An Observation

I agree with what Katie said. Candy, did you know the attrition rate in your nursing class will be about 40%? I didn't believe it when our dean told us that in orientation 2 years ago, but by God, that's what it ended up being. I think that's people getting into it and finding out what nursing really entails, and not having the heart or the tenacity to finish it out. You really have to want it, and when students see the yuck that Katie just described, the effort sort of wanes, among other things. Perhaps these students are the 'fallback" students, I don't know.

Schools are tightening up their entrance requirements every single year to make sure the ones that get in are going to stay in. It's too much money wasted all around to have nursing students flunk out when they find they don't like it/can't make it, or find that it's just not for them.

It's an interesting dynamic. You'll see. (Sudden thought: you're in the hospital program...that's a lot different that the campus one. Can you ask the attrition rate of that program when you start tomorrow? I think you'll be in the third cohort, so the program is still new, but it would be interesting to how much the last two graduating classes shrunk.)

I don't feel that nursing is mediocre. And not everyone CAN do it. It takes a special person to have to deal with bacteria-infected bodily fluids, open wounds, crazy family members, etc., to do the job that we do. I know people who wasted 4 years of school to get their BSN and have left nursing because they thought that they could handle it but realized that they couldn't. It just depends on the individual. Some people like being at bedside, others get their BSN and move on towards their MSN, not that there is anything wrong with that.

For me, I love nursing. I like being at the bedside, but I know that I will not be doing this forever. I'm already going back for my BSN and as soon as I finish that, I'm applying at Wayne State or Madonna University for my MSN.

I don't think she was saying that nursing was mediocre. I thought she meant that it felt like people just decide on a whim to get into nursing, and it makes it seem (to ourselves perhaps, or outsiders, who don't realise what work it is) that it is easy.

Or something more like that.