My Message to all June 2008 Nurse Licensure Examination Candidates


Send this eCard !

If you or somebody you know will be taking the Philippine Nursing Board Exams on June 1 and 2, then this cute e-card will surely make your day.

On a similar note, check out the e-card I used for
Ward Class, my other nursing blog. Just as cute as this one!

You Might Be A Nurse If...

I had been very busy with my other nursing blog lately that I wasn't able to post a single entry here at Nurse In Cyberspace for more than two weeks. To make up for that, here is a hilariously insightful piece from LifeTips.com. Here goes:

You Might Be a Nurse If...

*You can drink a pot of coffee and still go to sleep in the morning.

*You believe every patient needs TLC: Thorazine, Lorazapam, and Compazine.

*You can´t see it; it´s probably not there.

*Your sense of humor seems to get more warped each year.

*You think it is acceptable to use "penis" and "vagina" in a normal conversation.

*You believe the definition of stress is when you wake up screaming and you realize you haven´t fallen asleep yet.

*You believe that if warm wine enemas were routinely ordered, patient complaints would greatly decrease.

*You call some of your co-workers "Flowers in the Field of Medicine" because they´re bloomin´ idiots.

*You hope there´s a special place in Hell for the inventor of the call light.

*You believe not all patients are annoying. Some are dead.

*You believe experience is something you don´t get until just after you need it.

*You see stress as a normal way of life.

*You have a tendency to laugh at your patient´s "big" problems.

*You know the phone numbers of every late night food delivery place in town by heart.

*You believe the problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.

*You´ve ever thought, "Patients, God love ´em, because today, I sure don´t!"

*Everything only happens all at once.

*You have more T-shirts that say, "Love a nurse PRN" than plain T-shirts.

*You´ve ever referred to other nurses as "Band-Aid Bunnies."

*You´ve ever been telling work stories in a restaurant and had someone at another table throw-up.

*You write a patient report and have to translate it to medical records because of all the acronyms in it.

*You notice that you use more four-letter words now than before you became a nurse.

*You look in your closet and can´t find anything non-medical to wear.

*You´ve ever told anyone in pain to "stop being a baby and deal with it."

*You have a patient in four-point leathers that asks if you´re a nurse, you reply "Yes", and walk away.

*You´ve ever told a patient to "stop faking it."

*You believe all bleeding stops...eventually.

*You don´t get excited about blood loss unless it´s your own.

*You don´t hit patients or doctors....unless absolutely necessary.

*You believe the pain will go away when it stops hurting.

*Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong and if nothing has gone wrong, you´ve obviously don´t understand the situation.

*You believe if you can keep your head among all this confusion, you obviously don´t understand the situation.

*You´ve ever said, "Why am I here?"

*If you believe if a patient who has a catheter, he needs it.

*Everyone gets treated exactly the same...until they piss you off.

*When you get a call telling you the name of your next admit and you can do the care plan before the patient gets to the floor.

*When called for orders, the MD says, "Write them yourself; you know the patient better than I do."

*You´ve ever had to contend with someone who thinks constipation for 4 hours is an emergency.

*Ever rolled your eyes when the 14 year-old says, "No, I´ve never had sex."

*You refer to motorcyclists as organ donors.

*You can eat a candy bar with one hand while performing digital stimulation on your patient with the other hand, and it doesn´t bother you.

*You believe Tylenol, Advil, or Excedrin provides a large part of your daily calorie intake requirements.

*You´ve ever held a 14-gauge needle over someone´s vein and said, "Now your going to feel a little stick."

*You can identify the "PID Shuffle" and the "Kidney Stone Squirm" at 15 feet.

*You´ve ever had a patient with a nose ring, a brow ring and twelve earrings say, "I´m afraid of shots."

*You´ve ever thought, "As long as he´s got a pulse, I don´t care about the rhythm."

*You think the ultimate cruel joke is get someone drunk, take them to the ER and tell them he OD´d on "some kind of pills."

*You automatically multiply by three the number of drinks a patient claims to have daily.

*You can keep a straight face when a patient responds, "Just two beers."

*You feel that if someone is shot or stabbed, they probably deserved it.

*You stare at someone in utter disbelief when they actually cover their mouth to cough.

*You think "awake and stupid" is an appropriate choice for mental status.

*You believe in the aerial spraying of Prozac.

*You have encouraged obnoxious patients to sign out AMA.

*You believe the government should require a permit to reproduce.

*Your most common assessment question at 2 a.m. is "Why is this an emergency now?"

*You believe every waiting room should have a Valium salt lick.

*You don´t believe 90% of what you´re told, and 75% of what you see.

*You firmly believe that "too stupid to live" should be a diagnosis.

*You have to leave the patient before you begin to laugh uncontrollably.

*You believe a book entitled "Suicide: Getting it Right the First Time" will be your next project.

*You believe a good tape job will fix anything.

*You´ve ever had a patient look you dead in the eye and say, "I don´t know how that got stuck in there."

*You have ever had a patient say, "I´m not pregnant, I can´t be pregnant! I can´t be having a baby!"

*You have a special shrine in your home to the inventor of Haldol.

*You can think of another 200 examples of "You Might Be a Nurse If..."


Tee-hee!:)

Reviewing for the Nurse Licensure Examination...


The Philippine Nurse Licensure Examination is scheduled on June 1 and 2, 2008. Candidates for this licensure exam are surely frenzied in their review with barely three weeks left.

In one of my online sojourns (what a word!) , I chanced upon a copy of a memo issued by the Commission On Higher Education prohibiting institutions from forcing their graduates or students to enroll with affiliated review centers.

It may be a tad too late for those poor graduates who were tricked by their respective College Deans into becoming sacrificial lambs in these rampant X-deals between nursing schools and review centers. Still, there is hope for those who will be taking the Nurse Licensure Examination late this year.

Here is an excerpt of the ChED Memorandum Order No. 13, series of 2006:

In accordance with the pertinent provisions of Republic Act. No. 7722, otherwise known as the "Higher Education Act of 1994", and in response to various complaints filed with this Commission, the following prohibitions shall be strictly implemented to all public and private Higher Institutions (HEIs):

1. Forcing their graduates and their graduating students to enroll in their review centers and/or in review centers of their preference.
2. Charging exorbitant review fees.
3. Withholding of grades and other school records of students and graduates who cannot enroll in these review centers.

All HEIs found guilty will be dealt with accordingly.


Some schools even go as far as incorporating review classes into the nursing curriculum. They usually give last-minute announcements 2 or three months into graduation (graduation in Philippine nursing schools usually fall on late March to mid-April) saying that students' performance in in-house review classes will be included in the final computation of grades.

Preposterous, huh?

Maybe our College Deans forgot that the nursing curriculum is already crammed as it is. With subjects such as Nursing Leadership and Management and Research to worry about amidst hurried clinical rotations, I know for certain how harassed nursing students are during their final semester in nursing school.

Of course, our esteemed specialists in nursing education knows what is best for our beloved student nurses. They believe they only have their graduates' welfare at heart so they painstakingly scouted for the best review centers in the land.

Really? You gotta be kidding me.:)