Homework due day one

Marie_LPN, RN, LPN, RN · Jan 4, 2004

Plenty of reading for the new chapters we're starting on wednesday.

Clinicals are monday and tuesday.

Two class presentations due on thursday. I'll be speaking for 2 hours. And i'm still hoorifice from the flu.

cadeusus2004 · Jan 4, 2004

Boe,

Welcome to the wonderful world of Nursing and Nursing Education.

From now on, if you stick with it, you will be required to digest and regurgitate-upon-command vast amounts of information, read mountains of text, take innumerable tests, develop endless care plans, be scrutinized at every point and turn of your clinical day, be criticized, harrangued, reviewed, interrogated, subjugated, inspected, selected, rejected, but never neglected. You will be expected to maintain a grade point average well above any other specialty in your school. And you will spend endless nights of study and days of stark fear.

You will learn to condition your nose to the reek of unwashed bodies, feces, bodily fluids and infection. You will learn to stomach the sight of open wounds, foul pus, writhing agony and adjust yourself to the clammour of the war against disease and broken bodies and minds.

At the end you will be spat forth upon this world as a new creation called a "Registered Nurse", to go yonder and inflict your skills upon the unwary, the sick, the beleaguered and the tortured- and to pronounce the dead.

Within five years you can expect more than half your class to have permanently left the profession.

As a RN you will be given insane patient loads, literally tons of various varieties of powerful medications and treatments which you must know backwards and forwards, endure rotational shifts, forced overtime, lazy or bad techs and CNAs, incompetent and uncaring managers, obnoxious physicians and interns, no breaks, very little lunch or meal times, monstrous amounts of documentation, redocumentation and re-redocumentation, and respond in a professional and gentle manner to all those whose lives you hold in your very hands, and their families also.

You will laugh and cry and mourn and sometimes believe in your heart that you are going crazy. At times you will feel so inadequate that you will have the urge to simply run away right then and there, to go and live alone in some hole in the middle of nowhere for the rest of your life. But, you won't do it.

You will exhaust yourself beyond any measure you previously thought yourself able to withstand. And you will, the next day, come back for more.

On top of that, you will be expected to keep current with clinical practice, new meds and treatments, changes in policies, changes in managerial personnel and a thousand other variables.

You will also be expected to participate with your colleagues to fight and make Registered Nursing better.

When you see your pay check at the end of the pay period you will wonder how you allowed yourself to be paid so little for so much effort.

Somewhere, within this melee, you will remind yourself that you have something few in this world can ever hope to possess: At the end of your name will be emblazoned the august title, "RN" and a member of the most trusted profession in the world.

Ruylupez · Jan 4, 2004

Our second semester instructors had a message delivered to the our class near the end of first semester:

Expect a test over chapters 3 and 12 on the first day of class.

What a great way to go into your christmas vacation.

jschut, BSN, RN · Jan 4, 2004

Hoo-boy! :eek:

I remember times like that in nursing (LPN) school. And I'm getting ready to torture myself again!?!?!?

Yep! :)

And eagerly awaiting it too!:chuckle

EyesForward · Jan 4, 2004

Originally posted by cadeusus2004
Boe,
Welcome to the wonderful world of Nursing and Nursing Education.
From now on, if you stick with it, you will be required to digest and regurgitate-upon-command vast amounts of information, read mountains of text, take innumerable tests, develop endless care plans, be scrutinized at every point and turn of your clinical day, be criticized, harrangued, reviewed, interrogated, subjugated, inspected, selected, rejected, but never neglected. You will be expected to maintain a grade point average well above any other specialty in your school. And you will spend endless nights of study and days of stark fear.
You will learn to condition your nose to the reek of unwashed bodies, feces, bodily fluids and infection. You will learn to stomach the sight of open wounds, foul pus, writhing agony and adjust yourself to the clammour of the war against disease and broken bodies and minds.
At the end you will be spat forth upon this world as a new creation called a "Registered Nurse", to go yonder and inflict your skills upon the unwary, the sick, the beleaguered and the tortured- and to pronounce the dead.
Within five years you can expect more than half your class to have permanently left the profession.
As a RN you will be given insane patient loads, literally tons of various varieties of powerful medications and treatments which you must know backwards and forwards, endure rotational shifts, forced overtime, lazy or bad techs and CNAs, incompetent and uncaring managers, obnoxious physicians and interns, no breaks, very little lunch or meal times, monstrous amounts of documentation, redocumentation and re-redocumentation, and respond in a professional and gentle manner to all those whose lives you hold in your very hands, and their families also.
You will laugh and cry and mourn and sometimes believe in your heart that you are going crazy. At times you will feel so inadequate that you will have the urge to simply run away right then and there, to go and live alone in some hole in the middle of nowhere for the rest of your life. But, you won't do it.
You will exhaust yourself beyond any measure you previously thought yourself able to withstand. And you will, the next day, come back for more.
On top of that, you will be expected to keep current with clinical practice, new meds and treatments, changes in policies, changes in managerial personnel and a thousand other variables.
You will also be expected to participate with your colleagues to fight and make Registered Nursing better.
When you see your pay check at the end of the pay period you will wonder how you allowed yourself to be paid so little for so much effort.
Somewhere, within this melee, you will remind yourself that you have something few in this world can ever hope to possess: At the end of your name will be emblazoned the august title, "RN" and a member of the most trusted profession in the world.

