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As an operating room nurse, you have to provide specialized nursing services to critically ill and the mentally disturbed patients and promote physical and mental health within the medical treatment facility. The Operating Room nurse is basically responsible for assisting the doctors in preparing patients and in the operating rooms for surgery. It calls for preparation and maintaining of sterile medical supplies and helping with preoperative and postoperative procedures. You need to be prepared to treat emergency cases without getting perturbed and with a lot of patience. The patient’s medical history needs to be examined along with his records while conducting basic duties like taking temperature, pulse and blood pressure.

There are plenty of options also available in the operating nurse career such circulating nurse in the operating room and anesthesia care nursing. Nurses who provide anesthesia have to have least two years of critical care experience and should have completed the course from a nurse anesthesia school for training. Circulating nurses are responsible for everyone in the operating room on any particular day. They are responsible as patient spokesman ensuring that the patient being operated on is the correct patient and that the doctor is performing the correct procedure.

Nurses have many career opportunities available to them when they complete an AOC qualifying course in operating room nursing or one year of supervised training in operating room nursing. The patients undergoing surgery come completely under the care of the nurses attending the operating theater. Their duties start with preparing and ensuring that the operating theater is ready for the operating procedures and seeing to it that all the equipments and special procedures that are to be done before any operation are all taken care off. Regular procedures and emergencies, if any. They are also responsible for all the equipments while the operation is under progress and they need to ensure all the necessary tools are kept ready depending on the operation that is to take place.

The OR Nurse also manages operating room activities like taking control of OR personnel and making sure they have completed their routine checks and given responsibilities, which could be anything from ensuring the equipments, are sterilized to keeping records and relevant documents updated. Other responsibilities include maintaining correct and complete records and reports, and helping with ongoing, in house training programs by continually updating already advanced knowledge and responsibilities of nursing personnel.

Operating room nurses, are also referred to as preoperative nurses, are usually qualified and registered nurses who work in co ordination with patients who are to be operated upon. In today’s world, nursing jobs are in demand in hospitals, different types of clinics and surgical units that operate during the day. In hospitals, their work is to interact directly with patients before the operation during the operation and post the operation.

Plenty of nursing jobs are available in the world today. Scrub nurses duty is to hand the medical instruments to the operating doctor during surgery while the circulating nurse observes checks and monitors all the equipments during the operation and ensures that they run smoothly. The nurses whose duty is in the operating theater are responsible to ensure that the operating room is ready in all respects for the operating procedure. This would mean making sure, all the equipments are properly audited and the patient’s record is recorded in detail. The consent form is to be filled by the concerned family before the operation begins.

The operating room nurses position in the operating theater is very crucial as the entire operating procedure depends on her efficiency and job knowledge as they almost operate as secondary physicians in all respects. Infact half the job like suturing the patients after the surgery and controlling the bleeding is an important part of a operating nurses job. These nurses play the role of mediators and need to keep the patients informed about the upcoming surgery and give them post surgical advice as well. Assisting them and changing the dressing when necessary. The Operating Room Nurse works under the direction of the Manager while carrying out nursing responsibilities and duties.

In considering going into the nursing profession, there are a few priorities that are crucial to determining future success. When individuals look at all of the criteria it becomes clear which schools would be a better choice. The first criteria that many people face when going back to school is financial. Some of the factors that need to be considered about the school are for instance, how much will it cost per credit hour?

Cost per credit hour depends on the school, whether or not it is accredited, a community college, a private college or a four year university. The other criteria for determining which nursing school to attend, is of course whether or not one can obtain financial aid. Financial aid is available for many that are in the working class. There are also Federal loans that can be obtained with very low interest rates. It would be considered a wise step to visit the financial aid office of a college or university near ones home to find out about the availability of government funding.

The next criterion, which may or may not be important for some, is the vicinity of the nursing school. For many whom work and plan to attend school, the closer the school’s location the easier the commute. In this society of multitasking, the closer that work, home and school are to one another the better. Also, gas is now a real concern. Driving fifty miles may not have been a deterrent to some a few years ago, but certainly with the cost of fuel now days; it has become a real deterrent to many. Along with the schools vicinity, one needs to look at whether or not the nursing school is accredited.

If someone is considering obtaining an Associates Degree in Nursing from a non accredited nursing school, then if they decide to go on to their Bachelors of Nursing, they will find that they cannot continue. The reason for this is due to the following; an accredited Bachelor of Science in Nursing Program, requires and accredited degreed Nursing Program from the two year Associate Degreed Nurse. What this implies is that the two years Associate Degreed Nurse who graduated from a non accredited nursing school will not be able to transfer in their nursing courses to the four year university.

This may be a real stumbling block to those nurses who wish to go on for a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. It is also important to know how the nursing school graduates perform on the NCLEX®, the National Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses. When there is only a forty or fifty percent passing rate on schools National Boards, this should raise a red flag for the prospective nursing student. There is no greater disappointment then failing the boards on the first time around.

Many hospitals will hire graduate nurses prior to their sitting for the national boards, on the premise that if they fail their national boards, one of two things will take place; 1.their job as graduate nurse with the hospital will be terminated, 2. they will be demoted to a lesser position with less money, 3. they will be demoted to a lesser position with less money and be offered a second chance with a specified time frame to sit for the national boards once more. None of the previous scenarios is an attractive option to any graduate nurse. Therefore the percentage of students that pass the boards at a particular school should also be included in the criteria for choosing a particular nursing school. However, do not judge the school too harshly on their rate of students who do or do not pass the national boards.

The reason for this is due to the fact that some schools require a high grade point average, such as a four point zero just to get into the nursing program. This requirement will of course skew the results of passing scores in favor of those with higher grade point averages. These criteria will of course preclude many from even entering the nursing program, since many students are not four point zero in academics. Generally speaking, an average of seventy percent and above passing rate on the national nursing boards is a good predictor of the nursing school. But, it is up to the individual as to how much time and effort is put into the program as to how much they get out of the program.

The nursing programs in general are very physically demanding, time consuming and mentally challenging. It is a very serious profession and there are those who find out that the field of nursing is not for them very early in the program. The best advice to those deciding on which nursing school to attend, is to use the above mentioned criteria only as a guide, because it will be up to the individual how well they do in the final analysis.

Learn how to pass the NET the first time at The Nursing Entrance Test Study Guide.

 

Perineal resection surgery in India is done at the most advanced surgery hospitals by experienced surgeons at very affordable cost. India has become global healthcare destination of the World is because Cost difference in India provides “First World treatment at Third World prices”, Availability of U.S., U.K. and Australian board certified doctors, Excellent Post-Operative care Medical / Surgical, Nursing and Rehab care in India .Technology and Infrastructure in India are similar to those in the U.S. with same or better equipment - from the same manufacturers as in the United States. Hospitals of perineal resection surgery in India are assisting international patients in planning their surgery in India.

What is it?
Some of the lowest part of your bowel, the rectum, is diseased and has to be taken out. Because the disease is so near to the opening in the back passage, this has to be taken out as well. If the back passage were left in place, you would be unable to control your bowel motions. You might also get complications from the underlying disease. A new opening for the bowel is made in the wall of your tummy. This is called a colostomy. The waste runs into a special stick-on plastic bag.

The Operation
You will have a general anaesthetic, and will be asleep for the whole operation. A cut about 40 cm (15 inches) long is made in the skin and muscle of the central lower part of the tummy wall. The lower bowel within reach is freed from its bed. Another cut is made around the back passage, which is also freed. The whole of the lower bowel is taken out. A fresh opening is made in the tummy wall for the remaining bowel which is made into a colostomy. The wounds are stitched up. You should plan to leave hospital about two weeks after the operation. 

