Any RNs considering medical school?

[Jstimmm]

Hello nurses! I just want to reach out as a new member to ask about RNs who have considered studying medicine. I am in my last year of nursing school and am finding nursing school to be incredibly boring and not stimulating at all. All day long I am measuring and recording vital signs, while I wish I was studying more biology and chemistry. I like the time I get with patients, and I love to make them happy.. but I just feel like this is too easy. I could have slept through every semester of nursing school because it was all too easy and it didn't really require as much critical thought as I thought it would for me. I am going to take a tour at a local medical school after clinicals today because I wish I was diagnosing, researching, and truly treating patients instead of executing orders and running to physicians every time there is a problem that is out of my scope of practice! I just want to know if there anyone else who has felt this way, or if there are any nurses that are in medical school that felt this way. I feel totally alone at school when it comes to the feeling I have towards this because everyone around me is constantly talking about how hard everything is.. I have had to study somewhat.. but besides the detail oriented things, when it comes to nursing exams, clinicals, care plans ... it is all so easy I could sleep through it. Even though I feel relaxed, the nursing faculty is constantly stressing out, and trying to tell us how stressed we are going to be ... it seems like they are trying to push stress only us for things that are practically thoughtless and common sense to myself... does anyone else feel this way? I thought of getting my masters or becoming a nurse practitioner, but I don't think I can live like this for the rest of my life. It is totally boring and I don't feel like it takes as much skill as I thought.. I think I can better serve patients as a doctor.. has anyone else thought of this and expressed their opinion in nursing school, and realized what a stigma there is surrounding nurses who want to study medicine?

[BAY AREA RN, BSN]

don't want to do med school cause i love the pt interaction w/ nursing. Ido know how it feels to have some boring clinical days though. Before you give up on nursing maybe the hospital where your doing your rotations aren't as interesting or have enough action for you. I just finished a rotation at a level 1 trauma center and it was amazing. It reminded me of grey anatomy, lol. Before you give up finish out school and try out different areas in the field first. you came all this way and it comes easy to you. it may be your calling after all. good luck

[angel0309, ADN, RN]

Perhaps your post would have been better received if you focused more on why you feel being a doctor is a better profession for you than demeaning nurses and your fellow nursing students.

A "better than thou" attitude is never the way to approach something. Especially something like this.

[Jstimmm]

I must be a crazy person because I didn't know that is how I came off. Lesson learned.

[Nurse_Kae]

Have you considered furthering to study Nurse practitioner? That is definitely an option especially if you are already completing nursing school. It only leaves you about 3-5 years depending if you are completing your RN vs BSN. It's beats practically starting all over.

[DowntheRiver]

Anyone know how I can delete this thread? The first responses to this thread were very disrespectful, incompetent, simple minded, and down right judgemental. I no longer want to receive notifications from rude judgemental people who presumed from my post that I was somehow "smarter" than them over the internet, and choose to belittle me to make their own selfs feel more adequate.

I was one of the first responses and I don't think I was rude to you at all.

I think you need a reality check.

[Jstimmm]

I think that if I were you and only had advice and suggestions to offer such as "you need a reality check" I just wouldn't say anything at all. Unless I was grumpy and having a series of bad days, only then might I offer advice that isn't respectable & hospitable. Then again, we are clearly different, and the way I worded this post the first time was not thought out, nor put together well- so your response is expected, and has been taken with a grain of salt! Take care.

[Jstimmm]

Yes I have! Is the practitioners practice closer to nursing than anything else? I have not studied the curriculum of the practitioner program, o my the MD. I have my associates in general science because I was taking pre med and switched to nursing and had to declare a major at the school I was attending, and couldn't declare nursing as my major unless I attended their nursing program so it ended up being general science with some extra physics and chem classes. Now I am about to graduate next semester with my associates in nursing or ADN, Then I have 2 semesters left to complete my bachelors because I have taken the classes during my associates of nursing degree and finished the other pre-read for the ADN before starting the nursing clinicals and program. I think the transition to NP would be easier, but most of the programs here require that you practice for 2 or 3 years before being admitted into the NP program, so I am thinking about looking into a nurse research job.

[Lunah, MSN, RN]

I suppose the immature part about posting what I did, was not considering that many nurses may not feel this way, because if they did, they would have continued their educations.

These kinds of comments are the ones not endearing you to the other members here. Beyond a couple of Associates degrees (OK, 3) and a BSN, I have two graduate degrees and I am working on a doctoral degree, so I have continued my education - just within the same profession. You will gain much by realizing that the nursing model is nothing like the medical model, so we go in different directions that are no less valid than medicine. MD education is not "beyond," you're comparing apples and oranges. Like wanting an astrophysicist to "continue" on to be an astronaut.

I understand where you are, and in nursing (or student nursing) you are not where you belong. Honestly, I am not sure you want to be a physician, from reading your post. I think you want to be a research scientist. I think once you got into med school and saw what that future looked like, you would be longing for the lab! Just my two cents, take it or leave it. Either way, I wish you well.

