Student Nursing Positions with Vancouver Coastal Health

Vancouver Coastal Health is passionate about providing learning and career opportunities to nursing students in and around the City of Vancouver. 

Student nurses can apply for the Employed Student Nurse program that provides employment for students between classroom semesters. The program provides up to 350 hours of paid hands-on experience in a clinical setting.

Successful applicants become part of the VCH team. This experience helps student nurses bring their theoretical and practical lessons into the workplace. They can apply their clinical skills in a rewarding environment where every shift is a learning opportunity.

Student nurses are also able to earn a decent wage during this unique employment scenario. This gives students an opportunity to pay down their school costs.

Beside an excellent opportunity for skill development, student nurses are also able to build up their seniority. With more hours on their VCH record, applicants are able to secure permanent positions quicker than nurses who took their summers off or worked in fields outside of healthcare.

Co-workers, from summer employment positions, often become valuable contacts once students graduate. As mentors, or simply friends, co-workers consistently pass on their knowledge. Often these professionals provide more insight than a classroom teacher. 

Interested applicants need to be currently enrolled in a British Columbia nursing program, have finished 2nd Year, have successfully completed the Adult Medical-Surgical Rotation, have certification in Basic Cardiac Life Support and meet all the recruitment screening requirements proposed by the Vancouver Coastal Health Career program.

The 2015 intake has already been decided but hiring will resume at the end of 2015 for the summer of 2016. Bookmark the Vancouver Coastal Health Employed Student Nursing website to keep abreast of the positions available.

For help with your NCLEX prep, contact PRIMED Educational Associates and get set for a career in one of the most rewarding fields available to young professionals. 

Free 1 hour NCLEX info session

PRIMED is pleased to announce they will be hosting a one hour online information session to help you get ready for the NCLEX-RN. PRIMED will be providing you tips and tricks on how to be successful on the exam.

The session will be held on: Sunday April 12 at 4pm PST/7pm EST.
To reserve your spot sign up at www.eply.com/2015FreeOnlineInfoSessionSpring1219522

Ten Ridiculously Awesome Nurses from Pop Culture

Pop culture is full of interesting nurses, from our favourite movies, to young adult fiction, to the small screen, to the classic comic book. These men and women offer humour, pull at our heartstrings, inspire hope and sometimes offer a sinister glimpse of humanity's darker lining. But one thing all, or most of these characters offer is unconditional care and that's what makes them nurses. That and four years of university followed by a pass on the NCLEX and a lifetime of countless specialization courses.

Schooling aside, here are our ten favourite fictional nurses:

10. Hana

Hana is the innocent Canadian nurse in the English Patient. She grows up too quickly in order to help the wounded in WW II. She care's for the badly burned Almásy and casts her own notions of romantic love on his bandaged face.

9. Nurse Ratched

The lead antagonist in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 'Big Nurse,' as the patients call her, is a strong force to challenge. She ultimately defeats Randle McMurphy, the loveable but moral less protagonist, but loses her voice in the battle. Her awesomeness stems from her unreeling will to maintain order.

8. Abby Lockhart

We watched her gain experience as a nurse, become a practicing physician and breakup and reunite with ex's almost every week. She was a rock in the ER and one of the stronger nurses.

7. Greg Focker

"Oh, you can milk just about anything with nipples." Enough said. Sidesplitting laughs…

6. Annie Wilkes

Definitely the most disturbed nurse on this list. Her obsession with Paul Sheldon, a romance writer, takes a sadomasochistic turn when she rescues him from a car crash and brings him home to care for. The most memorable scene by far is the ankle-breaking scene.

5. Jackie Peyton

After completing her run on the Sopranos, Edie Falco was given the title role in the Showtime comedy-drama Nurse Jackie. Her character balances her working life, with a complicated personal life that includes an addiction to prescription pills. But the show is more about the workplace interactions, than the powerful pull of addiction.

Awesome quote from Executive Producer Liz Brixius:

Every medical show out there has been about doctors. Doctors are absolutely unable to do what they have to do without nurses. We want to tell those stories.

4. Linda Carter

From the comic world, comes Marvel's Night Nurse heroine, Linda Carter. The melodramatic tagline for the series: Enter the world of DANGER, DRAMA and DEATH!" The short-lived comic run featured no superheroes and was ahead of its time in addressing social issues in a illustrative medium.

3. Margaret Houlihan

Loretta Swit played 'Hot Lips' Houlihan for 11 seasons on M.A.S.H. During the course of the show her head nurse character moved from rigid disciplinarian to a more humanist management style. The men in camp unfairly humiliated her on more than one occasion, but she always kept her head high.

2. Phil Pharma

"This is that scene in the movie." Philip-Seymour Hoffman delivers this self-aware line as he tries to connect his dying patient with his absent son. It shows the passion that nurses have for not just the health of their patients, but also their souls.

1. Carol Hathaway

She made the tough decisions when others couldn't. She decided not to become a doctor, but continue making a differenceas a nurse. She ended up marrying George Clooney's character, Doug Ross. Three big wins!

PRIMED Education Bursary Program

PRIMED Educational Associates is currently offering a limited number of bursaries for students to attend our NCLEX-RN prep Review Course for free. Nursing students who are interested in this opportunity need to write a 500-word letter of intent explaining why they are deserving of this unique educational experience. This letter needs to be accompanied by two letters of reference from professionals in a registered Canadian nursing program.

Successful candidates will receive PRIMED's two-day review course. The course will cover content on a wide range of nursing topics. These topics are all testable and are included in some form on the latest NCSBN Test Plan for the NCLEX-RN exam.

Beyond the standard nursing topics, PRIMED also reviews ethical practices, maternal emergencies, acid-base imbalance and pharmacological tables. The instructors explain in detail how the computer adapted testing works and suggest strategies for successful exam taking. They work alongside students on a variety of problems applying best nursing practices to common clinical scenarios.

Once completed, students are able to return to their notes and focus on the areas they struggled with in the classroom. Their take-away is an intense nursing review session, an invaluable question and answer period, practice with the current assessment format and a 200-page study guide/workbook.

The PRIMED staff is confident that this review course, paired with a diligent study routine, will lead to successful results on the NCLEX-RN. That is why we want to open it up to the widest possible audience. If you are interested in this opportunity, please complete the 500-word letter of intent mentioned above and submit it, along with your signatures to: info@primededucation.ca. Include the subject line: Please support me to attend a PRIMED NCLEX prep Review Course.

If you are a nursing educator reading this blog and know a student who may benefit from this opportunity, please forward this message.