Possible Complications
As with any operation under general anaesthetic, there is a very small risk of complications related to your heart and lungs. The tests that you will have before the operation will make sure that you can have the operation in the safest possible way and will bring the risk for such complications very close to zero. This is a major operation and complications can occur more frequently compared with other operations of the bowel. When they happen, they are rapidly recognised and dealt with by surgical staff. If you think that all is not well, please let the doctors or nurses know. Chest infections may arise, particularly in smokers. Getting out of bed as soon as possible, getting as mobile as possible and co-operating with the physiotherapists to clear the air passages is important to prevent chest infections. Aches and twinges may be felt in the wound for up to six months. Sometimes the lower wound is slow to heal. Sometimes the stoma is troublesome. Sometimes there is some damage to the bladder and sex nerves.

India has kept pace with the latest in technology and its application has been widely felt in the health industry. India is enabling foreign patients to get speedy recovery at attractive cost in India. Corporate hospitals perineal resection surgery in India has a large panel of surgeons, doctors, nurses, and support staff with wide experience and international exposure. Tourism in India would be an unforgettable experience due to India’s natural beauty and world class travel facilities. Indian medical tourism is a best combination of less cost medical treatment with enjoyable tourism in India. US medical tourism companies’ affiliation with forerunners healthcare in India will lower the cost of medical treatment and tourism for Americans. To know more about perineal resection surgery in India please visit http://www.forerunnershealthcare.com and enquiry@forerunnershealthcare.com

Snowbirds. To a Florida native, it used to be a derisive term for those retirees that flood the Florida coast when the winters turn cold up North - but these days, snowbirds are being viewed a little differently. Many staffing agencies and medical facilities are deliberately hiring snowbirds to help fill their seasonal staffing needs. In many cities in Florida, the need for nurses fluctuates with the season, creating spikes in the available Florida nursing jobs during the best times to visit Florida.

This is good news for registered nurses who are looking for a change of pace, or just a warm place to hang their hats during the cold winter months. September through April is prime time for travel nursing assignments in Florida, and there are hundreds of positions that need to be filled during those months. The assignments include nearly every specialty in the medical field, including nurse practitioners, licensed practical and vocational nurses and nurse therapists in a variety of areas. Nurses with experience in gerontology are especially in demand, as are those that can be flexible about scheduling and job preference.

Because the increase in Florida nursing jobs is cyclical, many health care giants in the hospital industry have started skipping the agency middleman and now provide their own “snowbird programs.” An employee of one major national hospital company may choose to spend six months of the year working for a hospital in Rhode Island to be near family, then ‘retire’ to Florida for six months and work in a Miami hospital when the northern winds blow.

What sorts of Florida nursing jobs are available for snowbirds? Just about any type of nursing job you can imagine. Most jobs require a current license, and one to two years of current experience. There are Florida nursing jobs available in ER, med and surgical floors, trauma units and ob-gyn. If you prefer to work outside a hospital setting, Florida offers nursing jobs in outpatient medical management, home care, hospice care and residential nursing care. With its multitude of theme parks, you’ll even find Florida nursing jobs on site for such well known names as Disney, Busch Gardens and Six Flags. There are nursing jobs available in Miami, Orlando, St. Petersburg, Pensacola, Daytona Beach, Kissimmee, Jacksonville - and that’s just a few of the many cities that have open Florida nursing jobs.

Florida is easily one of the most popular destinations for travel nurses, but there are also many positions for full-time year round nurses in the Sunshine State. If living in the sunniest state in the Union appeals to you, then take a look at what a Florida nursing job can offer you.

-Salaries increasing steadily in the past five years
-Steady employment and job security
-Flexible shifts and scheduling
-Beautiful weather year round
-The opportunity to work with world-class practitioners in all fields and specialties

Whether you just want a vacation from your everyday job, a recurring seasonal position or a permanent, full time career, you’ll find what you’re looking for among the wide open range of Florida nursing jobs.

