Life After Nursing School


I finished my nursing degree back in April 2005 and passed the Nurse Licensure Examination shortly after that after roughtly spending 6 months taking formal review classes for the nursing board exams.

While some of my batchmates opted to start early in their nursing careers by working as staff nurses in tertiary hospitals here in my hometown, I decided to start reviewing for foreign nursing exams first.

Back then, my best option was to take the NCLEX-RN directly and bypass the CGFNS. And so I spent more than 6 months reviewing for the NCLEX-RN examination-- answering thousands of practice questions on my own while taking formal NCLEX-RN review classes. I took the NCLEX-RN in Hongkong sometime in August 2006 and a few days after that, I found out that I am about to be sent my State of Connecticut nursing license.

I was tired with all the reviewing I did but I still had to take the IELTS (International English Language Testing System) exam. I needed to pass the IELTS for my visa screen certificate . And so, again, I spent a month or so reviewing for the said english-proficiency exam and passed it with a decent overall band score.

Many things happened after that: I found myself a US-based employer, patiently waited for my I140 application to be approved, renewed my State of Connecticut nursing license twice, provided end-of-life care to an immediate family member for more than a year, and obtained myself that very expensive Visa Screen Certificate from CGFNS.

A couple of months ago, I ventured into blogging by putting up a couple of blogs, one of which is a blog specifically for student nurses. I honestly think whipping up article after article on various nursing topics can be a bit tedious but thanks to the valuable help and untiring support of Pinoy R.N., I'm still blogging.

While I also want to further my nursing career by working as a staff nurse in one of the acute care healthcare facilities here in my hometown, I prefer to work at home right now for a variety of reasons. I'll just obtain actual hospital experience later and in the meantime, just apply what I learned from nursing school to the best of my ability. After all, nursing can be applied in a variety of settings, don't you think?


I know many of you disagree with me on this but we do have our own reasons for the decisions we make and what's best is that we try to do what we think is best for us. With this, I hope you have a good day and do drop me a comment or two if you have lots of time in your hands.

:)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

you are not alone. the ones who are not like us don't actually understand our decisions. kelangan magkampihan tayo kasi they tend to look down on us just because we don't choose the road most traveled

CyNurse said...

my sentiments, exactly. there is time for everything. it may take forever for me to get there but I definitely will.:)

alvinism said...

if u dont mind, what work are u into in ur home? im also a nurse as of june 2007 and reviewing my ielts though has no work presently..