Psychosocial retardation of our nursing curriculum.

Peeps Mcarthur · Feb 14, 2002

Purp,

It's very weird:confused: I've tried to memorize the material like I do my science courses and the material just WON'T GO IN! I even tried memorizing short phrases to go with short answer and I draw just fragments from my memory. I guess, like the real science that I excel at, it has to make sense first before my brain will store it.

I think I'll just try to get a fair teacher next time and take whatever I get and accept the fact that the curriculum is what I should expect from a two-year college. I need Gen.psychology, Sociology, and Lifespan. I'll have to take them during clinicals. Maybe the honors designation on my Anatomy will be enough to make up for it to get me into a good program later. I can't help but think I'm blowing a chance at another field that doesn't have this make-believe-science as a requirement. I have to consider my options before I flush my GPA down the toilet.

Kinda frustrating when everything else I've done is so good.

Hey.......maybe I'll get a fair teacher next time that understands that this is a load and we just want to pass a few tests and get on to the career thing.

Boohoo.......Boohoo

Brad

live4today, RN · Feb 15, 2002

I loved that class myself, but then again I'm a psych major. I took just as many psych and sociology classes as I did nursing because I love learning all I can about people.

Most psych professors are weird...get use to it! Some are funny, some are boring (intentionally, I think), and some are just plain weird!

Most of my psych professors told me that no one should ever fail psych because "everyone's perception is right". That should tell you to stop taking it so seriously, and just breathe in what it's worth for learning about the very nature of different people. Believe it or not, your psych courses will come in handy down the road in nursing, so pay attention. IMHO: Nursing is 90% psych, and 10% hands on healing.

delirium · Feb 15, 2002

Hey Peeps

There actually wasn't a lot of mumbo jumbo on the exam. It was mostly psychosocial theorists: a lot of Erikson, Piaget, mostly Erikson. Simple developmental theories. Nothing earth-shattering. I was sooo glad I wasn't stuck in that class a whole semester.

Maybe you could do it via distance learning? Then you wouldn't have your tree-hugging prof to worry about?

:roll

Mkue · Feb 15, 2002

Brad, don't know if anyone mentioned it earlier but I noticed that in Sociology (if you have to take that) Piaget, Kohlberg, Freud are all mentioned again, depends on the book you have though. So you probably will revisit some psych again in other courses, so don't feel like you have to get it the first time, it will come to you eventually, a lot of it is common sense, maybe the instructor is making it seem too difficult.

I took a religious ethics course (required at the college) and the instructor I swear thought we were Grad students. He would not let us give any answers in "our own" words, all answers on tests had to be word for word according to his teaching! UGH it was very frustrating and I didn't hesitate to question his grading techniques, oh this is another thread I will start.

Anyway, hang in there, go to class, look interested, if you are lucky your instructor may correlate a story to go along with a topic "remember that story and associate it with the term" if that makes any sense.

Good Luck, mkue

CountrifiedRN · Feb 15, 2002

Originally posted by Peeps Mcarthur
Get this,

This was my first psychology class. I noticed that Sociology and General Psychology are also required. Do they require these classes for the same reasons they would include, say, Composition I & II?( Those being a foundation for communicating effectively.)

I am painfuly aware that this has very little to do with actual nursing, and more about filling in a curriculum. I think this is one of the reasons there aren't more males in nursing. This is just too "touchy-feely" and psychoanalytical to be anything useful to me.
Any nurse , with the exception of a psych nurse, is not going to really use this.......are they?

I'm going to look into other curriculums also. I think the OB/GYN and Psych stuff might just be for someone else. I can't begin to pretend I'm even vaguely interested in talking, thinking, studying about useless stats pertaining to feelings, anything about babies, Pediatrics, social-anything. How am I going to fake my way through that? All the other classes are very interesting though. I'm taking Honors Anatomy and completing case-studies of the pathological processes of each main topic. I'm taking a comp class that is intellectualy stimulating and I enjoy participating in the workshop. I just finished General biology and Microbiology classes that I was tutoring other students in. Maybe there's another curriculum that plays to those strengths and would be more geared towards subjects of biological and medical importance.

Hi

I'm in the 2nd semester of an ADN program, and let me tell you, my instructors are all about communication and lifespan development. One of the things they keep drilling into our heads is that doctors treat the disease, and nurses treat the "human response" to the disease. I think that as nurses we do need to be aware of psychological and sociological issues with patients, and not just the disease process. It's a huge part of nursing, needed in all aspects of care, not just for psych majors.

Don't get me wrong, I'm far from a hippie-tree-hugger person, and I do agree that there is a lot of mumbo jumbo in those types of classes. But I have also learned some useful ways of communicating from those subjects. Hopefully, if you take the class with a different instructor, you will be able to find something beneficial to pull from it.

You said that you are interested in the pathology of disease, have you thought about becoming a doctor, or a patholgist? It seems like you would be very good at those professions, and it's something you like to do. :)

Best of luck in your studies!

Peeps Mcarthur · Feb 15, 2002

TREE HUGGERS! Exactly.........lol:roll

In the interim I've actually met some people that liked it:eek: They can't understand why I would not be enthralled with phrases like........."The ability to move freely within ones enviroment"(is this related to proper fiber intake?) and "One must operationalize(made up word alert!) the concepts of theory in order to test them"..."Eye contact thus becomes an operational definition"............. and finally, the statement, within an typicaly anal list of the Theory and its strengths and weaknesses that qualifies it's retardedness(my own made-up-word back at ya)........."The basic concepts of the theory are abstract and difficult to operationalize"....

If the heart of the text basically is "abstract" and difficult to use, by thier own admission, then why should it be required? Is Nursing then also as abstract if it attempts to "operationalize" these concepts into use?

