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Who You’ll Hear
Kati Kleber, MSN RN – Nurse educator, former cardiac med-surg/stepdown and neurocritical care nurse, author, and speaker.
What You’ll Learn
- How I got started in nursing
- Why I switched from ICU to Med-Surg
- My nursing career
How I Got Started in Nursing Show Notes
- Right out of high school, I thought I wanted to be an elementary education teacher
- Went to a large state school ($12K/semester!)
- Never did any job shadowing, got into the classes and found out it wasn’t for me because I realized what the day to day as a teacher truly looked like
- Moved to a community college and starting nursing pre-req’s
- Wasn’t sure if I wanted to be a nurse, but classes sounded cool
- $4K/semester (at that time) – went there for 3 full semesters + summer school
- Liked it better because the professors taught classes, not TA’s
- Joined the Women’s Basketball Team for my 2nd/3rd semesters
- Academic All-American, had my scholarship cover tuition and just had to cover room and board
- Transferred to Iowa Wesleyan College for a BSN; played basketball for one year (partial scholarship)
- Approx. $25K/year, was there 3 years with various scholarships and grants, took out a loan
- Tried to make myself more marketable
- Did an internship between junior and senior year at the hospital I hoped to work at after graduation
- Volunteer work at another local hospital in their Emergency Department; got great letters of recommendation
- Completed senior year preceptorship in a small rural emergency department (8 beds) and asked two of the physicians there to write letters of recommendation for me as well
- Started in a cardiac med-surg/step-down type unit
- Worked there for 2 years
- Completed residency program
- Enjoyed it but wanted more of a challenge after about two years
- Moved to Charlotte, NC, interviewed for a stroke patient floor job
- The patient ratio was 14 to 2 nurses – in my mind the interview was over at that point
- The manager wanted to hire me for her neurocritical care unit instead
- Worked Neuro ICU
- Worked there for 4 years
- Very challenging, but rewarding
- Got my CCRN in 2015, went to conferences, sat on committees (shared governance)
- About this time my blog started to take off, had my first child
- After four years, decided to move back home to raise kids near their grandparents
- Applied to work at the same hospital I started my career at
- About 400 beds
- Could either work in the ICU, which took children at that time, the CVICU, or back on my old unit
- Was back in school to get my MSN in Nursing Education online
- Decided to work PRN (once/week) back on my old unit so I could focus on my MSN while getting acclimated, and spend time at home rather than learning new skills to only work 1 day/week
- Differences between ICU and Med-Surg
- Went through orientation again
- Nurses with less experience than me were precepting me
- Interesting experience, but they were great
- Different perspective working with nurses 2-3 years into career, versus myself at 8-9 years in – saw they struggled with the same things I did
- Struggled with time management the most
- Extended my orientation by a few weeks because I was simply too detailed (typical for ICU) to get everything done on 4-5 patients
- Complicated discharges were challenging
- Different kind of chaos from the ICU – but just as overwhelming
- Had a brand new appreciation for students because I had the knowledge and mental space to teach them, which I didn’t have at the beginning of my career + I felt comfortable with not knowing an answer
- Went through orientation again
- Worked there PRN for 2 years
- Had my second child and did not go back after maternity leave
- I decided to focus on FreshRN full time
- At the end of the day: It is your career and your life
- You have to do what is best for you both professionally and personally