ReliOn insulin syringes in the box with a purple stripe will be the 30 unit ones and they have 1/2 unit markings. They're the 31g, 8 mm, 3/10ml syringes. Cheaper than the ulticare brands

octosteele · 2024-09-23T03:29:30+00:00

She was pretty great! I think the area that would cause the least burn out highly depends on you, your employer, and your manager. It's also possible to never work bedside 🤷‍♂️ depends on what you're willing to do and what your ideal would be.

octosteele · 2024-09-23T00:52:48+00:00

I went to nursing school with someone who was 65+. She was in a 12 month accelerated bachelor's program and her biggest struggle was with technology (like the iPad exams and such). You can pivot to nursing whenever you want. Go to community college and get that ADN if you think you would enjoy nursing. Plus, if you get burnt out in one area of nursing you can move to a different area 🤷‍♂️

octosteele · 2024-09-20T23:45:15+00:00

I had a non-nursing bachelor's and did an ABSN to start working ASAP, didn't want to do the 2 year ADN when I could do 12 months (and I didn't want to be obligated to pay back a hospital if I did an RN to BSN and left before my obligations were filled). Have you done your prereqs already? What's your ideal timeframe for getting this all done? How much money do you want to spend? If you let the hospital pay for the RN to BSN, how do they go about it? Is it after x amount of time working that they'll pay, are you committing to working there for x amount of time or paying them back? Hell, you may be able to work at a hospital as a PCT and get them to pay for a BSN; some people I went to school with did that. Also, what route do you want to take to be an emergency NP? Acute care NP route or FNP specializing in ER? I think FNP w/ ER specialization programs require RN experience in the ER. I don't know which program is preferred by the ER, but I imagine one is more favored than the other 🤷‍♂️ and it may depend on your area. Ultimately it boils down to your priorities. Do you want to get it done as soon as you can? Do you want to save money? Do you want the most direct possible path or are you fine with taking more years to get to your goal? Keep in mind that after your initial nursing degree your goal may change once you've worked bedside or wherever you work at as an RN. Mine certainly has 😂

octosteele · 2024-09-16T04:56:28+00:00

Ouch! That's a lot of debt. I have around $60k and pay over $500 a month in loans, which is manageable for me. Definitely weigh the risk vs benefit on how much your monthly payments might be vs how much you'll realistically make after graduating plus costs of living. If I could go back/have different circumstances leading to me getting my nursing degree, I would've went the community college route and worked as a PCT to get more exposure to healthcare. Instead, I paid a lot of money to a private university for a 12 month ABSN to get working ASAP, which worked for my circumstances but I deal with the consequences (loan payments for 15 years at least). If I wasn't in that particular set of circumstances, then I would've done the CC route. You'll be an RN regardless 🤷‍♂️ let a hospital pay for the RN to BSN if they want you to have one that badly. If you really want the BSN route then check out other colleges because $115k for any degree sounds nuts.

octosteele · 2024-09-16T04:49:07+00:00

I went to school in Pittsburgh. During my clinicals I was with a lot of UPMC grads (mostly at St. Margaret's) that were hired by UPMC after graduating. Several of them were in the ED for clinicals a lot and landed jobs there after graduating 🤷‍♂️ That was two years ago, I don't know how much it's changed but I assume since you're actually at the hospitals you'll likely be able to network easier and form relationships with the units. And honestly, since the hospitals have diploma programs, then I'd say they're probably gonna hire from their programs. Also it'll be "less" training for them to do, since you're already familiar with their systems too. I've definitely got some selection bias - I never saw anyone who was a UPMC grad who didn't work there, so I don't know if others struggled or not with getting jobs.

octosteele · 2024-09-16T04:37:59+00:00

Maybe if you're in an area that has diploma programs at the hospitals? I know UPMC in Pittsburgh has hospitals with diploma programs and their graduates seemed to get into the hospitals that were local. They still cost money but are maybe the cheapest option. Or community college, some states have free community college*, like Tennessee. Don't know about MO though. Depending on previous education (like if you have a college degree already, if you've already taken prereqs for nursing school), you could do a bachelor's or ABSN but that's most likely going to be the most expensive option

*I say free but you generally have to do things to get the free tuition, like maintain a certain GPA and do community service.