[DowntheRiver]

I think that if I were you and only had advice and suggestions to offer such as "you need a reality check" I just wouldn't say anything at all. Unless I was grumpy and having a series of bad days, only then might I offer advice that isn't respectable & hospitable. Then again, we are clearly different, and the way I worded this post the first time was not thought out, nor put together well- so your response is expected, and has been taken with a grain of salt! Take care.

Ok y'all, was I rude with my first post? I really don't see it.

[Nurse_Kae]

Yes I have! Is the practitioners practice closer to nursing than anything else? I have not studied the curriculum of the practitioner program, o my the MD. I have my associates in general science because I was taking pre med and switched to nursing and had to declare a major at the school I was attending, and couldn't declare nursing as my major unless I attended their nursing program so it ended up being general science with some extra physics and chem classes. Now I am about to graduate next semester with my associates in nursing or ADN, Then I have 2 semesters left to complete my bachelors because I have taken the classes during my associates of nursing degree and finished the other pre-read for the ADN before starting the nursing clinicals and program. I think the transition to NP would be easier, but most of the programs here require that you practice for 2 or 3 years before being admitted into the NP program, so I am thinking about looking into a nurse research job.

Well i mentioned this program because you mentioned the dislike for having to go to a an MD for the good stuff. Most states actually allow NP to practice solo with the acception of few that require a physicians signature on certain prescriptions. This way you would have some of the autonomy that it appears you desire.

[Jstimmm]

This has been established. I agree with you that I am longing to be in a lab somewhere. I guess I just don't know what would interest me because I also enjoy the patient interactions I get. It is almost as if I would be happy in a nurse research setting. Maybe I sounded like I was outing the nursing career all together, but that is not it. It is the traditional clinical setting with the paper work and the way charting is that gets to me.. I mean if a patients chart says that they have chronic systolic & diastolic congestive heart failure, atrial fibrillation, and COPD, I think it is common sense that the patient is also at a increased risk for decreased cardiac output, and risk for gas exchange impairment.. since the physician ALREADY diagnosed them with exactly that, why do we need our own set of diagnostics that are only the side effects of what the physician already diagnosed them with. It feels like sort of a pointless task to me.. it is the simple minded tasks like this, where I am basically putting a care plan together in clinicals, basically adding things on to the exact diagnosis that was already given... and this is supposed to be my assignments and they seem pointless/easy.. then when I go listen to the patients heart I can hear that she has fluid in her lungs and a cough, which could be from the COPD- but she also had a HX of pneumonia.. and I am thinking that could be a strong indicator, but it isn't my place .. at least in clinical to point those things out. I also noticed while auscultating that she has Pericarditis or fluid around her heart which is also present with pneumonia.. I just wish I could do more because i leave and she's stuck there coughing for who knows how long.. her sputum was not totally clear and there is just nothing that I can do for her. I can't tell them to send her for labs and a chest X Ray because that isn't my job.. but she is quicker to run out of breath lately as well.. these changes are minor but I feel I could catch so many things in people before they get too bad and are more difficult to treat because I have sort of spider senses for things that are not so obvious to others.. this about me, is what makes me want to be a physician, as well as the understanding of the bodies chemical process, cells and changes, and kind of a sixth sense for it makes me believe I could do this.. but I will finish my clinicals and graduate before I figure it out for sure.

[MrsMamaNurse]

I agree with you on the fact that people are having trouble understanding me. This seems to happen a lot when I reference this topic. The professions are definitely related. Most of the nursing classes I had to take were also included in the first two years of my pre-med degree. Each profession focuses on the client in a different way, and I would like to focus on how to correct or treat the overall diagnosis. I want to find cures and know that I can, not treat the symptoms. I want to treat people who are having trouble and are rejecting their organs post transplant. I do understand not only the body systems , I also connect the chemistry, pathophysiology, connections of the body systems from one to another when it comes to the disease process in cancers and the way it spreads, the histology and the changes of the different cells and their behaviors in diseases, the DNA of cells and how to identify benign vs. malignant microscopically, I can practically look at person and tell when they are about to become ill with a disease. I know mostly every chemical within the human body and how to look for problems that might occur because of different lab measurements. I do not know how I became this way. I just know that I am. I do not think I will speak of this again, but just do what I think I should. I do not feel that my level of understanding will properly suite my patients in a nursing career because my scope of practice is too limited.

I agree that you should investigate the doc track, if that could be your passion. That said, this thread should encourage you to take a look within before and while doing so. Confidence is wonderful, and it's also dangerously blinding when actually working with patients. The nurse that "know everything" is a huge risk to patient lives, and the same for docs. Secondly, you will need to work WITH nurses, and I can tell you that work will not be fun if you truly believe that nurses are just nurses cause they couldn't do med school. Truly though, good luck on your journey!