Accepted! Now what?

As a fellow male student about to start the nursing program this Fall, I would like to thank you all for answering this gentlemans question and giving us a good foundation to start on.

Jason

The endocrine system. All of it. Every last detail.

Find people at your institution one semester ahead of you for inside tips and tricks.

Woah don't freak the guy out he isn't going to medical school to become an endocrinologist.

You know what, though... if you know a lot about cardiac, respiratory and endo, you're pretty set.

Be ready to in an environment where the ratio is 8:1

high five!

Woah don't freak the guy out he isn't going to medical school to become an endocrinologist.

Sad thing is...HE IS RIGHT...Endocrine is one of the hardest systems in my opinion. I took a few Kaplan Nursing Exams and a lot of the questions had to do with Endocrine. Mostly diabetes. If you should know inside and out of one specific endocrine disorder...It would be diabetes mellitus type I and II. Pathophysiology, meds, insulin onset, peaks and durations, foot care, PVD, and all the secondary characteristics.

Find people at your institution one semester ahead of you for inside tips and tricks.

That is some AWESOME advice. I know a few people in the class ahead of me and they have helped me soooo much :) They just graduated today...I will miss them :)

I left something out. Nervous system receptors. Opioid, muscarinic, nicotinic, etc. Get to know all of them very well, they will come up again and again and again. The most important part of studying the nervous system is to remember that as you go down the system, you will be absolutely convinced that this or that detail can't possibly be important. You basically need to know X. If you know X, you should be good to go. It definitely seems that way when it's just you and the book. The problem is, it's only by going all the way down to the finest granularity of detail in your 100 level community college anatomy and physiology courses will you learn what you need to know later.

You don't realize it when you're taking anatomy and physiology. It seems like minutiae at the time. How can we possibly be expected to remember the difference between a mu receptor and a K receptor? Come on, I'm not really going to have to know this to be functional as a nurse. Guess what? If you want to be a good nurse, you will consider that kind of thing to be basic knowledge that everybody should have. How could you not know the difference between a mu and a K receptor, and what kind of medications work for a given patient based on which receptors are triggered?

If you learn it right the first time, you'll sail through the rest of your schooling with SO much less trouble. Anatomy and physiology are key courses. I'm so glad I spent 3-5 hours a day seven days a week studying for those classes. It made everything else so much easier.

To the contributor above, I think that nurses ARE going to medical school to become endocrinologists. I don't think of myself as being a grunt medical worker, I think of myself as a medical professional. I haven't been to "medical school" but I don't think that means I haven't studied medicine. I'm working on my Masters now pursuant to a PMHNP certification, and I better know my stuff before I start prescribing psychiatric medications to unstable veterans with years of experience in killing people.

Part of the reason I'm continuing my medical education is because I am not satisfied with transferring calls and transcribing orders, making sure that the physician's orders page has a sticker on each section of the yellow carbon page, and a million other things that can be done by anyone with an 8th grade education. I expect more from myself, and wish my coworkers expected more of themselves. I'm finally dialled in enough in my current workplace that I can get out from behind the nurses' station desk and spend at least 25% of my time interacting with the patients. My goal is 50%, and I can kind of see it from here. That's pushing it, but I think I can get there.

Scraping by is lame.

Say goodbye to your social life

and

... Good Luck

Learn how to calm down and just take things a step at a time. It's not as serious as people make it out to be sometimes. You can still have some sort of social life and get the grades you need. About to be finished with the program and I realized that I was worrying too much for no good reason. Do whatever works for you before you got accepted. Classmates of all various demographics and ranges still read the book, cram, or do what they did to study originally. It's what worked for them and they are still in it thus far.

Learn how to calm down and just take things a step at a time. It's not as serious as people make it out to be sometimes. You can still have some sort of social life and get the grades you need. About to be finished with the program and I realized that I was worrying too much for no good reason. Do whatever works for you before you got accepted. Classmates of all various demographics and ranges still read the book, cram, or do what they did to study originally. It's what worked for them and they are still in it thus far.

BINGO!! We got a winner, this is solid advice. Don’ttry and change the way you learn or retain new information because you seefellow students doing it another way. We all have inherent styles of learning.

there are three basic types of learning styles. The three most common arevisual, auditory, and kinesthetic. To learn, we depend on our senses to processthe information around us. Most people tend to use one of their senses morethan the others. It is not unusual to use different learning styles fordifferent tasks. That's why people can respond so differently to the samething.

In the same way you will model the behaviors’ of the nurses you will eventuallywork with you should seek out the top students in your classes. Naturally youwill find yourself picking up the skills and behaviors’ that allow them to performat that higher level.

Thanks for the advice everyone! I'm in the thick of it now... got a B on my first Fundamentals exam; next one is coming up fast! I bought a digital voice recroder and started recording the lectures to listen to them again over the weekend (doen't make my weekend any more fun, but I htin kit will help with learning material). I learned quickly that I wasn't going ot be able to read the entire assigned reading (300 pages of reading in one week.... seriously Professor?), and even when i tried, I didn't retain much of it. I'm studying from the PowerPoints, and going through the chapters with emphasis placed on the portions that were discussed in lecture.

At least I enjoy studying nursing and patient care.... Otherwise this would suck!