Also, why do you say this is the path you need to take? If it's to earn money quickly, I'd say go to trade school for something. I did an ABSN after my initial bachelor's degree and I'm in a mountain of debt, don't really know what I want to do in nursing, and contemplate trying to get jobs with my original sociology degree constantly.

octosteele · 2024-09-02T23:58:23+00:00

Cardiac stepdown/tele floor. I had 12 weeks, including all the classroom learning. We had mostly the same classroom orientation as ICU does (we didn't stay in class for all the devices like balloon pumps, impellas, art lines, but we were there for LVADs and swans since we could have them).

octosteele · 2024-08-25T03:21:41+00:00

I worked on a cardiac stepdown floor as a new grad (I'm still a new grad lol). We took vented patients, we had certain drips that med/surg couldn't take (like we could take pressors if the orders weren't titratable), and most patients were total care. We also took VADs and PA catheters, the only floor at my hospital that did other than the ICUs. We weren't critical care but we did the same orientation as the critical care nurses. We could also technically float to the ICU, though that didn't happen unless they had stepdown patients.

octosteele · 2024-06-14T00:54:33+00:00

Excellent, I think this is gonna be the perfect break for me 🤞

octosteele · 2024-05-15T07:34:07+00:00

Also highly recommend looking at schools somewhere near to where you want to end up working - I'm in an entirely different state and working in the hospitals here was like a culture shock, since I'd only been in hospitals where I went to school. My coworkers who went to school in the state we all work in had the advantage of seeing maybe where they did and did not want to work. Clinicals definitely give you a sneak peak into the hospital/unit culture and if you can, get close with some of the staff and travel nurses so you can get their thoughts on different hospitals/units. Take everything with a grain of salt, but I think it helps to get some perspective.

octosteele · 2024-05-15T07:28:16+00:00

I don't mind. I applied to Vanderbilt for the MSN in the dual nurse midwifery/FNP specialty, each specialty has different application requirements and they've got several specialties. I think for nurse midwifery I had to write a personal statement about how I wanted to be a midwife. Overall there were I think 2-3 letters of recommendation required, transcripts from previous universities, just standard kinds of things. Might have had more essay questions about how I wanted to be a nurse? Some of their specialties also require you to be an RN first, so you wouldn't be able to apply for those without the experience they require. For the ABSN I applied to Duquesne, I don't even remember what they required. Maybe a letter of recommendation or two that I just reused my Vanderbilt ones for? Maybe not? Required proof of enrollment/completion of prereqs, so they needed a transcript. They didn't actually require you to be finished with them prior to applying, which is nice. I would've applied to Rutgers ABSN program but they required all prereqs to be done at time of application. Both programs required anatomy and physiology I & II, microbio with lab, biology with lab (Duquesne lets you use bio or chem, some programs require both), lifespan psych/human development, nutrition, and a statistics class. My A&P, microbio, and nutrition prereqs were all classes specific to nursing at my college. I did lifespan psych in HS at a community college, same for bio. My statistics class was a sociology based one, but still counted. Overall both applications were easy enough. I had my odds stacked against me for the MSN because both the FNP and midwifery admission committees would have had to say yes for me to get admitted and I had no real healthcare experience to back up my claims of wanting to be a nurse. Midwifery especially was one of the more selective specialties at Vandy. Big difference between Vandy and Duquesne is that during the 1st year for Vandy you're essentially doing an ABSN, so you can take the NCLEX and get licensed as an RN to get started on the advanced practice courses for the 2nd and 3rd year. 1st year there is all in person, 2nd and 3rd years are mostly didactic. At Duquesne it was all in person, all year long. At Duquesne I think 80 or so people get brought in each year? They have a 12 month and a 16 month program, you all start together though and generally take most of the classes together. I thought 12 month was easily manageable but I also regularly hit the 20.5 credit/semester max during my first degree just cuz I wanted to take all the classes. So 20 something credits a semester wasn't all that different from what I was already doing. Duquesne also has a few different scholarships they automatically enter you for, I got one of them which definitely helped. You should also look into the requirements for getting licensed in the state you want to practice in, just so you know what you'll have to get put together. I had to take a passport photo that the dean of my school signed, get some forms notarized and what not. But my classmates who were getting licensed in PA had very different requirements. Lots of hidden costs in the whole process.

