If there's any lesson I've learned in PA school, it is that mistakes are the fertilizer to grow a healthy clinical year. This month is me versus the OR (operating room) and if I didn't contaminate my glove, then I accidently bumped my head into the surgeons or didn't bury the knot correctly on my suture. Some of these mistakes I've made ...

The real tragedy of getting a medical education is not the understanding of your own mortality or quantification of personal risk factors. It's not even the fact that friends and colleagues want you to look at something awful that is growing out of their body (I was sure that was a myth). It is the loss of good television. An EMT friend of mine ...

If I could give any future medical student advice about the ER, my three most important words would be: Vicks Vapor Rub. When I first entered the ER, I was prepared to be jaded, but I was not prepared for the smells: abscesses, STDs, rotten teeth, body odor, mildewed t-shirts, alcoholics, chain smokers, drug-addicts, and diarrhea diapers, to ...

In an accelerated NP program, newly-minted nurses often find themselves in graduate-level classes with people who have been in the profession for most of their lives. I just passed the NCLEX two weeks ago -- hang on -- I can't hold it in. Hire me! I'm great! Anyone in the central Mass. area looking for a new grad Murse with a background in ...

Terry Clarke, student nurse here. I am in an accelerated nurse practitioner program at UMASS Worcester. We just finished our year-long RN BSN equivalency. I've been feeling like a hand-stamped 18-year-old at a bar, able to join the conversations but not order a beer. As my NCLEX draws nigh, I finally feel competent to write about this experience. ...

There is a coming crisis so controversial that Murses fear to bring it up at staff meetings. This danger will affect all healthcare workers equally, from the grizzled PCA to the specialist surgeon whose shoes cost as much as your rent. Will you find a rubric written in the hospital emergency book? No, because, this danger is almost ...

Every student nurse knows that clinical rotations are a hit or miss experience. There are so many factors that cannot be controlled on a hospital floor - the patient assignment, the nurse you are shadowing. You can go a whole day with nothing much happening. Yet, there are still a smug few who always have some riveting story to tell at post ...

Howdy folks, my name is Terry. I'm a student nurse practitioner and this is my introductory blog post. Let's talk about ''murses.'' Do you like Steven Seagal films from the early ‘90s? Who doesn't! In a lot of his movies, there seemed to be an inevitable scene in which Glitter Man himself would walk into a bar and a big drunk dude would growl: ...

Dear Math,  I'm writing this letter to let you know you haven't got the best of me.  You will be seeing me more often, even though I know you and I don't really get along. I don't know what happened to our relationship. Years ago, we were at least tolerant of each other, but now....Now, I don't even know you. I've spent the last six ...