On Washing HandsBy Atul Gawande
Author of Better

One ordinary December day, I took a tour of my hospital with Deborah Yokoe, an infectious disease specialist, and Susan Marino, a microbiologist. They work in our hospital’s infection-control unit. Their full-time job, and that of three others in the unit, is to stop the spread of infection in the hospital. This is not flashy work, and they are not flashy people. Yokoe is forty-five years old, gentle voiced, and dimpled. She wears sneakers at work. Marino is in her fifties and reserved by nature. But they have coped with influenza epidemics, Legionnaires’ disease, fatal bacterial meningitis, and, just a few months before, a case that, according to the patient’s brain-biopsy results, might have been Creutzfeld-Jakob disease — a nightmare, not only because it is incurable and fatal but also because the infectious agent that causes it, known as a prion, cannot be killed by usual heat-sterilization procedures. By the time the results came back, the neurosurgeon’s brain-biopsy instruments might have transferred the disease to other patients, but infection-control team members tracked the instruments down in time and had them chemically sterilized. Yokoe and Marino have seen measles, the plague, and rabbit fever (which is caused by a bacterium that is extraordinarily contagious in hospital laboratories and feared as a bioterrorist weapon). They once instigated a nationwide recall of frozen strawberries, having traced a hepatitis A outbreak to a batch served at an ice cream social. Recently at large in the hospital, they told me, have been a rotavirus, a Norwalk virus, several strains of Pseudomonas bacteria, a superresistant Klebsiella, and the ubiquitous scourges of modern hospitals — resistant Staphylococcus aureus and Enterococcus faecalis, which are a frequent cause of pneumonias, wound infections, and bloodstream infections.
Each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, two million Americans acquire an infection while they are in the hospital. Ninety thousand die of that infection. The hardest part of the infection-control team’s job, Yokoe says, is not coping with the variety of contagions they encounter or the panic that sometimes occurs among patients and staff. Instead, their greatest difficulty is getting clinicians like me to do the one thing that consistently halts the spread of infections: wash our hands.
There isn’t much they haven’t tried. Walking about the surgical floors where I admit my patients, Yokoe and Marino showed me the admonishing signs they have posted, the sinks they have repositioned, the new ones they have installed. They have made some sinks automated. They have bought special five-thousand-dollar “precaution carts” that store everything for washing up, gloving, and gowning in one ergonomic, portable, and aesthetically pleasing package. They have given away free movie tickets to the hospital units with the best compliance. They have issued hygiene report cards. Yet still, we have not mended our ways. Our hospital’s statistics show what studies everywhere else have shown — that we doctors and nurses wash our hands one-third to one-half as often as we are supposed to. Having shaken hands with a sniffling patient, pulled a sticky dressing off someone’s wound, pressed a stethoscope against a sweating chest, most of us do little more than wipe our hands on our white coats and move on — to see the next patient, to scribble a note in the chart, to grab some lunch.
This is, embarrassingly, nothing new: In 1847, at the age of twenty-eight, the Viennese obstetrician Ignac Semmelweis famously deduced that, by not washing their hands consistently or well enough, doctors were themselves to blame for childbed fever. Childbed fever, also known as puerperal fever, was the leading cause of maternal death in childbirth in the era before antibiotics (and before the recognition that germs are the agents of infectious disease). It is a bacterial infection — most commonly caused by Streptococcus, the same bacteria that causes strep throat — that ascends through the vagina to the uterus after childbirth. Out of three thousand mothers who delivered babies at the hospital where Semmelweis worked, six hundred or more died of the disease each year — a horrifying 20 percent maternal death rate. Of mothers delivering at home, only 1 percent died. Semmelweis concluded that doctors themselves were carrying the disease between patients, and he mandated that every doctor and nurse on his ward scrub with a nail brush and chlorine between patients. The puerperal death rate immediately fell to 1 percent — incontrovertible proof, it would seem, that he was right. Yet elsewhere, doctors’ practices did not change. Some colleagues were even offended by his claims; it was impossible to them that doctors could be killing their patients. Far from being hailed, Semmelweis was ultimately dismissed from his job.
Semmelweis’s story has come down to us as Exhibit A in the case for the obstinacy and blindness of physicians. But the story was more complicated. The trouble was partly that nineteenth-century physicians faced multiple, seemingly equally powerful explanations for puerperal fever. There was, for example, a strong belief that miasmas of the air in hospitals were the cause. And Semmelweis strangely refused to either publish an explanation of the logic behind his theory or prove it with a convincing experiment in animals. Instead, he took the calls for proof as a personal insult and attacked his detractors viciously.
“You, Herr Professor, have been a partner in this massacre,” he wrote to one University of Vienna obstetrician who questioned his theory. To a colleague in Wurzburg he wrote, “Should you, Herr Hofrath, without having disproved my doctrine, continue to teach your pupils [against it], I declare before God and the world that you are a murderer and the ‘History of Childbed Fever’ would not be unjust to you if it memorialized you as a medical Nero.” His own staff turned against him. In Pest, where he relocated after losing his post in Vienna, he would stand next to the sink and berate anyone who forgot to scrub his or her hands. People began to purposely evade, sometimes even sabotage, his hand-washing regimen. Semmelweis was a genius, but he was also a lunatic, and that made him a failed genius. It was another twenty years before Joseph Lister offered his clearer, more persuasive, and more respectful plea for antisepsis in surgery in the British medical journal Lancet.
One hundred and forty years of doctors’ plagues later, however, you have to wonder whether what’s needed to stop them is precisely a lunatic. Consider what Yokoe and Marino are up against. No part of human skin is spared from bacteria. Bacterial counts on the hands range from five thousand to five million colony-forming units per square centimeter. The hair, underarms, and groin harbor greater concentrations. On the hands, deep skin crevices trap 10 to 20 percent of the flora, making removal difficult, even with scrubbing, and sterilization impossible. The worst place is under the fingernails. Hence the recent CDC guidelines requiring hospital personnel to keep their nails trimmed to less than a quarter of an inch and to remove artificial nails.
Plain soaps do, at best, a middling job of disinfecting. Their detergents remove loose dirt and grime, but fifteen seconds of washing reduces bacterial counts by only about an order of magnitude. Semmelweis recognized that ordinary soap was not enough and used a chlorine solution to achieve disinfection. Today’s antibacterial soaps contain chemicals such as chlorhexidine to disrupt microbial membranes and proteins. Even with the right soap, however, proper hand washing requires a strict procedure. First, you must remove your watch, rings, and other jewelry (which are notorious for trapping bacteria). Next, you wet your hands in warm tap water. Dispense the soap and lather all surfaces, including the lower one-third of the arms, for the full duration recommended by the manufacturer (usually fifteen to thirty seconds). Rinse off for thirty full seconds. Dry completely with a clean, disposable towel. Then use the towel to turn the tap of. Repeat after any new contact with a patient.
Almost no one adheres to this procedure. It seems impossible. On morning rounds, our residents check in on twenty patients in an hour. The nurses in our intensive care units typically have a similar number of contacts with patients requiring hand washing in between. Even if you get the whole cleansing process down to a minute per patient, that’s still a third of staff time spent just washing hands. Such frequent hand washing can also irritate the skin, which can produce a dermatitis, which itself increases bacterial counts.
Less irritating than soap, alcohol rinses and gels have been in use in Europe for almost two decades but for some reason only recently caught on in the United States. They take far less time to use — only about fifteen seconds or so to rub a gel over the hands and fingers and let it air-dry. Dispensers can be put at the bedside more easily than a sink. And at alcohol concentrations of 50 to 95 percent, they are more effective at killing organisms, too. (Interestingly, pure alcohol is not as effective — at least some water is required to denature microbial proteins.)
Still, it took Yokoe over a year to get our staff to accept the 60 percent alcohol gel we have recently adopted. Its introduction was first blocked because of the staff’s fears that it would produce noxious building air. (It didn’t.) Next came worries that, despite evidence to the contrary, it would be more irritating to the skin. So a product with aloe was brought in. People complained about the smell. So the aloe was taken out. Then some of the nursing staff refused to use the gel after rumors spread that it would reduce fertility. The rumors died only after the infection-control unit circulated evidence that the alcohol is not systemically absorbed and a hospital fertility specialist endorsed the use of the gel.
With the gel finally in wide use, the compliance rates for proper hand hygiene improved substantially: from around 40 percent to 70 percent. But — and this is the troubling finding — hospital infection rates did not drop one iota. Our 70 percent compliance just wasn’t good enough. If 30 percent of the time people didn’t wash their hands, that still left plenty of opportunity to keep transmitting infections. Indeed, the rates of resistant Staphylococcus and Enterococcus infections continued to rise. Yokoe receives the daily tabulations. I checked with her one day not long ago, and sixty-three of our seven hundred hospital patients were colonized or infected with MRSA (the shorthand for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and another twenty-two had acquired VRE (vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus) — unfortunately, typical rates of infection for American hospitals.
Rising infection rates from superresistant bacteria have become the norm around the world. The first outbreak of VRE did not occur until 1988, when a renal dialysis unit in England became infested. By 1990, the bacteria had been carried abroad, and four in one thousand American ICU patients had become infected. By 1997, a stunning 23 percent of ICU patients were infected. When the virus for SARS — severe acute respiratory syndrome — appeared in China in 2003 and spread within weeks to almost ten thousand people in two dozen countries across the world (10 percent of whom were killed), the primary vector for transmission was the hands of health care workers. What will happen if (or rather, when) an even more dangerous organism appears — avian flu, say, or a new, more virulent bacteria? “It will be a disaster,” Yokoe says.

Copyright © 2007 Atul Gawande from the book Better Published by Metropolitan Books; April 2007;$24.00US/$30.00CAN; 978-0-8050-8211-1

A Week in the Life of the Single, Working Mother

 

“It’s ok,” you think. “Nothing to worry about, really!”  I mean who doesn’t occasionally put their panties on inside out?  It can happen! The cottage is relatively dark in the morning and the bathroom has no light in it, so even if you went to the toilet you wouldn’t have noticed. No problem there. But then you go to the bathroom at work for the umpteenth time in the morning (you suffer from a weak bladder) and only then do you notice, staring back at you from the mirror,  a moron who is wearing two different types of earrings! Not two similar earrings, that may be understandable, but two totally different decorations. “Are those warning bells?” I think, listening intently.  “Or is that just the sound of me losing my mind”. I stride back into the office, laughing – you must do this in these situations -  and tell everyone the story. It’s funny, really, I mean, who doesn’t occasionally put two different earrings in their lobes?

 

All might have been well if I hadn’t remembered the keys! “Try to forget the key story!” I tell myself.  But no, a nagging imp-like, pest of a voice insists that I remember the keys. So, warily I cast my mind back to this morning’s debacle.  On leaving the cottage this morning, I absolutely know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I looked at the keys on their hook. I removed them from said hook and walked up to my car with three of my four children. Imagine my frustration and absolute impatience (I’m very impatient with ineptitude), when I couldn’t find the keys. This followed having to squeeze into my car (it was parked too close to my brother’s car), loaded with bags, trying to balance on my high heels that kept sinking into the soft earth. The keys! I just could’nt find the blasted things! We all looked, all four of us, while I muttered all the while that I definitely took them off the hook. Jarred, my nineteen year old, decided, very quietly, not to believe me, and wandered off to the cottage. He reappeared shortly after, keys in hand. Had I dropped them on the way? Did I put them down after picking them up? No, nothing that simple. I was flabbergasted to discover that they were still, in fact, hanging on the hook. Those damned fairies. Jarred knew better than to comment.

 

 My doctor says I’m stressed. My therapist says “Duh”! So, I decided that I would look at a week in my life and try to discover if I am indeed stressed, tired, overworked and hence abnormally distracted!

 

A week! How do you determine a week? My life seems to run from one chaotic moment to the next, forming hours, days, weeks and years. My absent-mindedness began on a Friday so I decided to capture my week beginning with the previous Sunday.

