advice for interested preschool male nurse

Bruce_Wayne, ASN, RN · Sep 27, 2011

One thing about nursing school is that you've got to go through all of it, including parts that you have absolutely zero interest in.

Look on youtube for "day in the life of a nurse". If you start watching those you'll get more and more links to more videos and they can give you a good idea of what nurses do. Here's a pretty good on on critical nursing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3x-ASSwLv0

Although it might be a little on the glamorous side, trying to talk you into being a nurse.

greennursestudent78 · Sep 27, 2011

Thanks you so much

bsnanat2 · Sep 28, 2011

You don't need an iron gut either. Amazingly you will adapt to a lot stuff and learn to tolerate the rest. Everyone has their "thing" that they hate. Many nurses will trade off, as in, "you take care of my vomit patient and I'll change your colostomy."

It's really a great field to be in! Go for it and talk to some nurses and talk to the faculty at your local nursing school.

TheOracle · Sep 29, 2011

Awesome field. Like the others said there will be areas you have no interest in. Mine was OB. But you can do anything with nursing. If you get bored with one area, it really isn't all that difficult to transition into another area. You may need to get some extra training, but that's no big thing depending on what you want to do.

Fortous · Sep 29, 2011

I can only speak from a nursing student perspective. I think most nurses will agree with me when I say that nursing school, no matter if you are in an associates or bachelors program, is difficult. Here is a little of my background: I am a 26 year old male, engaged with no children. The only experience I had with the medical field was when I got my EMT licenses, about 5 years back; I decided to go back to school for my RN because I loved the science of medicine but disliked the extremely short duration of patient contact that being an EMT offered. In my mind nursing was the right choice, so I started working on all the required courses I had to take in order to apply to the nursing program at my local community college, it is called CNM.

For me the anatomy and physiology classes were by far the hardest required courses I had to take. Although, if you learn how to study the right way it is a great prep for the nursing courses itself. Then when I took the nursing assistant course (this was the last course I had to take before starting the nursing courses), I was shocked at the difference between nursing and EMS; since you will not have the issue of "unlearning" pervious training, I will not go into it. Here are some tips that will help you get through the academic part of the required and program courses:

1) Buy a Latin to English dictionary because most medical and anatomical terms are based in Latin. Instead of memorizing each phase, you can just remember what each word part means. For example the hyperglycemia has three latin word parts: hyper- high or elevated, glyc- glucose, or sugar, then emia (which happens to be greek)- of the blood. When you throw all of it together you know that the phase means high blood sugar.

2) Flashcards are your friend! I know that everyone hates flashcards but they will help you learn so much! Plus they are a great thing for a nursing student on the go to have

3) Take the free online test called the VARK(here is the link http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire). Remember that just because read/write may not be your best style doesn't mean you should not study like that! Learning theory and my personal experience shows that the more senses you use to study the better you remember it!

The very soul of what defines nursing... patient contact! This is something that I still struggle with to this day, and most likely will until I have a good amount of experience, but here are some useful hints I have gotten or come up with myself that have helped me with patient contact:

1) Learn to relax

2) You will not be perfect your first day as a student nurse, we are human and as such are prone to errors!

3) Strive for learning and understanding, not an A in a course

4) Always, look for points of improvement

5) Focus on delivering safe care first then start tweaking your certain style of delivering care

Well I think I have covered all the major things. If you want to know more of my experiences or anything else please feel free to e-mail me at [email protected]. Good luck and best wishes!

Rob72, ASN, RN · Sep 29, 2011

Fantastic advice above. If you can, I would suggest trying to get a job in or related to healthcare now. If you can work as a tech, or even admissions, something in a hospital or nursing home, they're much more likely to work with you on work time and school time.

It will be hard. With no college, you can finish an Associates degree in 3-3.5 years, if you take classes in summer. If you don't, that 2 year degree is actually 4 (and the 4-BSN- is actually 6) 2 years of pre-requisites, and the 2 or 4 years for Nursing Science.

I don't want to discourage you, but I wouldn't lie about it either. If you're reeally sharp, and know how to study, its not too difficult.

Fortous · Oct 25, 2011

Hi,
My name is Kimberly, and I'm a junior at the University of Pennsylvania. I have a marketing internship with Education Dynamics, specifically working on their bestnursingschools.com. My job is to increase male awareness of nursing, so I was wondering if anyone would be interested in answering a few questions related to being a male in the nursing. We could conduct the interview over email. I only have about 5 questions. We are purely using this information for marketing insight. If we think that something you mention might also be valuable in an article, we will contact you and get your approval prior to anything being published with any identifying details. Please let me know if you're interested, or know anyone who would be.

I would be happy to you can contact me at [email protected]