This time around I took the Med-Surge ATI. With this test I decided to take more breaks and finish the test over the span of 1-2 days so that I wouldn’t lose as much focus and concentration on the questions. I also made sure to do a better job of fully reading through the questions because I know I had a lot of mistakes on my last ATI because I didn’t full read through. One thing that was challenging for me this time was select all that apply questions. I answers majority of them correctly but then I would leave out one answer that was also correct just because I was insecure of how many answers I was selecting, but I need to be more focused on the answers at hand and what is true/false for the question rather than overthinking how many answers I give. This is something I will work on next time by really dipping deep into select all that apply questions and looking through all of the answers before answering. I really like how these ATI tests are helping me to find problems in my content gap as well and seeing what things I have mastered and what things I need to do more studying on because it gives me great feedback to make me a better nurse in the future.
Prepare for Licensure #1
This time around doing the Pharmacology ATI, I made a plan to just go into it and not change my answers. I made this plan beforehand so I would spend more time on the questions rather than flying through the ones I felt like I knew and then being stuck on other ones and I believe this really helped me. It helped me to not overthink the questions and not get stuck between 2 answers. One thing I could have done better was highlighting key words in the question because the main weakness I had was picking wrong answers for questions that were asking contraindications or “needs for further teaching”. Making sure you read the question all of the way through and thoroughly looking through all of the answers is one thing that I need to work on.
I also found out that I can get very burnt out during tests and then I start to lose focus. One thing that could really help me, especially during ATI is taking my time and doing 10 questions then giving myself a minute to just think and reset as if I am taking a bunch of little tests rather than a 200 question test all at once.
Pre Interview Reflection
The subject I chose for this interview is my father. My father works as a nurse and he is the clinical leader of his floor. He works in orthopedic nursing and has a background in physical therapy as well. He has been working at the same hospital for over 10 years and has taken on a huge leadership role as the clinical leader of his floor. I chose my father because he has been my biggest role model my whole entire life and having the pleasure to also see your role model grow and go from a floor nurse to a clinical leader is something special to me. As a father, he is compassionate, empathetic, understanding and always willing to listen and that is something that he also shows in his work with patients. He is always prepared and professional but still accommodates to any needs that a patient has. He is always able to communicate efficiently and is extremely self aware which is something I have always admired because it means that he is able to always check in on himself and work on things to make himself better for not only his family, but his career as well. As a clinical leader, I find him to be both informal and formal. He is a formal leader because he does have authority over his floor but also connects with others and builds communication with others to find a common ground for people which is seen as informal. I am extremely interested in interviewing him because I want to learn more about how he sees himself and get a behind the scenes of how he came to get this clinical leader position. I am extremely interested in finding out more about what it was like being a male nursing student at the time that my father went to school. During that time period I know it was not as accepted to be a male in nursing and I think those struggles that my father went through really helped him to become the amazing nurse that he is today.
Career Development
During our last class together, we watched NURSES If Florence Could See Us Now. This movie really opened my eyes to all aspects of different nursing and how much it means to be going to school for this career. Watching this movie made me feel extremely lucky and grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to come to UNE and learn everything this is about nursing because even though it is a rewarding career, it is a lot of hard work and dedication to reach your goal. You have to make sure you learn every aspect about all types of nursing before you really know what you want to do, along with some sleepless nights and early mornings studying and educating yourself on things that will help you in your career. One thing I learned from this movie were all the types of positions that nurses can be in, such as a nursing manager or the floor nurse who got infected with HIV and became an educator for others with HIV and workplace needle injuries. This was one thing I didn’t realize about nursing was how flexible it is and how many types of things you can do depending on what you want to do with your life.
An interview is a huge part of the hiring process and can make such a big difference when you’re applying for a dream job. The first thing I would do before an interview is 100% research the facility that I am applying for just to know if that environment is something I want to be in. I would also prepare questions to ask for myself because I feel like that is important, if not more important than answers to questions. I would think about where I want to be in the future and if this facility is going to help me get to that end goal, whether it is at that facility or somewhere else. I believe just being confident in my abilities and my dreams/passions will be able to impress interviewers.
I would say my biggest strength is that when I am passionate about something, I want to learn as much as I can about that particular thing. I may not be the smartest student or know everything there is to know but I am also an extremely hard worker and if I set my mind to something I will do it and never give up. Whatever I do in my life I always give 100% and I think that would be my greatest strength. My greatest challenge is that I am a very visual/active learner so I really don’t understand how to truly do something until I see someone do it and then do it myself. I am taking steps such as making concept maps and putting a lot of work into SIM and clinicals to make sure that that weakness becomes a strength for me over time.
Prepare for Transitions
Starting a new chapter in your life is very difficult to do, but also extremely rewarding and exciting. I think I am most excited to feel in control of my own life and job and all of the choices I have. During nursing school you need to learn everything you can about nursing as a whole, but I’m excited to have my choice of my speciality and my choice of where I decide to work. I think that is something that is extremely exciting for a new grad because it is a new start to a new portion of our lives. The biggest celebration I will have will be for graduating. Graduating is such a huge milestone for everyone but I will be the first child in my family to have graduated college, and that in itself is a huge accomplishment. I will be celebrating by spending time with my friends and family and the people who helped me get through school all this time.
