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[gaviidaegrrl]

From the lj of one goneplatinumYou know how sometimes people on your friend's list post about stuff going on in their life, and all of a sudden you think "Wait a minute? Since when are they working THERE? Since when are they dating HIM/HER? since when???" And then you wonder how you could have missed all that seemingly pretty standard information, but somehow

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[gaviidaegrrl]

And see, I never went through getting my nursing degree before this because living on the Iron Range, the only place to work as a nurse is long-term care and I do NOT want to work long-term care. *cringes* But now that I'm in the metro area and looking in the Star Trib on Sundays and seeing all these other opportunities (OB and nursery! Sports injury!) ... and then hearing what my cousin is making per hour ... just makes me go "hmmmm... might not be a bad idea!"

So what exactly is a HUC? I know it's a Health Unit Coordinator, but I've never been able to ask someone who actually does the job just what it entails. And how long does the schooling for it take? Cause that might be up my alley and I see a lot of job opportunities for that, as well.

The kiddos are doing well. Abbey's teething to beat the band. Has two on the bottom, getting two more on top. Abbey will be 8 months on the 24th of June, so she's about 5 weeks younger than your niece. =) And Nissa is just way too smart for anyone's good. I fear what her college education is going to cost and PRAY for scholarships.

We should try to get together! Just wait until we're settled in in Chaska... I got way too much to do in the next few weeks. =) I'm not certain exactly how far it is from Hugo to Chaska. I've never actually been TO Hugo. I know approximately where it is, though. Um, hmm... depending on traffic probably an hour? Hour and a half? In rush hour, though, I fear it could take all day. LOL. How long does it take you to get to the MOA? Cause we're about an hour from there. (All of the literature says "half an hour," but I never actually have been able to make it in that amount of time ... and I last lived in Chaska in 2000 so I'm sure it's only gotten worse.)

[goneplatinum]

Wooo-hoo, someone wants me to explain my job!! (This is a first lol) It varies, really, from hospital to hospital because some are up on the electronic medical record(meaning everything is done on the computer) but there are some still working with paper.

What I do is order entry(labs, admission orders, etc.), answering the telephone and patient call light system, I call the RN's and CNA's to go do stuff(I call my desk Grand Central Station), and on our floor we have telemetry(cardiac monitoring), so I'm responsible for watching that as well as admitting/discharging/transferring patients to and from the floor, ALSO responsible for when a patient transfers to a nursing home to get all the paperwork to the NH via a packet sent with the patient and via fax. OH, I also have to coordinate transportation(like medi-vans and ambulance transport) for patients. Then I call other floors and the storeroom for stuff.

Like I said, Grand Central Station, lol. And how busy it is depends on the day, how many patients we have, the acuity(we only have 19 beds on our unit, so it's not as bad as around the other units).

I went to school at Hennepin Technical College for one semester in 2004 to get my HUC certification. But really, nothing--NOTHING that we learned is used at Mercy anymore--just because of the EMR implementation back in September of '06.

I like my job, but it can get stressful, especially when a patient suddenly goes downhill(I work on the stepdown unit from the ICU, which is just down the hall) and a code is called. THEN everything gets stepped up a notch.

RE: How far to the MOA... I'm about 40 minutes give or take from there. My sister actually lives in Apple Valley, so she's super close. Send me an e-mail once you're all settled into the townhouse and we can make plans from there! Okay this comment is FAR TOO LONG lol. The niece woke me up with her giggles and squeals, so I'm going back to bed for another couple hours. ((hugs))

[gaviidaegrrl]

Hmmm... I think I should look in the becoming a HUC. Because I'd really rather not do quite so much hands-on care. I'd like to do what my mom is currently doing with her RN license - since she works in longterm care, she is responsible for keeping all of the paperwork up to date for the residents, mainly the MDS (Minimum Data Set) that has to be done like twice a year per resident. She's a glorified medical secretary, really.

But I'll have to look to see if any of the schools down this way offer HUC certification.

Thanks for the info! And I'll definitely get ahold of you once we're settled in in Chaska.

[goneplatinum]

Because work was slow as fuck tonight, I decided to look for the nearest school that offers the HUC program to you. It's either Red Wing or St. Paul, looks like. About 45 minutes to each. You may want to look at the hospital websites or nursing homes to see if they offer a HUC class exclusively.

[gaviidaegrrl]

I took a look, too, and it looks like I could go for the certificate at HTC-Brooklyn Center (or was it Brooklyn Park? One of the Brooklyns!) So that's a relatively straight shot up 169 from Chaska. Probably about half an hour depending on the time of day. Once we get settled in Chaska and see just how horrible our finances are, I'll be able to look in to it further to see if it would be at all feasible for me to take on schooling. One nice thing is that my mom has been making payments on my student loans for the past few months - I'm no longer in default so I might possibly be able to get some financial assistance!

[goneplatinum]

I went to Hennepin Tech for my HUC certification :) It's a good program.