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
Clinical Pearls: Liver Failure
Oh the ways the liver can fail. As a new nurse practitioner this one was hard to get down. Cardiology is generally seen as the bee all end all when it comes to keeping our bodies running, but I’d like to talk about the under appreciated liver. Hepatology is fascinating because the normal function of the liver is supremely multi-faceted. Throw in a little pathology and any number of pathways can be deranged and within those any degree of severity can be seen. From acute to chronic to acute-on-chronic, severity can run the gamut. Decompensated cirrhosis is a common killer in most ICU’s. Given how poorly understood this disease state is, I’d like to talk about the complexity, progression, prognosis, and management of liver failure in the intensive care unit.
Mistakes To Avoid On Your Resume
I’ve seen a fair number of nurse practitioner resumes in my day. Seems like my large group is always cycling through new hires. In addition to that I look at all the resumes that come through for my consultation/interview prep business. It’s interesting to me the variety of what folks are doing across the nation. When I wrote my first NP resume I assumed we all heard the same HR lecture and wrote them the same. Most people have professional looking resumes but there are some industry specific issues that I find am repeatedly addressing with clients. In this post I’ll discuss the most common mistakes I see on the nurse practitioner resume.
Clinical Pearls: Evaluating For Intubation
When is it time to say it’s time? I think back on the really bad days of the pandemic when I walked from room to room asking myself this question repeatedly. Honestly, for intensive care unit level covid that’s what it felt like - a few random meds that typically didn’t help, supportive care, and careful vigilance for when it was time to go on the dreaded vent. Our patients feared it, our families feared it; it was the elephant in the room every time you walked in. Outside of covid pneumonia, there are a million reasons why a patient needs mechanical vent support and failing lungs are just one component. This is a very common question I get asked when I am training a nurse practitioner student Here’s how I approach evaluating a patient for intubation need.
NP vs RN: Differences in employment structure
This topic comes from a question I received from a client asking to explain how nurse practitioners fit into a physician run group. She expressed her surprise to learn that many APPs and physicians who work in a hospital are not employed by the hospital and asked for feedback about how this works and how nurse practitioners fit into this model. I definitely understand this confusion. As nurses, we are used to standard hospital or health system employment with clear hierarchical management. In this post I’ll talk about my experience with this and the main differences between NPs and RNs in regards to:
Who employs you.
Who manages/directs you.
How you get paid.
Who your colleagues are.
Toxic Workplaces And What to Do About Them
I talk to a fair amount of nurse practitioners who are in a space of indecision. My goal is to help them sort out what will best serve their {whole} life goals. It’s always about balancing work-life factors with career goals. Some of them are considering leaving the profession and going back to the bedside or doing something else altogether. Some are coming to me seeking interview/job acquisition help and what we discover is that their confidence has been wrecked by a unhealthy work environment. I’d be willing to bet many of you have experienced this in the past or are stuck in this situation currently. It’s truly a sad state of affairs these days particularly for nurse practitioners. In this article I wanted to talk about this phenomenon and what some options may be for you.
Nurse Practitioner Fellowships
When I say fellowship, I’m really referring to two types of post-graduate training: nurse practitioner residency and nurse practitioner fellowship. What’s the difference? A residency is more general and encompasses a broader scope of practice. It may be a longer time frame as well, most range between 6-12 months. It is ideal for someone who had little bedside experience or sub-par education in school (be it academic or clinical). A fellowship on the other hand is specialized and has a particular focus of interest. It is ideal for someone who has a strong sense of what they want to do and/or lack the opportunity to find a way into the niche.
Clinical Pearls: Waveform Capnography
End tidal carbon dioxide (ETCO2) measures exhaled carbon dioxide, it therefore reflects the efficacy with which CO2 is pumped back to the lungs (indirect measurement of cardiac output) and then exhaled (ventilation). Waveform Capnography is a continuous tracing, or waveform, of ETCO2. It is very useful when assessed as a trend.
The Best Nurse Practitioner Podcasts
Are you an avid auditory learner? I’m slightly obsessed with podcasts. I tend to go on benders based on what is going on in my life. I listened exclusively to travel podcasts for eighteen months when I planned a European trip a few years ago. I have always liked to use podcasts as an adjunct to my professional education as a nurse practitioner. IMO it’s hard to utilize them exclusively just because the search functions are not as robust (there’s a lot to dig through to find one talk about a subject like normal labs, etc) and the content is long. But, once you find a quality show that addresses your specific population it’s great to listen to on a more regular basis (versus a search approach). The nuggets of wisdom you can garner from these discussions can greatly impact your practice. You may have to be willing to wait for them, but if you were going to be doing the dishes anyway, why not multi-task? In this post I will share my favorite podcasts (which are mostly ICU): what I love about them and how I use the info in my career as an ICU nurse practitioner.