i want to be a NURSE!!

NurseLiNA · Feb 15, 2003

heyyy!! ?que pasa? im keeeeping my post alive...DO NOT GO ON PAGE 2!! thanx to all those who replied back to me!! ya are jus so sweeeeet!! i appreciate it ever so much!!! hey if ya read my profile and all, i finally got my pic...it's dumb...it took me 10 posts man!! i'll be back!!

muahhhhhz

lina

Edward,IL · Feb 16, 2003

Dear Lina,

Thank you for considering nursing as a career. You are wise to look into nursing now, at your age, so that you cn plan your academic career well and avoid the mistakes that a lot of us made.

Here are my mandates for your career:

1) Consider only persuin the Doctorate in Nursing as you final degree. To get there, ake as much science and math in high school as you can. An introductory anatomy and physiology,

and statistics would also be helpful.

2) Obtain a 4-year undergraduate degee in liberal arts with lots of varied electives in the humanities and sciences. This will produce a well-educated 22 or 23 year-old who is ready to settle into serious academic work at the graduate and post-graduate level. Don't even think about a "specialty" in nursing until you've been through or during your graduate clinical rotations. The more you learn and experience, the more you'll change your mind

(ie "I really want to work with older people" changes to mid-wifery when you do your maternal/child rotation")

3) Check out the web sites at the following universities, see what they offer and compare them. There IS a big difference inschools of nursing. Thers are my favorites, not in any particular order of priority or ranking:

Columbia University, New York, NY. Dr. Mary O'Neill-Mundinger

University of Maryland

University of Wisconsin (all campuses within their system)

University of Iowa (also check out what they are doing with development of computerized information systems, research in Nursing Diagnosis, Nursing Interventions and Nursing outcomes.

E-mail any of their faculty with questions and guidance re your academic career and save yourself alot of time, money and frustation. These are the people who are developing the future of the Nursing profession, which is where you'll be 20 years from now.

University of California/San Francisco

University of Illinois, Circle campus, Chicgo, IL

Also check out the American Association of Colleges of Nursing

They are the official (deemed by the Dept. of Education at the federal level) to accredit university based programs. Ask to read their white paper on nursing education, now about 5-10 years old but still a good read.

The National League for Nursing. The oldest accrediting body for nursing education, but they still accredit hospital-based diploma programs and 2-year Assosciate-degree programs; both of which are becoming quickly obsolete.

Also check out the American Nurses Association. Read the Social Policy Statement (this represents the Nursing Profession's contract with society, and lets you know now up front, the magnitude of the committment you are considering undertaking in terms of schooling, legal responsibility. While at the ANA web site,

check out the American Academy of nursing.

Look all this stuff up. Go to a nearby university that has a college of nursing, talk with faculty and students. Go to the library and peruse the Nursing Journals to get and idea of what it is nurses really do. Find a friend who might also be interested in nursing to do all this homework with you.

As you go about life, you will talk to many (90%) of working nurses who will discourage you from attempting nursing as a career and suggest that you major in anything else (even medicine has gotten crummy these days, 40% of the graduates from med school are woman hwo quickly become disgruntled, also). It IS posible to have a rewarding, satisfying career in nursing, but the prerequisite to this is advanced, pre-service, formal higher-education through the doctoral level (by this I mean the academic credential of DNSc. DNS, or PhD. in Nursing. NOT the EdD. or ND. Again, ask the doctorally prepared nursign faculty at one of the universities I've named above and they will tell you in a nutshell why at your tender age this is the path you should persue. Good luck!

justjill · Feb 16, 2003

hey lina!! welcome!

sorry, but i'm not a 'real' nurse yet, just a student like yourself. :)

good luck with school! hang in there!