TurboNurse

Yes, even though I am unit based and not officially a nurse resident, I do still get the benefit of the education offered by the residency program.  It's really a good deal.  Since I'm unit based, I don't have to spend 3-4 months in different units, I go straight to home (and collect my $200 along the way----monopoly pun).

Yesterday was my first day.  It was pretty alright.  We got set up with our CBO's which are new hire check off books that we have to complete within one year of hire and goes toward our CAP points.  CAP is basically earning pay raises based on education, research, and unit based stuff.

We also have two books that are self study and we have to submit our test online for grading.  I'm going to work on those and have them done hopefully by the end of next week.

The day was actually quite boring.  We did our introductions in the morning and our educators talked to us about the program and what to expect from it and what their expectations are from us.

After that, which took about 3 hours, we started doing NCLEX review.  They just popped in the CD from the Saunder's review guide, which I have already, and we did questions from the CD one at a time.  I can't believe I'm actually getting paid my nurses salary to study for the NCLEX!

With all the review we are going to do over the next two weeks, there should be no reason at all for me to fail.  It seems that over 50% of our time in class is spent on review!  I'm actually quite happy for that!  I feel like I'm being set up for success and as a new nurse, I couldn't ask for anything better.

The class is quite small.  There are a total of 24 of us.  Only two in our class are from my graduating class from CNM so needless to say we are quite outnumbered.  I'm so glad that the other CNM person is someone that I know and like.  We are also hired on to the same unit.  I'm very excited about that!!

We got to talking about our positions because we made one HUGE observation.  All of the people in our class were hired from the inside.  I think all the UNM grads were interns, I was an extern, and my counterpart was a tech.  I'm not sure how many got scholarships but I know the two of us from CNM did.

It also seems that they had already preselected us for our positions.  The positions that are taken by the UNM grads were posted but I was told by HR that those positions were not hiring for new grads but here they are filled by new grads.  That's what makes me think we were all preselected for our positions.  I would be real interested in knowing why they preselected me for NICU.  Especially since I have zero NICU experience.  Who knows.  I can speculate all day on it but in the end it really doesn't matter.  I am still feeling totally blessed for this opportunity!

We get ample time to complete our RN competencies so I will be brining my laptop along with me to work on those so that I make sure I get paid for doing them and don't have to worry about finding a computer.  I'm going to go shopping today to look for a laptop carrier bag thing so I have something to carry it in when I ride the shuttle to and from the hospital.

I'm sure there is more to cover but I can't think of it right now.

I'm off to go get my NCLEX paperwork notaraized to walk it over on Monday so I can get my ATT ASAP.  I just want to take the NCLEX and move on so then I can concentrate more on learning my job.