Contrary to what you may think, I actually took these lectures very seriously. There are all sorts of penalties for not following the rules up to and including losing your license. Believe me, after spending a ginormous amount of money (via loans) on my nursing education, I’m interested in keeping the job that will pay it off.
So, my job is not in the state where I got my original license. No big deal. Once you get one license, you simply fill out the paperwork, get fingerprinted for the background check, get your paperwork notarized, send in the information from your school, and your money to get a license for the state you will be working in. There is, of course, a timeframe for all of this to occur or it’s considered “working without a license” and you get in BIG trouble. You know, like Bueller would have been in, if his vice-principal was every smart enough to catch him.
Anyway, I get an email from the hospital telling me I have 30 days to get the license thing taken care of. “No problem,” I think. I’ve already sent it in, and I don’t even start my job for another couple of days.
Fast forward to my first week on the job…
I find out at 4 pm on a Thursday that by “30 days” they mean 30 days from the time my original license was issued by my home state. I start to panic a little bit. I don’t even know when that was, but it was definitely the middle of May sometime. One would think this wouldn’t be such a big deal except that you can’t even go to orientation if you don’t have this little piece of paper saying you can sit in a classroom all day. I didn’t know any of this. I’m thinking, “Awesome. Here’s my first test of professional responsibility and I’m failing it because I didn’t even KNOW ABOUT IT! WHAT ELSE AM I NOT DOING THAT I DON’T KNOW ABOUT?”
So I call the board on my way home, and the woman was very nice and helpful and tells me she will start working on it. “Whew!” I think, “crisis avoided.” Then I go home and look at my original date of issue. It’s earlier then I think! I have even less time then I thought.
Thankfully, the woman I spoke with was true to her word, and when I called back on Monday to ask 17 other questions in case it didn’t get done in time, they told me I was good to go. Later that day the official piece of paper came in the mail.
Now I have a sweet little “RN” tag added to my name tag, and people think I actually know what I'm doing...Ha. Ha. Ha.
