Why do some people assume NS is easy?

[citylights89]

I'm not talking about other nursing students, but the general public. Heck, even patients!

I have had a patient ask me was I in nursing school (obviously). She then asked how far along I was and how long was the program. I told her it was a 4 year degree with 3 years of nursing classes (at my school). She said "What?! For a nurse?" Granted, she was out of it and in pain, but it was just the way she said it. The general public is really uneducated on what nurses actually do and their schooling. We need to work on improving that so people don't just think we are all assistants who work under the doctor.

Then there are the people who call themselves nurses, or have others call them nurses, when they are medical assistants and such. I'm not going through all this rigamorue in school to be compared to someone with a certificate who went to school for a few months. I'm sorry but that's not a good look.

Nurses might as well be aliens because apparently who we are and what we do is a mystery covered by the CIA.

[decembergrad2011, BSN, RN]

I never meant to state that I took organic chemistry, so no need to lament about my class not being full-blown organic. I just personally didn't feel like my pre-requisite classes were easy, and not because I did poorly. I feel like my education has done a good job of exposing us to material and expecting us to know diseases and drugs. I also don't feel like my A&P or Pathopharm courses were easy or inadequate, but they were in ways tailored to nursing. But, as I already said, I don't think it's the course work of nursing that make it so hard near as much as all of the other details coupled with the course work.

If you didn't mean to state that my courses were wimpy, cool. I misinterpreted, so I apologize, it happens on the internet. I assumed since you quoted me and hadn't changed paragraphs that you were alluding to me.

And as an aside - I really could care less about what is posted here after I close out of the thread, so don't fret. If I was bothered by opinions I wouldn't speak mine.

[Multicollinearity, BSN, RN]

By comparison to the hard sciences, nursing school is just not that hard. *Real* organic chemistry is the one that ends with the American Chemical Society standardized final and *real* o-chem is nothing compared to physical chemistry and quantitative chemistry. Quant is nothing compared to mechanical vibrations or thermodynamics.

Any science class that doesn't require calculus is 2nd-tier IMO and any class that relies on multiple choice tests... well, those don't even count as 2nd-tier in my book.

Nursing school is much easier than learning to be an actual floor nurse.

I agree that nursing school is not as hard academically as many hard science degrees. However, I had to take organic chemistry, and my o-chem class finished with the American Chemical Society standardized final. It was an 'easy' final exam. This was a requirement of the nursing program. FYI, some nursing programs require this.

Also, we all know of some hard science majors who lack people skills. Nursing does draw on people skills. This is important, too.