 

This week began relatively normally on Sunday evening when my eleven year old realized that he hadn’t completed his project that had been due for the previous Thursday. Nothing too complicated, just a moving greeting card! No need to panic, especially as he also had to look for every letter of the alphabet (in differing fonts and sizes), and stick them onto a piece of paper.  Ok, so I panic a little! Who wouldn’t?  Try finding a “Q” or a “J”. The card is cut out, his cricket players look like aliens and the family is in fits of laughter while my seven year old daughter draws something of a Rembrandt version of his picture (she is very bright). He doesn’t mind, just shrugs and continues to be glued to the TV, while I bellow, “Homework! Vincent, your homework!”

This situation could, in itself, be bearable but for that fact that it is happening at 6.30pm. This is the beginning of hell night. It is bath time accompanied by more bellows, “Get in the bath! Vincent, bath water! Katie, GET IN THE BATH!” It is school lunch time, but more on that later. It is uniform preparation time and goodness knows what else. There is always something of great significance that pops up out of nowhere to cause chaos and disorder.  There is also supper. After a huge lunch of prawns and rice the little angels are hungry. I’m not hungry! So I throw chicken pieces, covered with tinned tomatoes into the oven and put on a pot of rice.  I am functioning on three planes. My friend is there for a visit with biscuits, dips and wine – very sophisticated, my kids are between nakedness and pyjamas – very bohemian, my food is slowly overcooking and I am trying to engineer a moving cricket bat that will hit a ball across a card. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned, there is absolutely no need to panic – much! The kids end up going to bed halfway through the E-TV movie which, of course, is too late! I am a failure of a mother!

 

By 9.30pm, school uniforms are ready, hanging over chairs but sandwiches must be made. I usually make amazing lunches but tonight there is no bread. If there was bread there would be no filling. I am, however, supermom, and I have a plan! Tuckshop! Godsend! Tomorrow I will make that new sandwich filling : sweet corn, tuna and mayonnaise. The kids are already moaning about that one. I tell them that they have to broaden their horizons! Then I get “make us an extra sandwich, in case we don’t like that one”. My kids, the connoisseurs! Tuna - not good enough.  Ham – only fine alone, no mayonnaise or, for Katie and Jarred, with mustard. Vince wants salami, no mayonnaise. I tried pilchards and cucumber. My little ones tried to be kind saying,  “Mom, we didn’t really like the lunch today”. Jarred said it was wonderful but he that he couldn’t take it to Varsity anymore because : “It STINKS!” How subtle! One day they love chocolate spread, the next they don’t. One of them, can’t remember which, hates cheese spread but my twenty-two year old could live on it.  One loves peanut butter, the other shudders at the thought. The only thing I seem to get spot on are the chocolates and sweets that I provide.  Jarred won’t eat those though! He’s trying to diet!

 

Monday morning dawns and I have to drag myself out of bed at 6.30 after I’ve changed the alarm setting twice. I realize that I’m playing with fire as Jarred must be at University by eight and we have to drop the little ones off first. He will be furious if he realizes how late we got up. Little ones don uniforms (this takes about half an hour – no idea why), with me shouting about how they should stop dawdling and have breakfast. Needless to say, they suck down their cocoa pops while big brother rants about how late he’s going to be. I decide that I can’t possible make it to work. My neck is in agony, I am exhausted and constipated and signs of haemorrhoids are beginning to emerge.  My boss will spontaneously combust as she has told me that today I am getting a written warning for a mistake made on Friday.  Could my physical symptoms be psychosomatic or am I merely skirting the threshold of severe and irreversible stress? I phone the office, make excuses to my colleague (it’s easier) and go to bed, after telephoning the doctor to make an appointment for my daughter and myself. Katie has been getting waves of extreme tiredness and I’m really worried. It’s never anything curable, when it’s your child, is it? The mind of a mother is a very frightening place sometimes.

Monday wears on. I fetch Katie and her friend from school at 1.00pm. We go home, relax a bit, read and I smoke hubbly bubbly, (it relaxes me, ok!). She has raided my purse because she wants a pie for lunch. I have no money save R40 in the car for petrol! Jarred has my card. Three fifteen p.m. and it’s time to fetch Vincent from cricket (back to the school I left  two hours previously). I give in and buy two pies and put twenty rand petrol into my car. We pick up Vincent, nearly get hit by a stray cricket ball and head off to the doctor for our 4.00pm appointment. The fun has just begun! Kaitlyn must have a blood test. Have you ever tried to hold down a ten foot, rabid, thrashing and peculiarly terrified Anaconda? I’m sure not but I think it would be a breeze!  It would certainly be easier than holding down a terrified, stubborn, bucking bronco of a seven year old. I won’t go into detail – it’s far too traumatic – but it played out like a scene from a Tarantino movie.  Three adults (all in various phases of shock) holding down a tiny child whilst one of the adults sticks a 10cm thick, 1 metre long needle into her arm and  proceeds to suck all the blood from her body. She, all the while, screaming “Mommy! Mommy! Please!”.  I tell you, if you have never felt like a heel before and have an odd desire to do so, I fully recommend this as the way to go about it.

 

In the midst of the screaming chaos, Jarred phones. “You can fetch me now”, he says nonchalantly. The little pulsing blood vessel in my temple seems to explode as I explain as calmly as possible, why he has to wait. Meanwhile, Vincent has disappeared to the toilet in the front of the doctor’s rooms. He does not emerge until the screaming, from the far end of the building has subsided! Once the torture is over, she is shaken but laughs as I joke about how strong she is and how hard she can kick. She is not the only one trembling. The doctor grins nervously at me saying that he knows it seems barbaric, but honestly, it has to be done. Then he rushes from the room. The nurse just fumbles for words and I sit there hugging my daughter until my heart decides to return to my chest.

 

It is now five o’clock and Jarred is waiting at the University in Parktown. I rush off, still shaken but trying to play it down and make jokes. Katie sits unusually quietly on the back seat. I hardly notice the hellish traffic, I can handle anything after the past hour. We get to Jarred and he, very foolishly, says : “Why do you make appointments at five when you know you’re fetching me?” Is it really necessary to explain or will my feral death stare suffice. It does! Katie revives and excitedly tells Jarred about her nightmare experience. In record time it becomes an adventure and by Wednesday I will be relieved to know that my baby is doing well and that she probably just has worms.

 

In the blur that is my life I make supper, get the children bathed, eat, sort out homework, uniforms and sandwiches. The ex-husband telephones the children and says something inane to Katie like : “If you go to bed early you won’t be so tired and need blood tests.” Although I contemplate smashing the cell phone against the wall, I realize that it is mine and so I pour myself another glass of wine! The quiet breathing of my sleeping children, the studious attitude of my middle son, and the comings and goings of my eldest make it all worthwhile – most of the time! Thank God Monday is over.

 

Tuesday begins much the same way with me pulling my comatose body from the sleeper couch (don’t ask). Today there is a cricket match for Vincent (he finishes at about 5.00), and netball and  P.E. for Katie. I am organized. All is well. The usual shouting routine ensues in a fast-forward blur and I appear, miraculously, at work. I am angry and defensive due to the fact that when my friend called for me at work on Monday, my boss told him that I was scared to come to work. Scared? Of work? I’m waiting for blood test results, if you really want to know what fear is! I am called into the “big boss’s” office. I am given the poor work performance lecture and am prepared to receive my letter of warning. I decide to completely ignore my boss - dislike her right now - pull myself together and try even harder at work.  I am so happy when my friend calls and says that I don’t have to do lift scheme and that Kate can play with “Scarlie” today. A breather!  Jarred, however, finishes early so I have to take him home and come back to work. What is it they say about no rest?