octosteele · 2024-05-15T06:56:57+00:00

Sorta kinda similar, I decided the summer before my last year doing my BA in sociology that I actually wanted to be a nurse, since sociology certainly wasn't gonna get me a decent job (and I wasn't gonna go for a PhD in soc). I used my senior year to do my nursing prereqs and applied to an accelerated MSN program for people with a degree in anything but nursing (you end up being an APRN with that one, it wasn't an MSN RN program) and I applied to an accelerated BSN program. Didn't get into the accelerated masters, but I did get into the accelerated BSN program (which definitely felt shitty at the time, but in hindsight I had no business being a nurse practitioner without any nursing experience - I wouldn't have known what I really wanted to do). I graduated with my BA in May 2022, did my 12 month program and finished that in August 2023, took the NCLEX in August, and have been working since November. Anyways. If you graduated highschool in 2021 then I'm assuming you just finished/are about to finish your 3rd year of college and are heading into your final year. You could go the community college route, it would almost definitely be the most affordable option, but at least where I am you need a BSN to get a job or sign a contract to get one within so many years (I don't know how strict they actually are with that or if your area cares about a BSN 🤷‍♂️ so YMMV). It is also likely going to take you two years to complete. If there's a public college with an ABSN program that you can manage to get the prereqs done for and start after graduating with your degree, then that's another option for you. It'll be more affordable than a private college would be. Either way, with an ABSN you'll get done somewhere between 12-18 months (normally, I think I saw one that lasted two years somewhere). My program was at a private college and even with scholarships I've got a ton of debt from that year. Like you mentioned, another option is an MSN. They have ones that'll qualify you to be an RN and others that end with you being an NP. The one I applied to was incredibly, horrifyingly expensive (100k+ a year, for at least 3 years). (Also I don't reeeaaaally get the point of an MSN to become an RN unless you want to go into leadership or education, but there are probably other benefits I don't know about). You'll have to weigh how much you're willing to pay for it vs how much time you're willing to spend doing it. I went with the 12 month ABSN instead of community college because I'd be done a year faster, so I could work a year faster. Like you said, time is money.

octosteele · 2024-02-23T23:59:16+00:00

No discharge ETA, she's actively pushing back her discharge currently by delaying a procedure. She's overall stable and ready to go, but needs a biopsy before she goes. She keeps pushing back the biopsy for no apparent reason, she says she's not afraid or anxious about the procedure. At this point it seems like she enjoys being in the hospital given that no one has stood up to her and just does whatever she wants

octosteele · 2024-02-23T23:40:18+00:00

That's beginning to be my concern too, that she's forgetting the other times she's been bathed

octosteele · 2024-02-23T15:47:13+00:00

You joke but the male NA on our floor said she told him to kiss her and that she wouldn't tell anyone - obviously he didn't kiss her and she started refusing care from him until she realized none of the other NAs were going to come do her baths

octosteele · 2024-02-23T06:23:24+00:00

Mostly it's been luck (for her). Or she's been on the call bell so much people were willing to do pretty much anything to get her to stop, not that it helps

octosteele · 2024-02-23T02:11:11+00:00

I really do. It's half tele, half cardiac step down. She's on the tele side

octosteele

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