What was your toughest semester in Nursing School?

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i'm doing my associates now so i only have fundamentals, med surg, phych, and maternity/pedi but those of you who are doing bsn can chime in as well.

Specializes in Critical Care, Emergency Medicine, Flight.

they all suck. i love the material, but the busy work is literally killing me. i cant wait for it be over. school that is..if i make it out alive.

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Specializes in Psych and Antepartum.

Hey I'm definitely interested in this topic! I'm currently a first semester nursing student in an accelerated BSN program, and so far I feel like it's not as hard and stressful as I expected, or as everyone makes it out to be. But next week I'm switching over to Med-Surg, and I can tell just by the syllabus that it's a whole different ballgame from the classes I'm taking now (Fundamentals, Health Assessment, Concepts, and Pharm).

So my question is... is it just Med-Surg that seems to be the most difficult class because of the amount of information? Or what exactly would you say makes a semester more difficult than another?

Thanks for any input!

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First semester was Fundamentals and Critical Thinking & Clinical Reasoning. I missed a B by four points in Fundamentals, but I didn't think it was hard and didn't put too much effort into it. Honestly, what made it tough were the little assignments all the time - weekly math, practice quizzes, etc. Critical Thinking I missed an A by a few points, but I did even less for that class.

I'm in my second semester right now. I have Psych (which is wrapping up next week, woot!) and Med-Surg 1. Psych has been great. I have a 92% in it and it hasn't been too tough. Med-Surg I have a C in (but only one test - waiting on the other to post) it. The professor is new and doesn't write her own tests which annoys me - she'll spend a two hour lecture on delirium and dimensia and not have one single test question on it. So, it's hard to really know what to spend time studying on. I've basically taken to really focus on the book and not so much on the lecture. In fact, I quit taking notes and just highlight if she talks about something from the book.

Next up for us is summer term: Geriatrics and OB.

In the fall, we'll have Med-Surg 2, which is supposed to be the hardest semester, we have no other classes with it.

Next spring, we'll have Critical Care, Management and Peds.

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Second semester was definitely the most grueling for me. Pharmacology, Med-Surg 1, Mental Health, and Geriatrics. Pharm and Med-Surg were a real shock to me because prior to that, I had always found all of my undergrad classes somewhat easy as long as I put in some effort. I worked my butt off for the B's I earned in those two classes!!

To answer your question, HannahSoCal, Med-Surg seems to be the most difficult because of the vast amount of information covered and the fact that you have to pull from all of the other nursing knowledge you've learned (no more learning information and then forgetting it at the end of the semester!). Patho, clinical manifestations, medications, nursing interventions, medical interventions, lab values, expected outcomes, expected vs. unexpected findings, etc. for a LOT of different diseases and then applying that knowledge to the nursing process for test questions. This is just my experience though.

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Specializes in Cardiology, Cardiothoracic Surgical.

I bet this one- med/surg II, psych, skills lab and a junior seminar. Schedule is pretty much just as long

with an extra clinical day thrown in there. I don't stop moving Monday through Thursday afternoon, and

there is more work because of the psych writeups.

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Specializes in Ortho Med\Surg.

Our semesters were broken down as follows:

Semester 1: fundamentals, med/surg 1, pharm

Semester 2: med/surg 2, psych, maternal/newborn

Semester 3: med/surg 3, peds

Semester 4: med/surg 4 (critical care), gerontology.

1st semester was definitely overwhelming, but Critical Care counted for 7 units all on its own! Plus the added hoops for graduation, BON paperwork, pinning ceremony committees, fundraising, multiple last minute schedule changes for clinical rotations, mock interviews, recruitment dinners, hospital applications and interviews, hospitals kicking us out because of audits and JC/CMS visits... Holy cow, I can't believe we survived but we did!

Nursing school sucks, just understand that now LOL.

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