Holy Buckets! I'm not sure I enjoyed reading this more as a piece of literary genius, or as a dose of reality for what is to come! Either way you sure stunned me.

LeesieBug · Jan 4, 2004

From now on, if you stick with it, you will be required to digest and regurgitate-upon-command vast amounts of information, read mountains of text, take innumerable tests, develop endless care plans, be scrutinized at every point and turn of your clinical day, be criticized, harrangued, reviewed, interrogated, subjugated, inspected, selected, rejected, but never neglected. You will be expected to maintain a grade point average well above any other specialty in your school. And you will spend endless nights of study and days of stark fear.

If my experience had been like this so far, I would have quit!

Thank God school has been nothing like that for me!

suzy253, RN · Jan 4, 2004

Get used to it. This comment is not meant to be harmful or mean in any way but that's just the way it is. Tremendous amounts of reading and retaining information and then using it in clinical applications. I didn't think some of my instructors were noticing how hard I worked and how prepared I was for class and nursing arts lab. Some students just got lazy after we got going but I was always prepared and my clinical instructor commented at the end of semester how I was always ready with my work and prepared to answer questions and such.

LauraLou · Jan 4, 2004

Originally posted by Boe
Anyone else have work due the first day of classes? At orientation, we received our "abbreviations homework assignment" listing 183 abbreviations, terms, and definitions.

We also received a list of abbreviations. My problem is some of them aren't words but symbols like a triangle. I'm not sure how to look up a triangle! We also have to pass a dosage calculation test. They gave us practice tests, so I have been working on those.

quote:

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From now on, if you stick with it, you will be required to digest and regurgitate-upon-command vast amounts of information, read mountains of text, take innumerable tests, develop endless care plans, be scrutinized at every point and turn of your clinical day, be criticized, harrangued, reviewed, interrogated, subjugated, inspected, selected, rejected, but never neglected. You will be expected to maintain a grade point average well above any other specialty in your school. And you will spend endless nights of study and days of stark fear.

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That's pretty much what I expected. It may be painful, but worthwhile. I always remember that if you make a mistake in accounting, the general ledger won't balance. If you make a mistake in nursing, you may kill someone. You need to really know your stuff.

truern · Jan 4, 2004

triangle = change (as in, change dressing)

Sarah Kat · Jan 5, 2004

Our orientation is Jan 23 and first full day of class is Jan 26. It says on my paper that on the 23rd well get our uniforms, books and assignments. I don't know if that means a syllabus or that we'll actually have an assignment due the first day of class. I won't be surprised if it is both.

In high school in some of my classes (honors) we had projects or papers that were due the first day of school (sure, what 16 year old does't want to read The Agony and the Ecstacy and write a paper on it during their summer break...)

cadeusus2004 · Jan 5, 2004

The Agony and the Ecstacy is very good. Also, you can rent the video of the same name starring Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn.

A better one, made more recently, is "Vincent and Theo". This really gets down to the family dynamics of having a family member with severe mental disorders.

For Death and Dying I reommend the short book "The Life Ivan Illych" by Dostoevsky and read the Emily Dickensen poems "Madness" and "I've Seen A Dying Eye". She also wrote a lot of others that might apply to your paper. (Instructors love quotes from poets if their work is considered in the Public Domain, therefore not plagiarism.)

Oh, they will give you a course syllabus. Its standard. If you don't get one, ask your prof for it; Most colleges require profs supply one for the students as a guide to the course.