Eat me.

New and student nurses have all heard the assertion that nursing, despite being a most caring profession, is one where the experienced practitioners “eat their young” — that instead of taking newbies under their wings, mentoring them and helping them learn the ropes, they, well, treat them like shit, make their lives impossible, basically do what they can to ensure they suffer. Now, I can’t claim to have seen this first hand in the ED where I work, where new nurses seem to get treated well by the preceptors. But then, all the ED nurses at this hospital aren’t new grads — they have to have floor experience first.

But what I can claim to have experienced is a noticeable amount of negativity from nurses here regarding my decision to pursue the MSN/NP. I’m well aware of the clash some RNs and NPs have about the Direct-Entry-never-been-a nurse-before-becoming-an-NP-Programs, and I’m even sensitive to the fact that choosing Yale over the local schools might be seen as elitist, so to be honest, I’ve tried to keep my fall plans under the radar of the nursing staff here. But this place is Gossip et Busybody Central, so you can imagine how successful I’ve been. But I guess I wasn’t really prepared for the reactions I’ve gotten. It hasn’t all been bad, because a few nurses I would call friends have been very supportive and enthusiastic, but I would say that the majority of people who’ve commented have said something snarky. One of the ACNPs was completely unsupportive and was kind enough to wrap up her disdainful lecture with “Well, you won’t get a job since you don’t have any experience.” Gee, thanks for the warm welcome to the profession! Ditto for the RNs, who usually ask a bunch of questions only to say something discouraging in response. I even had one RN say “Well, Excuuuuse Us!” and walk off in a huff off after overhearing that I was leaving the hospital to go to Yale.

That one actually stung a bit.

The hard part about all of this is that I don’t feel like these nurses have any rhyme or reason to judge me, but they’re doing it anyway. They’re taking my career plans as a personal affront — without knowing anything about why I’ve made this choice. Most of my administrative coworkers are in their early 20s and have high school diplomas or are working toward associates degrees — so very few of the nurses know that I’m a bit of an anomaly with my age and my work/educational background: I’m 28, this is a second career for me, I already have my bachelor’s and work experience, yada yada. And as much as I actually do enjoy answering their phone calls and keeping track of their paperwork here in the ED, this wasn’t my life’s work. Oddly enough, I think that if I was going to medical school, they wouldn’t be so harsh. But my choosing NP over RN, that’s clearly insulting. Sigh.

The one truly positive conversation I had was with a staff nurse who was graduating from a local MSN program who was supportive about my not choosing to attend BC (she had precepted there and felt the program was, indeed, rushed) and who actually confessed to me that she “used to be against the direct-entry programs” UNTIL she went through an MSN/NP program herself. She said that now that she really knows what NPs do and what their training is like, she thinks people are comparing apples and oranges — that what RNs and NPs do is so different that having the RN experience really doesn’t make a difference. She said that she thinks she’ll be able to use her RN experience to bring something additional to her NP practice, but she didn’t think her classmates without it would be worse practitioners.

So that was the one exception to the rule — a nurse who was both positive about my becoming an NP and who didn’t think I was a jerk destined to be jobless for doing Direct-Entry. She made my day.

Needless to say, I’m looking forward to being at Yale soon where I’ll be part of a community that’s excited about all kinds of people becoming APRNs… and that I hope that I never become a nurse who eats anything other than a vegetarian diet.

Sorry, Munoz.

Something about birthdays makes you wax philosophical about life. Something about an upcoming move makes you see your old haunts in a new light.

Something about driving in Boston makes you homicidal.

I turned 28 this week, and 48 hours later got into my very first car accident. I’ve been driving since I was sixteen, and although I’ve never owned a car, I’ve done seven years of driving in CrazyTown (courtesy of Zipcar) without mishap. But on Thursday, I had to drive to Worcester to attend the Mass Fall Prevention Coaliton’s statewide symposium. I took the Pike out there, but on the return trip in the afternoon, I thought to myself, “I’m not in any hurry! I should take some back roads and see some more of this fine state I’m abandoning shortly!”

Well, I didn’t end up being too impressed, and really, all I can recall now is thinking that I was going to end up rear-ending someone because of the traffic and the typical Masshole driving I encountered on these actually-not-so-back roads. It proved all too ironic that I was so worried about it, because five minutes from home, a local MD driving a Porsche Cayenne dialed his cell phone while in the midst of a very busy intersection and gave little red Matrix Munoz a nice hard smack on the ass.

Not much damage to the car, and I only have mild whiplash-type achyness today, but what a pain. Since I didn’t own the car and had never been in an accident before, I really had no idea what the procedure was. Apparently the procedure is a lot of effing paperwork. And a little mild hysteria once the other driver left and the Zipcar person asked me five times, “Are you sure you’re okay? You don’t sound so okay.”  Yeahh… I guess you’re never too old to have a wee freak-out.

I’ve been thinking for a while about what things I’m not going to miss about this town, and to be honest, most of them involve the Green Line, but right up there is going to be the way Boston drives. Because it wasn’t the extra second the MD took to dial his phone that truly caused the accident — it was the asshole two cars ahead who led all of us into this crazy intersection and then attempted to make a ridiculous (and very illegal) 160-degree left turn.

Friends in CT

So I was lucky enough to get a nice flame comment on my blog… which is pretty funny, considering it’s, well, my blog. Where I don’t have to respond or even post their comment. But in the interests of education and good will, why the hell not?

The comment was on this post from January, about my experience visiting the nursing school at Yale. The most important thing to note, which my dear flame-thrower did not, was that nowhere in my blog did I say that I felt unsafe in New Haven. The whole point of my post was that I was TOLD that I should feel unsafe there by Yale-affiliated-folk. The staff and students I met were clear: No walking around the nursing school, call for the shuttle if you’re going anywhere after dark, etc.  And what about my good friend in New Haven, who for eight years lived in one of the less-gentrified areas of Cambridge (where, I clearly recall, he had no problem letting me wander around intoxicated at night)? Well, he DROVE me to YSN and back and asked me to take a cab the two blocks to the train station. 

Those were the things that gave me pause, dear readers.

I am perfectly willing to consider that this may be alarmist behavior on behalf of Yale and/or the individuals I met and not a real reflection of the state of New Haven affairs, but I think it’s totally reasonable that I was a little, um, disconcerted.  I’ve felt comfortable being on my own in major metropolitan areas since I was a teenager — to be told by adult men that they don’t walk around at night alone in a place I might live was a bit hard to swallow.  And then discovering that the going rents in New Haven were more than I’m paying to live in a very safe and walkable/T-accessible area in Boston — well, the whole thing was a bit surreal.

That said, I’m not a hater. I’m excited to move there and am looking for apartments. I’ve been back for a visit, had some apizza, drove and walked around some parts of town. So simmer down, flamer. But I’ll reply to the best bits of the comment because it was so random, and delayed, and hell, the blog’s been pretty slow….