Nursing school is hard enough without the fear tactics.  And the truth is, there are so many ways that people learn.  Instead of saying "One of you won't be here" - what if we said "I will HELP you be here".

You CAN Do This!

-Jon Haws, RN

The past is prologue - there comes a time when we have to stop wishing for a better past.  It took me 5 years to accept the past as a way to move forward. 

I literally wrote the book on surviving your first year as a nurse (The New Nurse Survival Guide) and today I wanted to share 3 tips from that book that you can start applying TODAY whether you are in nursing school or already working as a nurse.

If I could encourage you to start doing ONE thing today while you're in nursing school - it would be this. 

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What I Wish I Knew: Potassium-K Lab Value Levels

What do bananas, avocados, and kale all have in common?

Potassium!

For more resources to help you understand Potassium, Hyperkalemia and Hypokalemia, click here:

What role does it play in the body?

What’s a normal range level for potassium?

And what happens when potassium levels are too low or too high?

On a shift early in my career, while I was still being oriented to the unit, I held tight to that rule of NEVER pushing IV potassium even when my preceptor was providing instructions that conflicted with that big rule. Here is that story...

This patient’s lungs were so bad, gas exchange had to take place outside of his body... Learning to read ABGs, and understanding what to do with that information is a very important skill for any nurse, but particularly a cardiovascular ICU nurse. 

Hi I am Nurse Abby, and I loved working in the cardiovascular ICU - that was truly one of my favorite nursing jobs. Today I want to share with you the story of one of my MORE complicated patients.

This week I opened up some old nursing school notes, and I started remembering how hard nursing school really was!  

I remember, in particular, getting a little confused between the different types of shock.  

When I was studying distributive shock I found one key 🔑 point that actually cleared up a lot of the misunderstandings and confusion.  That started to really turn things around for me in nursing school!

Hey man, so uh, just letting you know that I’m at the hospital being admitted. I’m having a heart attack, so I probably won’t be in tomorrow."

When my patient's son said he wasn't feeling right, it would have been easy to assume it was because of the stress he was under. 

He was visiting his sick mom . . . in the ICU nonetheless.    

But something just didn’t feel right"