Nursing

Registered Nurse Wisconsin

Renewing my Wisconsin Nursing License – 2010

In 2010, I have the same gripe I have now, as I did in 2008 – – – aside from a few bucks out of my pocket every two years, there are no educational requirements should I decide to re-enter the nursing field.  In Wisconsin, mandatory continuing education as a condition of licensure exists for the majority of health care professionals except for nursing. Can you imagine?  I haven’t practiced since 2004.  That’s 6 years now.  In the ever-changing field of medicine, I can’t even begin to imagine what I’ve missed and how much I don’t know. 

2-Year Renewal

March is a month away and I got a notice in the mail that it’s time to renew my nursing license. Here, in Wisconsin, we have to renew them every 2 years in order to maintain the license. It costs, roughly, sixty-five bucks to renew every two years – – there’s no continuing education requirements to be met…. just money (of course). I think in other states, nurses have to meet a certain amount of hours of continuing education in order to maintain their licensure… here in Wisconsin – good ol’ cold hard green cash will do. I graduated nursing […]

On the road without a cell phone

I was talking with Chelle this morning. She was sharing her new cell phone number with me. We chatted a bit about life before cell phones – – having to use those things called Pay Phones when we were away from home. Remember pay phones? Heh. It reminded me of a job I had once. My title was “Nurse Liaison” – I worked for a hospital that specialized in post-op orthopedic rehabilitation. My job? We took referrals from the major hospitals of patients who needed post-op rehab. I took the referrals then drove to the various hospitals to meet with […]

Genie in a Blog

Ask and Ye shall receive. Of course, I don’t think that phrase was talking about blogging – – but it did, at least in my case. Things remain a little nuts around here while playing catch up, no big shocking news there. Yesterday, I took a bit of a break and went to meet Tom for coffee (he’s that long lost friend I spoke of earlier). We caught up after about a year of no contact. He did, in fact, make up for dropping off the face of the earth by buying me coffee at Starbucks, but he also brought […]

A 36 Hour Day

Early in my nursing career, I was green, like most new nurses are. There is so much to keep straight, keep track of – I found it somewhat difficult to hone my bedside manner while, at the same time, keeping track of the medication schedules of 15 different patients – – wound dressing changes, meal times, special diet needs, physical therapy schedules and on and on. On top of that, as a newly graduated Registered Nurse starting her career in the midst of one of the worst nursing shortages this country has experienced (turns out? that nursing shortage never did […]

Randomality

I survived my night on call for hospice for the first time in 6 months. I’m unsure that I like that ol’ ball-and-chain feeling that I get, knowing that I’m responsible for 70 very ill home patients that span a 5 county distance. I don’t know how many times I looked at Chris that night and said, “Umm..explain to me once again, why did I agree to do this?” He says, “Because you were feeling isolated and needed the interaction?” Me, “Umm..yea.” It wasn’t so bad, really. I’ve just gotten used to not having anyone to answer to. Spoiled little […]

Back in the saddle

I’m nuts and crazy. Both, at the same time. For those who have been reading for awhile – you know that before quitting my job and taking the leap into full self-employment with my hosting and design biz, I worked as a Registered Nurse in hospice. When I left, I walked away from 15 years of a career dedicated to nursing. My burn-out level was pretty high. My boss, at the time, stunk. Overall, I was ready for the leap and for the move. What I didn’t count on was missing my patients and the work that I did. I […]

Sunday Sunday

I was on call for Hospice today – – just got home not that long ago from a 12 hour day of doing patient visits. I’m exhausted and worn out. It’s 8pm and I”m thinking of getting in my PJ’s and going to bed. Imagine that? From the queen of the night owls! Guess that means I’m getting old? (eek!) Nah, it’s just that sometimes – Hospice can be so emotionally exhausting. Not going to go into all of the tragedies that I stepped in an out of during the course of my day today . . . it was […]

Special Date

I agreed to put in a few hours for Hospice today. They had a new patient that they wanted me to do an intake on. So I spent 3 hours today at the home of G. – a man with lung cancer. He has an approximate 3 month prognosis, and is in extremely good manner about it. He’s a former POW from WWII and an active veteran with his local VFW. He wants to remain active in it as much as possible and for as long as possible. After I was done answering his questions and then doing his physical […]

That was cold

I was on-call for Hospice on Labor Day. A situation that I had to deal with was a little surreal. The patient was 41. He was the father of three kids (ages 5, 7 and 10) and the husband of a 35 year old wife. One of her very first questions for me was: “When is he going to die? Because the kids and I have tickets out of here to Arizona when he does.” And then there was this, in regards to the 5 year old boy: “No one has told him that his father is going to die. […]

Scroll to Top