Let me go try to operationalize that and I'll get back to you!LOL:chuckle

It may very well be a good Idea to see a counselor about the future curriculum. If it is as universaly acceptable as in Mkue's clinical rotation then I will never fit into the mold of what an excellent nurse sould be. If I can't be excellent then I'll be very unhappy.

At my age it would be unlikely to be accepted to a medical school. The time and financial investment would also be a difficulty.

I realized too late in life what potential I have inside myself. I squandered numerous oportunities along the way in favor of the easy way out of everything. I aspired to nothing, and as a result was a great success at it. That's why it's so important for me to get this right. It's important to choose a path that will lead to where I belong.

If this is important in clinicals, then I'll just lose the faith in my schooling altogether. I don't think that someone who thrives within science can put up with it's contrived "theories".

I think I will go to see someone familiar with the clinical rotation.

peaceful2100, BSN, RN · Feb 15, 2002

Hey, I must of had a really good instructor because I loved my human lifespan class. It was one of the best pre-req classes I took besides anatomy and physiology. It may also be the fact that I was almost a psychology major before nursing. I was planning on double majoring in psychology/journalism and then I changed to nursing. So now my major is nursing and my minor is journalism. I have a definte interest in psychology but I defintely do NOT think I could be a psych nurse.

Peeps Mcarthur · Feb 16, 2002

Tony,

I have actualy talked with some other students that liked it. Another student that I know that is still in that class after I dropped it just got a 29 on a test.........yup, a 29/100... :rolleyes:

She's a "B" student, so she puts in study time. She is still in denial about the material and says it's not difficult. I think it's clearly the instructor not paraphrasing the text and TRYING to make it more than it is.

I want to ask you Tony. Have you used any psychosocial theory in clinicals? Does your instructor make reference to it and test you on it like Mkue's instructor?

I think this will call for another thread.

Brad

fergus51 · Feb 16, 2002

I recently started orientating to the PEDS floor in my hospital and all that Erikson amd Piaget crap was absolutely invaluable. I guess it depends on where you will be nursing.

Bonnie Blue · Feb 17, 2002

Peeps. You have to go through OB, peds, psych, community health and adult clinical rotations in order to sit for the licensure exam for nursing. There is also "fluff" in nursing. Professional development and management are two I'm experiencing right now. If you cannot stomach jumping through these hoops, than nursing is not for you. Maybe you should think about becoming a paramedic.

Peeps Mcarthur · Feb 17, 2002

Bonnie,

I'm suggesting that nobody should be made to "jump through hoops". If you're in the right academic endeavor, there should be minimal "hoop jumping".

It's not unavoidable in any field of study, but there are people that just LOVE that curriculum. I'm questioning why I don't find it even a little interesting. There has to be some reason why they would go to the trouble. There must be something missing from me if I don't grasp the relevance or feel at least a little interested. Maybe it's just a lack of estrogen.

OB and Pediatrics are at least based in science and not entirely on conjecture. I could "stomach" that, as you say, since the study of those discilplines lead to pathophysiologic curiosities paticular to those organisms. Concrete, data related science.

Those areas are not "male friendly" and niether am I in turn any less eager to embrace them. I will however rise to that occassion by not intimidating the encumbent female presence.

Leadership courses I can handle. Psychology is just too much crack-head daydreaming to take seriousely.

However,this is interesting. It seems that the textbook's ideals of communication which lack forethought, and the actual practice of Psychosocial Nursing are continents of rhetoric apart.

I went to the library and reviewed a copy of Psychosocial Nursing. It's a publication written by, to communicate to, nurses that put this theory to use in thier daily job description. The communication was in a form I would have expected BEFORE I took the class. It was easy to extract the message of each topic without the clutter that existed in the textbook I was forced to study. It was in plain language and concise, and yes I'm willing to admit, a little interesting.

If the journal was put into such plain language, for nurses with degrees that stressed that field, why then would a textbook supposedly designed for the first-time theorist be so inedible? Why would a textbook that would be a foundation for understanding be so inaccessable?

One more thing before breakfast.

Why would you suggest Paramedic? It seems kind of a waste of money to buy an education that would do little for me intellectualy or financialy.

Brad

crnasomeday · Feb 17, 2002

Oh my peeps....I can agree with you that all the theorist stuff that you have to study for nursing seems extraneous. I have often thought that all the psychobabble basically boils down to common sense that someone put into really big words, tacked on their name, and ....WA-LA...had themselves a theory.

So what do you think all of this ridiculous abstractness is for? Why would they make us sit through all of that? Maybe they want us to begin to think outside of the box for a minute. Maybe they want us to examine our thoughts about why human beings act and feel the way they do, and maybe they want us to realize that there could be all sorts of motivating factors behind a person's actions and attitudes. Maybe they want us to learn other ways to look at people so that we can provide them with empathetic and caring assistance tailored to their individuality and humannness.

An inability to deal with what is not strictly concrete will certainly be a hampering factor to you in nursing, Brad. As someone in an earlier response said, nursing is about treating the human response to disease, and the human response is not concrete. It is abstract and individualized. Nursing is also holistic, and if you can't deal with anything but the pathophysiology involved in nursing care, then maybe you should reconsider your options.

I have to say this one last thing too, Brad. You are coming off as being a pretty abrasive guy. Your comments about "lack of estrogen" and the courses not being "male friendly" are, imho, offensive, not only to the female population on this board, but to the males as well. I have found, in the time that I have spent reading thousands of posts on this board, that here is a collection of some of the brightest, most empathetic, most caring, most wonderful people that the nursing profession will be priveleged to have in these future months and years. Your comments are overtly stabbing at others, as you try to make your point that you are far too intelligent and reality based to deal with this stuff.