Even though starting a new chapter is a fresh start, it is also very nerve racking. Even though I am excited about starting a new life for myself, it can also be scary. Knowing that everything I do is in my own hands and my decisions can always affect what happens to me in the future is a lot of pressure to put on myself. I am the most anxious about taking the NCLEX. I have not always been known to be a great test taker and that scares me, but I think by using the SMART goals throughout this semester and the summer that I will be able to properly prepare myself for the NCLEX.
The way I will do this is by starting in the summer after this semester and allowing myself to read through at least 20 pages of my NCLEX book a week and answer questions. If I don’t do as well, I will double them the next week with the same questions and make sure I am able to master them before I take the NCLEX or before the first week in August. One thing that did help me already with this journey is the ATI nurse logic modules. These helped me because they helped me notice what type of questions I need to work on rather than the question itself. I think this will help me a lot in the future when I am studying to focus on which questions I need help answering that don’t have anything to do with content and have more to do with the answering of questions.
Final Project Reflection
This dissemination project taught me a lot. It really taught me how to prioritize main points and things I can do to grab the audiences attention. In this case, the audience is nurses and my group and I decided to do our project on retention rate of new nurses because that is a huge population of nurses and can help not only newly graduated nurses, but charge nurses and experienced nurses who play a huge role in teaching those young nurses. It was really nice working with my clinical group because we had all seen similar things on our floor and knew what we had to research once we identified the problem. It was amazing seeing everyone different points and perspective on the topic and I think it was really interesting seeing how our work as student nurses can still affect working floor nurses and even charge nurses. It made me realize that all nurses, no matter a student or experienced, all have a voice and that is the amazing thing about EBP is that is helps people notice a common problem which then helps find a common goal. I really enjoyed doing this project and working this hard to see the final project all done was all worth it.
EBP Final Proposal and Reflection
This proposal was very challenging but helped me greatly with prioritizing information. At first my group and I thought there was no way we could add in all of the research and information we found into 2-3 pages, but we then decided that we needed to put the information in place my priority. We tried to add in information that we found in research while still keeping it our own. Even though we put information from multiple sources we made sure that they all went together somehow and reflected our common goal of research which was to compare how charge nurses teach and how that can help a newly graduated nurse retain information. Even though our group had a hard time at the beginning, it made me realize why rough drafts are so important because they help us pool the information together in one, but also gives us room to go back and pick and choose which information was more valuable to us.
Literacy Narrative
Part 3: Learning Outcome 5 and 6:
- My ability to do MLA formatted citations or formats on my paper has definitely improved. At the very beginning of the year, on the first paper I wrote, I didn’t formatt my paper in MLA and I didn’t have a work cited page, mostly because I forgot but also because I didn’t really know the proper way to do it. In my Literacy Narrative, I had a perfectly formatted work cited page and made sure I had the proper in text citations. Most of this was due to the Little Seagull book. This book helped me memorize how to do the proper citations rather than putting my URL in Easybib and copying it and pasting it. By the end, I basically memorized how to do the citation myself and if it came from a different source, I knew the resources on where to go to.
Big Data Project
Working Thesis with Sources
“Big data affects almost every aspect of our modern day lives. It makes a huge impact on not only our social lives, but also our basic needs such as healthcare. Even though it is used greatly, the positives and negatives are rarely talked about.”
Lohr, Steven. The Age of Big Data. 2012, Article. November 16 2017.
I will use this source to give the basis of Big Data and help people who were like me and didn’t understand or have any background on it.
Ho Lee, Choong. Yoon, Hyung-Jin. Medical Big Data: Promises and Practices. 2017. Journal Article. November 16 2017.
I will use this source to help me with the pros and cons of medical data and be able to show both sides and a counter argument for why it is helpful but also can be dangerous.
Marr, Bernard. How Big Data is Changing Healthcare. 2015. Article. November 16 2017.
I will use this source to show the affect that the medical data has on us that we don’t even realize, and how much of a drastic change it is.
Gibbs, Frederick. Reznick, Jeffrey. Teaching and Researching the History of Medicine in the Era of (Big) Data. 2017. Journal Article. November 16 2017.
I wil use this source to show how medical data started which I think will set my paper apart from others and give another good basis on medical history.
My plan for this paper is to show the positives and negatives of Medical healthcare but make sure that I give good background on Big Data and write in the perspective of someone who has no idea what it is. I want to inform people of the affect it has on everyday live and how dangerous yet helpful it can be to have these medical record. I am using pros and cons to give both sides and give more of an information paper rather than an argumentative problem. More sources could help me but I would rather go in depth with minimal amount of sources instead of overdoing and confusing the reader with my research.
