What is a graduate nurse to do between graduation and the start of new grad orientation?

Do visions of Margaritas by the pool, relaxing massages and pedicures come to mind????

I wish!!! The last 10 days of my life have been spent cleaning my house, attending an NCLEX review course, and working. I did take the weekend off to run my dogs in a flyball tournament (which we won), but I won't get off on a tangent about my dogs...I promise :-).

The Kaplan NCLEX review was the highlight of my week (not counting the flyball tournament of course), and I think it deserves a bit of a discussion. Many people are torn as to whether or not to attend a review course. They figure heck I just paid $X.XX for 2-4 years of school, why should I shell out 3-600 more for a review course? Well, I can't speak for every review out there, but coming from someone who is an extremely good test taker with a near photographic memory, I wholeheartedly recommend the Kaplan review. Their decision tree model gives you a solid framework for answering questions, and seems to work about 75% of the time even when you know nothing about what they are testing on. That is not to say that you could go in with no knowledge at all and get a 75% just by using the decision tree, but it will definitely up your chances of getting a correct answer. Another great thing about the decision tree is that it gives the non confident test taker a "plan", and therefore a bit of confidence. They also have a great resource in their RN course book...it presents clear and concise information on what I can only assume is a huge part of what we will need to know for NCLEX. The online resources that come with the class have been invaluable to me as well...the qBank and qTrainers supply a large number of high level test questions to practice with (unlike many of the cd's and books that supply mostly knowledge questions). The best part of all is that if you follow their quidelines, and do all of your homework, if you fail the NCLEX, they will refund the cost of your review class...IMO it is overall a great deal. On the downside of the Kaplan review is the 4 days of sitting in a classroom going over test questions with a nurse that has a book with all of the rationales, but the critical thinking skills of a slug. I learned a valuable lesson from that though....I am going to miss some questions because I don't agree with the people making the test (I'm sorry, I will see the possible GI bleed before the incontinence every time). Just because the answer I chose is not the correct answer according to the test, doesn't mean that it is not a viable option. Once I have that RN after my name, it will be my job to determine the "correct" answer for my patient's situation, and as long as I can justify my reasoning and keep my patient safe and alive, it is my call what to do...not some test maker locked in a small windowless room somewhere in eutopia hospital. Bottom line...if you can at all swing it...take the Kaplan review. It is worth every penny.

The other thing taking up my time has been work. I had planned to not work between graduation and the start of the GN program, and hoped that would give me the much needed time to clean my house and get my life in order. Well, it didn't happen that way. Remember my schpeal on teamwork in my first post and how great of a team of nurses we had? Well, somewhere in there I forgot to mention that when you are a part of that team, and things head south you are expected to help out as much as possible. We have had a rough couple of weeks at work, more unstable patients than usual, lots of nurses getting sick, and one nurse deciding to get arrested for stealing drugs (not gonna get too in depth on that...suffice it to say it was a shock and has saddened us all). When census is up and nurses are down, everyone has to chip in, so I spent 3 or 4 nights at work trying to help them keep their heads above water. It is an interesting dynamic there now, as I am not longer just a tech, but I am not quite a nurse yet, so no one is really sure what I can and can't do.
Next week all of that will change, as GN orientation starts on Tuesday. More on that next time!!