 

After work I fetch Katie from Scarlet (where she did her homework – whoopee) and Vincent from cricket.  I finally get the kids into the bath while I cook supper in the house (again, don’t ask).  It’s a rather difficult task as I have to keep running back to the cottage for the ingredients that I have forgotten.  I try to do this really quietly because if the bathing darlings hear me, I am yelled for. This usually happens when I’ve made it into the cottage undetected and am halfway back to the house, thinking how cleverly I have eluded them. The word, “MOM”, uttered very loudly, causes me to stop dead in my tracks. Like a secret agent I attempt to melt into my surroundings. I become very quiet, I tip-toe up the stairs and into the kitchen. Made it! They soon forget that they have called me and I am congratulating myself when a raucous cacophony emerges from the bathroom and the air is filled with shouting and wailing.

“Jarred!” I scream, “For goodness sake, sort them out!” 

They are fearful of him until he turns his back and then Katie begins to sob and gesticulate hysterically. It appears that Vincent has ‘accidentally’ wee’d in the bath and then, just as ‘accidentally’, has splashed all the wee-filled water all over her.  All fear of terminal illnesses vacate my mind as I threaten to drown the children in the bath. My yells of “GET OUT! PUT NEW WATER IN,” to Vincent are heard blocks away while Katie adamantly refuses to get back in the bath with him and wanders around sopping wet and wrapped in a towel.

 

I somehow make it through the evening, tidying my cottage, packing my mom’s dishwasher with my dishes and watching that Vincent completes his homework. All memory of long division has long since been erased and I battle to help him with his maths homework.  I quickly pack Katie’s ballet  clothes – where the hell are those character shoes – and convince her that, because the shoes are too small,  I will get her new ones.

“Feel where my toe is,” she says convincingly to me.

Vincent has P.E tomorrow, so does Katie, but he refuses to wear a Speedo and so I must pack him some long shorts. While I fully applaud his fashion sense, I doubt that the school will believe his excuses for much longer.  I sigh when, miraculously, the atmosphere is infused with the even breathing of sleeping cherubs. I am just relaxing into a wine-induced oblivion (of course I’m exaggerating) when Gary, my eldest grabs on to my security gate from outside shouting, “Mom, Mom, hurry, open up! Quickly! Hurry!” My heart leaps into my throat. Someone is dead? Someone is chasing him? It’s obvious that something truly horrible has happened”.

“What is it? I somehow blurt out.

“Hurry! Open up! It’s Prison Break”.

 

How I’ve actually made it to Wednesday is beyond me. Perhaps it’s those “happy pills”, maybe the fact that I’m eating better, or more likely, I am simply functioning on auto-pilot.  Things go relatively smoothly this morning. I think I’m used to the chaos and I arrive at work only to realize that I must go shopping to cater for the afternoon meeting.  My boss is subjected to grunts, nods and head shakes from me as I refuse to be civil to her. I do a few things in the office and then head off to the shop to buy the eats. Today is not my lift scheme day and I look forward to a nice quiet lunch with my colleague from my previous job.  It’s really nice and I get back to work relaxed after a glass of wine and a tramezini.  I have a few invitations for the evening (kids are out Wednesday evening with their dad), but I decide to stay home and do my ironing that has been building up for weeks.  I buy myself a bottle of wine, make no supper because I’ve eaten and sit down with a magazine on a chair that I hardly move from for the entire evening. Jarred sits with me doing his homework. I help him because it’s English and I’m not bad at it. When I look for the wine I realize that I left it in my car, which Gary has taken. I sigh! I will have it at 7.30 when he gets home and hubbly will do in the meantime. I make sandwiches at the table and sort out school clothes. Needless to say, I do absolutely no ironing and have a glass of wine at 7.30. I continue to do the Sudoku that I have been doing the whole evening. Vincent and Katie get home at 8.00 and I have to rush them through a bath and then homework.  In bed late again! Jarred then begins to play guitar and make up a song about the politics of the country. I am excited and write down the words. Katie and Vincent listen from their beds.  By bed-time I’ve had about three glass of wine and am sleepy. Uncharacterisically, as I lie down the room begins to spin, and spin, and spin! I end up sick in the bathroom and fall asleep almost immediately.   What an end to my night of semi-solitude. They say, those very wise “they” people, that alcohol affects you more when you’re stressed. I wonder….! It’s a damn good excuse though.

I am pretty sure that I don’t have to mention that the vacating of my bed on Thursday morning is no easy task.  I do, however, succeed! Today we leave with only school bags. No tog bags, no cricket bats, no tackies, no ballet things, no extras at all. I feel free, wild – nothing to forget. The euphoria is intoxicating. This must be Heaven. I am even energized to go grocery shopping this evening. My friend says that she is free this evening. She asks if we should get together. Frankly the idea of wine or any other alcoholic drink, after last night, induces fear and trembling.  I decline.  Work is quiet as I continue to ignore my boss and 2.00 pm brings about my usual lift scheme.   I drop the little ones off, practically begging them to tidy the cottage and go back to work.  I don’t recall this but they say that I told them they could go shopping with me if they tidied up.  At about 4.00pm Jarred arrives at the office and I take him home. I have since decided that I should shop alone, leaving the little ones at home with Jarred to bath and do homework. The outcry that results from this suggestion to Vin and Kate is something I am not qualified to deal with.  I deflate and collapse into my car seat and meekly say, “get in”. They inform me that they “even cleaned the cottage”, in order to be able to go.

 

Shopping to me is a sadistic ritual.  I cannot comprehend those perverse individuals who actually enjoy the dreaded ordeal.  Add on two children who want everything in sight and who, after pleading to accompany me, want to go home after half an hour. Include fist-fights, sibling verbal abuse and disappearances every five minutes for free samples, and the whole thing intensifies ten-fold. I arrive at the shop at about 5.00 pm and get home by 7.30.  I am comforted by a well-meaning woman who tells me that my two fighting little maniacs are completely normal.  This is after she hears me yelling hysterically at them to “STOP IT!” and “I TOLD YOU TO STAY AT HOME”, accompanied by several other expletives. I tell her that I’ve had to go through it twice, having two older sons as well, and that I must have done something particularly evil in a previous incarnation.  She tells me that I look too young to have two older sons and I almost kiss her.  I feel haggard and worn, but decide to preserve the tiny morsel of dignity that I have left.  

 

I arrive home in the dark with two tired children who have not as yet bathed or, horror of horrors, done homework. Supper is no problem. MacDonalds, I love you! The cottage is in a dismal condition and if they had indeed tidied it up, a hurricane has since swept through it.  I try to tidy while Jarred brings a few shopping bags from the car. We eat and Katie takes ages to finish her food while I jump around uneasily trying not to think of bathing and homework.  Vincent gets stomach ache and needs the toilet but can’t find matches for the candle that has replaced the broken light bulb.  He eventually decides he has to go in the dark but five minutes later is wandering around bare-bummed looking for a torch! Jarred is ranting about how unfair it is because no-one will help him unpack the car and I am cleaning, packing away groceries and emptying the garbage bin, while yelling at Vincent to get back into the pitch black bathroom and onto the toilet. Katie, meanwhile continues to eat at two chews per minute and Xena, my Doberman, runs in and eats Vincent’s burger! Thank goodness Katie has two burgers, having got the special in case Gary is home for supper.  This extra one is given to Vincent. When I remind my daughter that she is taking an abnormally long time to eat she throws down her burger saying, “Fine, I will starve”. This results in me telling her what a “princess” she is!

 

Add to this chaotic evening the fact that there is a really young and persistent man that I know who keeps phoning me at the most inconvenient times and you have the makings of a true farce. I kid you not, to the delight and bemusement of my children he phoned and let it ring for a full seven minutes. They, and I, were absolutely amazed. My little ones know all the excuses in the book now when he calls, but this time we just let it ring – our amusement for the evening.

 

Eventually, eventually, eventually clean, educated and well-fed children are lying in their beds.  Unfortunately there is some good stuff on T.V. and the little darlings keep peeking at the screen. Death stare time! Eyes shut! And peace reigns supreme.

