[babymeena]

Hi, all. I will be sitting for NCLEX in November so this might be too early to ask about the anesthesiology school. But I know that planning never hurts as I've learned through many wasted college units. Here are my questions.

1. GPA of 3.0 of undergraduate study: Do they want the overall GPA of all the courses taken including Nursing classes, sci classes, & english etc? What exactly does undergraduate study include? What is graduate study? What is post graduate study???

2. When choosing school, does it matter what degree you will graduate with? I know they all give you masters but what is the difference between them all such as Master of Science in Nursing, Post-Master's Certificate, MS in Nurse Anesthesia. Are any of these better than the other? Would any of these help with your career any more than others? I have no concept of these last few letters people like to put after RN on their name badges.

3. Once I obtain my RN, should I try to go for ICU training or ER training. I know all schools require acute care experience of at least one year and I plan to get it while I go for my BSN. I'm in Southern California and there are three schools of anesthesiology. I'm more interested in USC & Cal State Fullerton since they're closer to me than Oakland. Is anyone going through these two schools right now?

4. Any helpful tips on planning for anesthesiology school will be greatly appreciated.


Thanks for all your input.


Ammie

[TraumaNurse]

First just to clarify the semantics, anesthesiology is the practice of medicine. CRNAs are anesthetists and both MDs and CRNAs practice anesthesia. So if you are refering going to CRNA school, you are talking about going to nurse anesthesia school, not anesthesiology school. It's semantics, but we must be PC!
As for your other questions:
1) Overall GPA of 3.0 includes all your coursework. However, some schools will look at your most recent GPA and not necessarily your entire college experience. I had a GPA of about 2.0 in my first couple of years of college. My nursing GPA was about 3.5 and BSN 3.9. The school I applied to did not even care about my 2.0 and not 1 program calculated my GPA with those early college years included. This could be a problem if you only attended 1 college and your cumulative GPA is impossible to escape!

2)MSN, MS doesn't matter. As long as you go to an accredited Nurse Anesthesia school and pass you boards!

3) Go to ICU. Many CRNA programs will not accept ER, but all accept ICU for your "acute care" experience. IMO, I think the best learning experiences are at larger teaching hospital ICU's.

4) Helpful hints: Keep your GPA up, get certifications (ACLS, PALS, TNCC etc), take your CCRN, work hard in the ICU and learn as much as you can, do well on the GRE, get as much critical care experience as you can and spend time shadowing a CRNA to get a good idea of what it is all about.
Read the FAQ at the top of the Forum.
Hope this helps. Good luck.

[babymeena]

Hi, TraumaNurse. Thanks for the kind reply. Yes, I meant CRNA school.
I'm glad that they may not count the early years in college. When I was taking all my core sci courses like a&p, micro, etc., I was clueless about the nursing field and didn't concentrate on getting good grades. I did pass them all (I don't know how since the prof. didn't even recognize me when I showed up for tests) but with Cs mostly. However I wised up later on when I found out too late that grades do matter on those courses I ended up going to LVN vocational school and got my LVN. I did get good grades on other stuff like English, math, and stuff for biz since I contemplated going into international trading. My GPA for ADN is 3.58 and hope to do better on BSN. I will take CCRN & GRE. Is CCRN hard to take? Is it some sort of a certification exam? If so how does one qualify to take it? I heard about GRE. I won't be taking that until I get my BSN probably. General idea about what this exam entails will be great. Thanks again for answering.

[babymeena]

Ooh, one more question. Do you think GRE score would be lower for people like me for whom English is second language?

[Kiwi]

Socal, your avatar is cute!

[elkpark]

CCRN is a nursing certification offered by the American Association of Critical Care Nurses (AACN) -- to get it, you must pass an exam which measures how much you know about critical care nursing. Here is the website: http://www.certcorp.org/certcorp/cer.../certcorp/ccrn

The GRE (Graduate Record Examination) is a "generic" examination designed to measure your general ability to do graduate level academic work. Many (most?) graduate programs require you to take the GRE and submit your score, which they use as one factor in making admissions decisions. There are "specialty" GREs for quite a few disciplines, and the graduate programs in those disciplines require the "specialty" GRE. Fortunately, there is no nursing specialty GRE! Here is the website: http://www.gre.org/

[babymeena]

Thank you ether & elkpark. I guess I won't be able to get CCRN cert until about a year into ICU work since they require 1750 hours of bedside experience to be eligible. I'm sooo nervous about going into ICU because it all seems so challanging. I'm sure I'll learn a lot though. I will just feel real stupid and incompetent for about a year. I'm really uncomfortable feeling that way but to reach my goal of CRNA, I will endure it... I just hope that the co-workers are as supportive and understanding as you guys. Thanks again everyone.

[elkpark]

I will just feel real stupid and incompetent for about a year.

This is something that everyone goes through -- you, too, will survive!

[Tia]

Originally Posted by elkpark

This is something that everyone goes through -- you, too, will survive!

When I transferred from the ER to ICU I felt like a brand new nurse trying to understand everything. You will have to prove yourself to your coworkers but trust me they will warm up to you and that is when you start to learn everything. Take it slow..don't try to learn it all at once. There will ALWAYS be days when you are on tip-toe with patient's conditions but you will learn to handle it. Good luck and keep working toward your dreams. Ask a ton of questions because nobody is going to spoon feed you the information..be responsible for your own education. You will need to do this as an RN in the ICU and be able to do it as an SRNA. So practice now

Tia

[UCDSICURN]

I'm glad that they may not count the early years in college. When I was taking all my core sci courses like a&p, micro, etc., I was clueless about the nursing field and didn't concentrate on getting good grades.

If you truly got "C"'s in your core science courses you may want to look at retaking those. C's in the core sciences are not competetive for admission to CRNA school regardless of when you took them.

Good luck,

Donn C.