RN School is tough !!

Nurses General Nursing

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Hello Everyone. Now I am 6 weeks into RN classes. I am forced to be succesful at: clinicals, lecture and labs. The other students are all nervous, like me, and it's tense. Often I feel sad myself because no one is smiling enough. Labs are tough and they expect us to know how to give an injection on the first or second try. People are so nervous I don't know if they would let me do them. The lectures are hard, followed by bigger and bigger waves of required reading from super-thick books. It's like an airport because everyone has those portable bookbags on wheels things. The meds are killer. There are so many meds and so much to know about meds, its overwhelming. Clinicals are two days a week at adult care facility which is not as acute as med-surg cna work I do. No one knows me, and I get lonely and feel lonely for the people who live there. My first PT died, and my second didn't want any visitors after a few hours. Trying to watch all the videos are hard...did i mention that. Instruction videos on Lab skills....there is about 5-6 hours worth of video Lab. Grasping the concept of nursing diagnosis and planning and relating it to a medical diagnosis...these are huge concepts my brain is stretching wide and hard for. And the tests so far are all tricky theory questions which forces you to have to read all the text and remember it for specifics.

My nutrition has dimished because my exercise has went out the window. I'm lucky to have time to exercise once a week, compared to the 5 times a week before I started nursing school. I don't have enough time to cook for myself, and I don't have the desire to take the time to eat right. I still have a 24 hour a week job at the hospital, but you can't study on a med-surg floor as a cna. Work is the most relaxed time because everyone there is supportive of me so much. If only they knew how tough going to nursing school is. :-) I have no more free time for myself...some days are very long.

RN school is no walk in the park, and it downright changes your life.

(Send me an angel, right now!)

i am sorry, mario..but when i look at your current avatar, i have the urge to toss you an alka-seltzer...

Someone called for an angel? :D

Hi Mario,

Yes nursing school is brutal. I remember it well. You want to try so hard, do so well, make everything stick in your brain, but the sheer volume of it all is overwhelming. You want to be the best nurse there is, but starting from the bottom is very very discouraging. Studying is a skill like any other, you get better with time. Patients come and go, you are learning more through them then you think you are. Giving needles is difficult at first but once you have given your 50th and 100th, it is a piece of cake.

I'm rooting for you Mario, I really want to see you become a nurse.

Remember, be patient with yourself. This is very important.

Hey man, I liked the seagull!

I understand exactly how you feel....I'm in my first semester and it is just BRUTAL. There are even people in my class who have kids and jobs....i dont know how they do it...You have to take it in stride i guess.

Hang in there and good luck!!!

Specializes in MS Home Health.

I know nursing school is hard. Very hard. When I was in my first lecture class for the nursing group which was held in a huge auditorium as there were 500 people in there, the instrutctor said to us that they needed to make it as hard as they could to weed out the non serious students. They also said 50% would fail or drop. They were right only 250 graduated. I understand and hear you on no time for anything. All I can say is hang in there and fight fight fight...........

renerian

I know how you feel - that's how I felt before - the stress can be very overwhelming - what with all the studies that needs to be done, the meds (which proves to be a big headache with the action, C/I, S/E and Nursing responsibilities), plus the procedures and the return demonstrations - whew!:uhoh3:

But looking at the brighter side of it all it changed me a lot for the better (for one I've learned to develop discipline and value the good things I have) and has helped me prepare to what nursing really is - TOUGH.

Take it one day at a time. Personally, It was during those times that I prayed really hard - can't do it all - I just felt I needed divine intervention - some days and some projects are really impossible. :imbar

And before you know it - you've finally made it - i'm sure you can.

Believe it and you can achieve it.

I've said it before -- study groups are great. Have you thought about putting one together? You get to know the other students and have help studying.

Mario, I agree completely! With one exception -- you lucky dog! You already have skills from where you work as a CNA. I had to learn all that too, in addition to all the other stuff they unload on us.

We do injections today -- another stress producing pass / fail. We must do it with fake MARS, and do all from checking meds for errors (even though we are injecting saline) to the entire pt. education. We watched a video and read a book on it though, so we should know it all right?!

10% of our class is GONE in our first few weeks, with more about to be d/t not passing math or not making the grade.

I HEAR YOU! But YOU CAN DO IT!

Mario,

Don't give up!!!

I'm 45 and in my 1st semester of nursing school and I didn't have any medical experience before being dumped into my first clinical rotation. I was even nervous about making the bed correctly:)

Fortunately the school I attend has small classes there are only 9 in my clinical and all of us have felt the same way.

You just need some support and big HUGS.... Well since I'm a guy also how about a pat on the back..... Well OK, even guys have feelings so here's a BIG HUG !!!

Mario, yes it is tough! I went back to school in my late 40's with 4 kids still at home. My children gave me some of the best study advice! One son told me this: you only have to know 80% of this stuff to pass! That thought took a lot of stress away.

Concentrate on what you CAN learn and the rest will come to you later. That was such good advice, because before that I'd spend all my time trying to understand a difficult concept; I'd neglect to study things I COULD have learned easily.

Another thing that helped me was just looking around at the nurses in the hospital. I didn't think I was particularly less intelligent than any one of them, and I developed a stubborn attitude. I was and am still new to nursing, but I am NOT stupid, and neither are you.

I was a fitness freak before starting school but that went out the window, so I do know how much that can hurt.

Working out, to me, is like breathing. I have to do it. When time got tight for me, I skipped my cardio and concentrated on weight training. Maybe my heart isnt as healthy, but I didn't lose hard earned muscle. New research is proving that weight training can be heart healthy too!

This is just a short time in your life. You'll be excellent! You already are!

:kiss

Thank you all for the comments and suggestions and empathy. I guess I got all hurt inside when I showed up at one of the lab (the day of the shootings) and didn't have my written homework on asepsis and sterile field when the instructor spot checked it. She told me to leave. Everyone had theirs done but me, even though I was ready to test on it. That really bugged me out, but I can't complain; she was correct to eject me, but I am stubborn and want to be shown something visually by a real person too. Thats a baby talking, and some things you just hafta imagine and do yourslef until the real person comes. I didn't like being ejected in front of everyone. Others have been ejected, so it wasn't like she zeroed me.

Another thing I learnt about myself (revisited) is that you can not steal from the sleep bank. If I only get 4-5 hours of sleep, because of work after school, then I am shot for the day. Throw strong coffee into this mix and what I have done to myself is wrong. Not enough sleep + coffee + no exercise + decreased nutrition (- a life) = low self esteem. A baby cries. Thanks for listening.

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