 

Friday, FRIday, FriDAY! Happy days! It’s Friday!!!! I have made it. We have made it. We are breathing and relatively sane. One more day to get through. Should be a breeze. And all appears to be fine but looks can be deceiving. I am organized! I am Supermom! Katie’s ballet clothes are ready, lunches are packed into cases and it’s time to go. But dizzyingly quickly we return to the Friday day I lost my mind!  The keys, the panties, the earrings – all effects lasting temporarily however.  My initial horror gives way to amazement as I realize that my distractedness appears to have come along with a burst of genius. I have managed, quite extraordinarily, to work out how to put seven separate documents onto one document on Excel. This involves a lot of copying, pasting, (making small), renaming and finally coming out with a whole new document. I am so impressed with myself that I forget to sulk and run to my boss to tell her how wonderful I am.  She agrees that I am very clever and I see no reason to continue the argument.

 

After the initial shock of all my weird activities of the morning, I begin to feel relatively relaxed.  Katie has ballet and so does her friend, so the other half of the lift scheme does the lifts today.  I do, however, still have to take Jarred home. This changes when he telephones to say that the pub at Education Campus is opening today and he will come over later, probably around three. This all seems fine until my boss, whom I have just made friends with, decides that we can go home early – at three. I try to call Jarred. Surprise, surprise – his phone is off. I have to wait. I can’t very well go storming into the pub to yank him out. In the meantime his older brother calls. I must meet him at home and then take him to Vodacom to sign for his new SIM card. The problem is we must do this by 5.00 as the shop will probably close. The other problem is that I have no idea what time Jarred will put in an appearance.  Gary laughs hysterically when he hears the situation, telling me that I’ve got a long wait ahead of me. I little while later the little ones call me at work to ask if they can make me a surprise from their recipe book. I agree to this asking, as nicely as possible, that they clean up after themselves.  At about 3.30 Gary phones, asking where I am and Jarred eventually arrives at four o’clock. At four fifteen Katie calls, asking how far I am from home because the surprise is waiting. I drop Jarred at home and Gary takes his place in the car. Katie runs out asking where I’m going and saying that the surprise is ready. I assure her that I will not be long. We get to Vodacom, sign the papers and are told that it will cost R65.00. Gary and I look at each other incredulously. Neither of us has money on us.  He decides to drop me at home, as I’m really anxious to have my surprise before the babies’ dad fetches them for the weekend. Gary will fetch my bank-card and go and pay the account. Miraculously we find the card in the car. At home I have a sosatie stick with strawberries, pineapple, banana and dates (because I have given up chocolate for lent) waiting for me on a plate with ice-cream and custard.  Children have an amazing way of erasing a week of stress in an instant, by a simple gesture of love so pure that it melts your insides and touches you to the very core of your being!

 

 Reality, however, has a nasty way of intruding on the most special of moments. My friend arrives to take me for dinner but my ex has not yet collected the children. The place is unbelievably noisy. There is a ridiculous modern musical blasting from the television and Jarred is showing everyone his political song. The atmosphere is mildly crazy but very enjoyable. The ex hoots at the gate for the little ones. Unfortunately at this precise moment my father and brother decide to have a very heated altercation. I do not want my children’s father to hear or see anything about the argument (long story) so I rush the children out as soon as possible.  It is a scene from a black comedy. The more I tell them that they must leave quickly, the more times they return to fetch something that they have forgotten. It is unbelievable! Finally they leave and I breathe a sigh of relief. My eldest son’s girlfriend has been ushered into the cottage to escape the argument inside.  My friend and I leave, I tell Jarred where to hide the keys and I, naively, believe that I am due for a quiet and peaceful weekend.

 

Dinner is uneventful except for when I go to the bathroom, get confused with the doors and end up exiting the ladies and entering a sushi restaurant that I hadn’t been eating at. After the initial confusion, I make a hasty retreat and find my friend outside, waiting for me.  While on my way to the bathroom I discover that Jarred has called me twenty-two times and I have finally heard the phone on the twenty- third try. He tells me that there is trouble at home and on top of this he has dropped my cottage keys into the cottage and cannot get them out. My friend and I end up getting into the cottage by unscrewing one of the security gates, at the same time releasing my Doberman who has been prisoner in the cottage for goodness knows how long. In the meantime I go to find my brother who has passed out in the garden and attempt to help him. The rest is a long, involved and futile story and is best ignored and forgotten.

 

My peaceful Friday ends and I fall into bed and into a deep sleep.

I have big plans for Saturday. I am going to get myself out of debt. I will get up relatively late, go to the bank and draw the money. I will then pay off my clothing accounts, my T.V. and buy my daughter and my friend their birthday presents. I have, however, discovered that in life that you should never plan anything. Go with the flow. That way you can never be irritated! This I have discovered but unfortunately I have never actually learnt from it.

 

I arrive at the bank. None of the banks at the mall have electricity. I swear, various expletives, under my breath and head off to the other mall. I think that I am very clever but at the same time have a sense of foreboding about what I will find at that bank. I am astounded beyond my normal ability to be astounded! The queues begin at the tellers inside the bank (far, far inside the bank), out the door and all the way down to Woollworths, which is about half a city block away. All the other banks have the same problem. I mutter some more swear words, this time including some obscenities about the state of the country and decide on retail therapy, which I most certainly cannot afford.  I head home, make a hubbly (yes, again) and tidy my flat. I am busy with this when my brother’s weird girlfriend starts yelling out my name. Jarred is amazed to see me hurl myself across the room, jump out of my shoes and fling myself onto Katie’s bed, at the same time begging him to tell her that I’m asleep. I close my eyes tightly, praying that she won’t come in.  Jarred, the horror, lets me lie like that for a few minutes, choosing not to tell me that she is gone. I continue to hide for awhile then poor myself a glass of wine (yes, again), put on a load of washing, set up the ironing board and complete all my outstanding ironing. I am Superwoman! I am Wonder Woman! I am Mother! I put washing on the line and it rains! I am Exceedingly Irritated Woman.

 

I, being so damn popular, have three invitations for Saturday evening. My haemorrhoids are agonizing at this stage and I decide I cannot go to the braai. I also don’t feel like visiting the young obsessive phone caller. I decide to surprise my friend and go to him to watch a DVD. The evening is uneventful except for the fact that my eldest son keeps phoning me to yell about how unfair it is that he has to lift my middle son to a party. He rants about how far it is and how it’s unfair to use his girlfriend’s car.  At about ten o’clock I go home and sit with Gary in the cottage until he leaves to fetch his girlfriend. I bath and, exhausted, climb into bed. The cell rings at 12.30. That dreaded call that will inform me that Jarred cannot get a lift home and I must fetch him. I am half asleep and ask Jarred to call me back with directions. Gary calls and tells me where to go. I put my dog in the car – she is astounded (as astounded as a dog can be) and we head off into the unknown, with a set of directions on my lap. I am in some God-forsaken place in the middle of the night but I eventually  find the place after a few more phone calls to Gary. I find the street but not the number. There is no number eighteen. Fortunately I am not alone in my stupidity as the taxi driver who has just arrived is also driving up and down the road in search of number eighteen.  I find it, eventually, around the corner - something that must have slipped the minds of both my sons.  I then spend about ten minutes outside waiting for Jarred to appear, anger causing all my arteries to pulse unusually. I cannot call him because, surprise, surprise, his phone is off! I cannot go in because I am in my pyjamas. I am on the verge of an embolism when he appears at the gate, glass in hand. I am irritated. I am tired. I tell him to throw the drink out.  His friend then proceeds to vomit next to my car. I am petrified. He cannot puke in my car. He sits in the front, window wound down and proceeds to tell me, in a very elevated tone, how much he loves me and what a good person I am. I am almost deaf when we reach home. I flop into bed at 1.30 in the morning.

