Clinical Pearls: How To Work Up Hypoxia Part 1
Briana Juskowiak Briana Juskowiak

Clinical Pearls: How To Work Up Hypoxia Part 1

I was recently drafting some material for a client who I am tutoring regarding hypoxia. She is in a pulmonary rotation and this is a very common reason for consult. I think when you are providing a consult service (which can receive a high volume of patients) keeping things focused on your organ system, standardizing your approach, and developing automation’s are the key to efficiency. The cool thing is that when you systematically work through the causes of hypoxia you can simplify the process of coming to the most accurate diagnosis. Then you can offer the primary team a suggested plan of action and be the hero (or maybe just uphold your reputation as a trusted colleague 😉). This article is designed to help ease the process of working through the etiology and focuses heavily on pathophysiology. If you can appreciate the pathway of oxygen delivery from the atmosphere all the way through to delivery at the tissue level you can better understand the disease states and more easily come to a diagnosis (or three, as is our common reality).

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What To Look For In An NP School
Briana Juskowiak Briana Juskowiak

What To Look For In An NP School

A simple google search for your desired nurse practitioner program will yield multiple pages of results. Starting with paid ads. Some seem legit, some seem sketch. So you go to FB forums only to see mixed results and lots of heated online arguments. So you ask people you know at the hospital, turns out they all go to the same one or two in your area that maybe doesn’t fit your needs. You do some deep introspection and honestly aren’t sure what you need anyways. Why is there no objective checklist out there in the world? Some tool that allows for school comparison and advice about what to choose? This is the blog for you my friend. In this discussion I’’ll give you the big list of variables to consider.

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When Should You Start Job Applications
Briana Juskowiak Briana Juskowiak

When Should You Start Job Applications

January…the month following December graduation. It’s a joyous time, and you absolutely should be celebrating. But what comes next? What I see across the nurse practitioner forums and social media are two big concerns: board exams and job acquisition. I wrote about board certification and how to prep for this a few weeks ago; today I’d like to focus on a topic that I think half the people are getting wrong. That is timing for job application. Many NP students ask when is the right time and the responses are mixed. On a recent post I tallied it was completely split 50/50. Half the people felt you should apply while in school and half felt you should wait until exam and licensing is complete. My argument is that if you are waiting until the latter you are behind the eight ball. Statistically speaking, I know this is likely to stress out half of you and that is not my goal. Hear me out, there are many reasons why I advocate for earlier efforts. Let’s talk about job applications.

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Nurse Practitioner Boards Preparation
Briana Juskowiak Briana Juskowiak

Nurse Practitioner Boards Preparation

After one has achieved the degree, put in the herculean effort to study, stressed beyond reason, hyper-fixated on all the possible outcomes, and then stood in this place of last minute test anxiety, bargaining with one’s maker is where you may find yourself. Based on the conversations I have with NP students I precept and online / via my mentoring business, I can confidently say only a tiny fraction of new grads are immune to this fear. There are some things out of our control as a neophyte, but boards preparation is not one of them. Taking control of how you ready yourself for this exam definitely impacts anxiety level as well as success rate. In this post I will discuss the best way to prepare for your nurse practitioner board certification exam

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