 

Sunday - wonderful Sunday. I get up late. I go to breakfast with my friends. Have a wonderful Pina Colada (spelling) and then head home. I must go shopping for my friend’s present, but decide to go with him so he can choose it. Then we see a movie. I am relaxed for the first time in a week!  He drops me at home. I iron the load of washing on the line and put on another load. The older boys are home and have toast, biscuits and dips for supper. This is my day, this is my moment, this is my time! I am tired. I am relaxed and I must preserve the last iota of strength that I have to begin this routine all over again!

 

The conclusion of this pitiful but ultimately fulfilling tale - : I am tired, I am stressed but hey I do these things for the people that I love. I love and am loved and nothing is too much  - although it sometimes seems that way.

 

And Monday I want to start gym again! Wish me luck!

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College and University Graduation: Graduating from college or university is a culmination of years of quality education. For some, the anticipation has been just too much! And you know that your excitement is culminating in a grand celebration, the much awaited graduation ceremony. As you don your graduation robes and receive your diplomas elegantly on the dais, you surely want to see your loved ones cheering for you with pride and uncontained joy. You have been building a strong foundation for yourself, aided by teachers and guardians. Now is the time to tell the world that you are ready to face the wide world by sending college graduation announcements or university graduation anno0uncements cards with unique styles!

High School Graduation: It is that time again – high school graduation fever is approaching. There is a buzz all around as so many young students, bubbling with enthusiasm, are getting ready to welcome a new phase of life. High school graduation is indeed, a milestone for any student. It is the time when, head held high, the high school student steps up on the stage to receive his high school graduation diploma amidst happy applause from the crowd. High school graduation brings with it so many new decisions. What is next? That is a question on the mind of all high school graduates.

HomeSchool Graduation: Graduating from homeschool is a different perspective on education. Some parents believe they are the best teachers, so home school is sometimes considered a good way to educate a child. Though you do not follow the rigid schedule of a regular school, the facts remain that homeschool is also a school and is rapidly growing in popularity! If you are a student, you are probably facing this feverish excitement enroute to your homeschool graduation. If you are a parent, you are probably wondering what is on your child’s mind with respect to after his homeschool graduation. Is he anxious, excited or simply confused?

Junior High School, 8th Grade and Middle School Graduation: Graduation for middle school, 8th grade and junior high school are all very important times in a young person’s life. And graduating from any of these education levels is just as important as they pave the way towards high school. Whichever grade a child is graduating from, it’s important to have middle school graduation cards, 8th grade graduation invitations or junior high school graduation announcements.

Kindergarten and Preschool Graduation: Kindergarten - Just the word sound cutes! Of course, kindergarten represents an environment for your four or five year old to discover the beautiful world around her. Preschool and kindergarten are meant to teach the kids how to share and care, make new friends and spend some time on their own, away from the warm cocoon of parents and home. Of course, kindergarten is meant to be a home away from home for the tiny tots. It is a great opportunity for them to learn new things on their own, ask questions and get the answers. It is a stepping-stone for future education. Kindergarten graduating is a cause to celebrate. Preschools usually have a small graduation ceremony to honor the graduating kids. You can make kindergarten graduation announcements on behalf of your preschooler.

Law School, Med School, Voc-Tech and Other Graduations: The word “Graduation” makes you sit up and think. You have so many options before you. For some, a career might be waiting. For others, further studies might beckon. For some college graduates, getting married and settling down might seem a good option. No matter what direction you are headed, your education will definitely help you choose wisely. This means that graduation is a milestone in your life. You are about to embark on a quest. Further in life you will meet many challenges and you are confident that your education has prepared you to face them head on! These graduations include Law School, Medical School, Veterinary School, Trade School, Voc-Tech, Vocation School, GED, Administrative Medical Assistant, Phlebotomy, Day Care Management, Office Assistant, Voc-Tech, Special Education, Physical Therapy, Pharmacy Graduation, Technical School, Computer Software & CIS Graduation and more.

Nursing School Graduation: Many nurses believe that nursing is not only their vocation, it is their calling; that they are doing something for the society. Not everyone is suitable for becoming a nurse. Along with all the dedication and hard toil, a lot of patience and kindness is needed. Nursing school graduation is a mark of respect and appreciation of your determination. Naturally, your nursing school graduation announcements must be very good, in keeping with your eagerly awaited, wonderful nursing school graduation ceremony.

Party and Open House for Graduation: Graduation is the stage where you look back at many years in the education process and hope that will someday be of great help to you. A mound of decisions is waiting to be made. But at the same time, an overwhelming feeling of accomplishment soars through your being. As they say, in the words of a Dr. Seuss, “with brains in the head as well as feet in the shoes, you can always steer yourself in whatever direction you wish to choose!” Graduation is a time to celebrate. And what better way to do so than by giving a graduation party?

Thank You Cards for Graduation: Thanking someone for a favor is a traditional practice, just like you thank people for attending your graduation ceremony or graduation party, ideally in person or through personalized graduation party thank you cards, like homeschool graduation thank you cards. College Graduation or University Graduation Thank You Cards are the hottest cards in demand every year. But there are cute graduation thank you cards for the little ones! They are cute, photo printed, unique, customized and printable discount thank you cards. There are special Kindergarten Graduation Thank You Cards and Preschool Graduation Thank You Cards for the preschoolers.

Wording Ideas, Wording Verses and Sayings for Graduation Cards: The nostalgia and the decisions and the questions will follow graduation, but right now, all you have to do is soak up the moments as they come. There are online sites that help you plan for your graduation ceremony. This means inviting your loved ones to the graduation ceremony or for the graduation party and then sending graduation thank cards to all those who came and shared the merry moments with you. There is lots of help in taking away your worries regarding graduation announcements. Not only with the graduation announcements cards but also with a gigantic collection of creative Graduation Announcements Wording Ideas, Graduation Invitations Wording Verses & Sayings for Graduation Cards.

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A physician (also called doctor in some places) is a person who practices medicine. In the United States, the term physician is traditional and commonly used. In Britain & Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Africa, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, the term doctor is more common (and in formal/legal contexts, medical practitioner as well), as physician refers to specialists in internal medicine.
Because of the extensive training requirements, physicians are traditionally considered to be members of a learned profession.

In all developed countries, entry-level medical education programs are tertiary-level courses undertaken at a medical school pertaining to a university. Depending on jurisdiction and university, these may be either undergraduate-entry or graduate-entry programs. Following completion of entry-level training, newly graduated doctors are often required to undertake a period of supervised practice before full registration is granted; this may be referred to as “internship” or “conditional registration”.

Further training in a particular field of medicine may be undertaken. In some jurisdictions this is commenced immediately following completion of entry-level training, whilst other jurisdictions require junior doctors to undertake generalist (un-streamed) training for a number of years before commencing specialization. Various teaching methodologies have been utilized in medical education, which is an active area of educational research.

In the USA, there are two types of physicians. Allopathic physicians hold a MD and osteopathic physicians hold a DO. Both physicians are fully licensed to practice in all 50 states. In most jurisdictions, physicians need government permission to practice. This is known as licensing in the United States. Regulating authorities will revoke permission to practice in cases of malpractice or serious misconduct.

Graduates of Foreign Medical Schools, who enter USA have to pass USMLE step 1 and 2 ECFMG and do a residency program to qualify for a state license. After graduating from medical school, American physicians usually take a standardized exam which enables them to obtain a certificate to practice from the appropriate state agency. All American states have an agency which is usually called the “Medical Board,” although there are alternate names such as “Board of Medicine,” “Board of Medical Examiners,” “Board of Medical Licensure,” “Board of Healing Arts,” etc. Australian states usually have a “Medical Board,” while Canadian provinces usually have a “College of Physicians and Surgeons.”

In the United States, as a result of the war on drugs, pharmaceuticals are strictly regulated at the federal level by the Food and Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Administration. All practicing American physicians who intend to prescribe controlled substances must obtain a number from the DEA, and that DEA number must appear on all their prescriptions. Use of the DEA number enables dispensing pharmacists or the DEA to ensure that a physician is not dispensing potentially addictive or harmful drugs, such as opiates or stimulants, in contravention to accepted standards of care.

Medical care is shared between the medical profession (physicians or doctors) and other professionals such as nurses and pharmacists, sometimes known as allied health professionals. Historically, only those with a medical doctorate have been considered to practice medicine. Clinicians (licensed professionals who deal with patients) can be physicians, nurses, therapists or others. The medical profession is the social and occupational structure of the group of people formally trained and authorized to apply medical knowledge. Many countries and legal jurisdictions have legal limitations on who may practice medicine.

Medicine comprises various specialized sub-branches, such as cardiology, pulmonology, neurology, or other fields such as sports medicine, research or public health.

Human societies have had various different systems of health care practice since at least the beginning of recorded history. Medicine, in the modern period, is the mainstream scientific tradition which developed in the Western world since the early Renaissance (around 1450). Many other traditions of health care are still practiced throughout the world; most of these are separate from Western medicine, which is also called biomedicine, allopathic medicine or the Hippocratic tradition. The most highly developed of these are traditional Chinese medicine and the Ayurvedic traditions of India and Sri Lanka. Various non-mainstream traditions of health care have also developed in the Western world. These systems are sometimes considered companions to Hippocratic medicine, and sometimes are seen as competition to the Western tradition. Few of them have any scientific confirmation of their tenets, because if they did they would be brought into the fold of Western medicine.

“Medicine” is also often used amongst medical professionals as shorthand for internal medicine. Veterinary medicine is the practice of health care in animal species other than human beings.

The earliest type of medicine in most cultures was the use of plants (Herbalism) and animal parts. This was usually in concert with ‘magic’ of various kinds in which animism (the notion of inanimate objects having spirits; or communion with ancestor spirits), shamanism (the vesting of an individual with mystic powers), and divination (the supposed obtaining of truth by magic means) played a major role.

The practice of medicine combines both science and art. Science and technology are the evidence base for many clinical problems for the general population at large. The art of medicine is the application of this medical knowledge in combination with intuition and clinical judgment to determine the proper diagnoses and treatment plan for each unique patient and to treat the patient accordingly.

Central to medicine is the patient-doctor relationship established when a person with a health concern or problem seeks the help of a physician (i.e. the medical encounter). Other health professionals similarly establish a relationship with a patient and may perform interventions from their perspective, e.g. nurses, radiographers and therapists.

Medical care delivery is classified into primary, secondary and tertiary care. Primary care medical services are provided by physicians or other health professionals who has first contact with a patient seeking medical treatment or care. These occur in physician’s office, clinics, nursing homes, schools, home visits and other places close to patients. About 90% of medical visits can be treated by the primary care provider. These include treatment of acute and chronic illnesses, preventive care and health education for all ages and both sex.

With 2008 in full swing, perhaps you’ve already had your fill of economic and political predictions by experts and clairvoyants. However, if you happen to be a Sandwiched Boomer, the following quietly growing trend may surprise you. The results of recent studies indicate that nearly 40% of close to 44 million unpaid caregivers for the elderly are male. The call to honor loved ones is becoming an emerging pattern of male behavior.

Traditionally, the bulk of these caretaking responsibilities have been carried out by daughters. Women have left jobs or subjugated their work life in order to fulfill the duties associated with the ‘daughter track.’ But male caregivers are different than their sisters - they don’t cut back on work as often and they have a louder voice in the workplace. Some experts think that men are powerful enough to catapult this beyond what is perceived as a woman’s issue to a societal need, similar to Social Security and Medicare.

Although there are far more existing data on the experiences and needs of female caregivers, Metlife has recently completed a study called ‘Sons at Work.’ It found that, while 62% of women spoke with their co-workers about their care-giving responsibilities, only 48% of men did.

Despite core values of filial devotion, sons often don’t know how to go about finding help nor do they feel comfortable asking for it. Recognizing this resistance, here are some ideas that can affect a shift in attitude toward seeking assistance and support.

1. Men have special needs in this arena, often feeling embarrassed or guilty. Greater awareness and education can break down attitudinal restraints and emotional barriers - practical seminars, newsletters and health fairs are excellent venues by which to accomplish this.

2. Besides seeing groups as only for women, men don’t think these provide enough structure and focus on problem solving. It is important to reduce their perception that support is only for women. Reframe the concept by redefining the actual group process or by using an alternative definition such as a workshop.

3. Advocate for more appropriate and useful accommodations in the workplace: the availability of geriatric care managers, resources for work/home balance and extended paid leave.

4. Work on expanding the Lifespan Respite Care Act, passed by Congress in 2006. Although $300 million in grants was earmarked to help provide relief to those giving long-term care to family members, the cost of these needs is closer to $300 billion.

5. Through networking, introduce the caregiver to options like community resources and local services. This can reduce stress while enhancing their ability to maintain control over the care-giving role.

6. For those who want loved ones to remain at home longer, provide detailed information about homemaker services or meal delivery. And for assistance to the caregiver himself, help with respite care so he can take care of his own needs.

Americans today are living longer and are developing or dying from more chronic conditions. A greater number of parents now need care at the end of their lives. Many continue to live at home with their children as unpaid caregivers or move in with family, instead of into nursing homes.

Male caregivers are already living their own version of the numbers. Nearly half of them have symptoms of depression. Time is a main resource in short supply and that issue takes a heavy emotional toll. How can they take time for themselves when that is the resource they’re already borrowing? We all have to put our heads together as the groundswell of Baby Boomers faces these dilemmas and discovers there’s simply not enough to go around.

© 2008, Her Mentor Center

The demand for online nursing degrees has increased to manifold looking at the demand of qualified nurses across the globe. The girls, who want to make career in nursing, start preparations right from their high school days. The number of such girls is increasing every year. Of late this profession is joined by boys too. The existing colleges are not enough to teach nursing to all the aspirants. That is why the federal government allowed universities to award online nursing degrees. The federal government gives accreditation to those universities, who fulfills its standards. It is advised that students must verify the accreditation of an online university from the concerned department before filling enrollment form.

The best way to find out an accredited online university for earning an online nursing degree is to visit an online directory. When was the first online directory published is not known but currently there are numerous directories available online for the nursing students. A directory such as DegreeAuthority.com contains addresses of only accredited online schools. Students can find leading names such as Everest College, CDI College, Western Governors University, Westwood College and Devry University. The leading directories such as DegreeAuthority.com also provide the facility to borrow student loan for fund raising. By visiting a directory students can be sure that they have got the right address for earning an online nursing degree.

An online nursing degree has several advantages over a traditional nursing degree.

Students can earn an online nursing degree in mush less time than they invest in earning a traditional degree. Students have to attend a traditional college for four years for earning a nursing degree. The online universities give liberty to students in pursuing studies. You can keep studying at your own pace. An intelligent student can become a qualified nurse in less than two years from an online college. The rest of time saved in earning an online nursing degree can be invested in taking practical experience in a hospital.

The online universities offer most cost effective nursing courses to aspiring students. Economically weak students can easily arrange fees for earning an online nursing degree. If they happen to borrow student loans then they can easily repay their installments by working in a hospital.

The online method of teaching gives enough time to students for preparation. You can ask question to professors and fellow students through chatting. The online classes are organized mostly in the nights or weekends so that students can attend them without any complications. Physically challenged students can take online universities as a boon. They can fulfill their dreams of becoming a nurse without stepping into a classroom.

It is seen that most of the talented students could not get into nursing colleges due to one or another reason. The rising cost of higher studies in America is also hampering the growth of many students. Some of the working people, who want to continue their studies, cannot study in traditional colleges. Either they have to take long leaves or quit job for pursuing their desired courses. Physically challenged students face problems while commuting to college.

The online university has solved all the problems. The class is organized at your drawing room and you can solve complicated problems while sipping coffee on your couch. Working people can earn an online nursing degree without quitting their job.