Being a pre-med is so overated

Nurses General Nursing

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Nothing upsets me more when a pre-meds bashes the nursing profession. After hovering over the SDN site (student doctor network) I find that a lot of pre-meds thinks that nurses are below them when they are not even in med school yet! I just don't understand their mentality of why they can sit on their high horses all day and talk about nurses because they're "aspiring doctors". And it is not even the SDN site, it is also the pre-meds at my university that made me want to check out the site anyway.

They tried to talk me out of being a nurse because some thing called the nursing module is stupid and take a thousand year for a nursing to do any obvious diagnosing and it should be only up to the doctors to that. So nothing gets my blood boiling when people think they are better than you then actually worrying about being a considerate, capable doctor w/o bashing the nurses!

Rant over. I was going to rant on the SDN forum but I'm not a pre-med and I don't think they care much.

Specializes in ICU.

We don't normally get residents on our unit. My unit has the sickest of sick patients. But this guy was coming up from the ER and the attending had them come up with him. The one was attempting to put in a central location be for the first time.

He was fumbling. With everything. Sterile field, using the ultrasound machine..... He was squirting saline all over the wall. He couldn't find the artery he needed. Finally, the attending came in and took over. He had a few choice words also.

It made me realize that we all have to start somewhere, even the physicians. As a new grad who is still waiting to take NCLEX, it honestly relaxed me because I become a nervous wreck when doing a new procedure and I fumble, often. And there are times when I feel a little intimidated by our attendings, even though most are really nice.

They are pre-med students. They have no idea what they are in for, or how nervous they will be inserting their first central line someday. This resident kept his composure and another resident who was more experienced was trying to help, but in the end the attending had to do it. And he said, look I can't tell you necessarily how to do it, I do it by feel. It's just something that comes with experience. And he was exactly right.

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Specializes in Med-Tele; ED; ICU.
We don't normally get residents on our unit. My unit has the sickest of sick patients. But this guy was coming up from the ER and the attending had them come up with him. The one was attempting to put in a central location be for the first time.

He was fumbling. With everything. Sterile field, using the ultrasound machine..... He was squirting saline all over the wall. He couldn't find the artery he needed. Finally, the attending came in and took over. He had a few choice words also.

It made me realize that we all have to start somewhere, even the physicians. As a new grad who is still waiting to take NCLEX, it honestly relaxed me because I become a nervous wreck when doing a new procedure and I fumble, often. And there are times when I feel a little intimidated by our attendings, even though most are really nice.

They are pre-med students. They have no idea what they are in for, or how nervous they will be inserting their first central line someday. This resident kept his composure and another resident who was more experienced was trying to help, but in the end the attending had to do it. And he said, look I can't tell you necessarily how to do it, I do it by feel. It's just something that comes with experience. And he was exactly right.

I have a lot of empathy for med students and residents, especially the PGY1s. I go out of my way to be helpful to them and help them relax, make suggestions, watch out for problems, etc. I think it's a win-win-win.

1) It's better for the patient

2) It's better for the doc (I'm the one who's chosen to work in a teaching hospital, after all)

3) It's better for all the nurses in the future who will work with this doc who, hopefully, has learned that nurses are friends, not food.

Some of my colleagues are downright awful to the residents and med students.

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Specializes in Oncology; medical specialty website.
That's a nice way to look at it but I just felt that nurses couldn't really stick up for themselves on that site so the pre-meds could say whatever.

You know, I have been a member of that site for nearly 15 years. I've gotten to know some really nice people on that site.

I think you get out of that site what you put into it. I've had people there thank my for presenting the nurse's POV, or helping them to understand why nurses respond to situations the way they do.

It's funny, there are people I remember as med students who are now attendings, and we chat on FB.

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I used to be one of those self-righteous pre-med, who thought nursing was beneath me. Thank god I got out of it, and I know nursing is perfect for me :) It's really stupid and destructive. All my impactful memories in hospitals for myself or my sick father (he's always in and out of hospitals) were from great nurses. They were very attentive, knowledgeable and professional! Being a Nurse is just as important as any medical profession and just as rewarding.

Becoming a doctor is seen as higher status because of the higher pay grade (we value money wayyy too much in this society) and yes more years of schooling, but I've had so many horrible doctors, know a few horrible people becoming doctors (only in it for the money) and know so many great and smart people who were rejected from med school. I hope those pre-med get out of that way of thinking.

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Specializes in Pediatric Critical Care.

I went to undergrad with this one guy - a good friend, very sweet guy. He was pre-med. I'll never forget the day that I found out that he literally honest-to-goodness thought that the main topics of my education had been things like making beds and giving baths. I had thought he was teasing me at first......he wasn't.

Anyway, he DID make it to med school. And when it came time to go on to a residency, he became the equivalent of the kid picked last for a team. Completed his residency at some unknown place and as far as I know, is an attending in some small town. I sometimes wonder if he has figured out what nurses do yet.

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Oh please, pre meds know nothing. Believe me Ive been the mother of two of them. Look at the percentage of those apply v. those who are accepted. Even my daughters smile at those comments. They are in their final year of residency. So who wins.

This not a nurse v. MD...just premeds v. docs.

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Nursing is a tough job, doctors think, we do the job for the most part and carry their orders. I hope doctors will have a rotation with a specific nurse and shadow them atleast once in their medical school career or life cause we work closely with doctors. They should know how it's like to be in our shoes.

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Specializes in Med-Tele; ED; ICU.

I'm at lunch right now... doing a double shift.

The doc was just signing out as I was leaving. "Thanks for your help tonight. Boy, you got the short end tonight." This is the same guy who earlier was grumping that IV meds weren't hung and that patients hadn't gone to CT. In the former case, I simply replied, "I'm doing what I can... and that drunk lady in there just pulled out her IV and peed all over the floor..." His reply: "I'll talk to the charge and see if we can get you some help." In the latter case I replied, "They haven't called for him..." and went down to talk to the CT tech who's my buddy and found out what was up, obtained an assurance that we were next, and gave the doc an update. He wasn't pleased with the situation but he saw that I was doing what I could to make it work.

He's a Dr. Grumpy McGrumpyFace but he's actually a nice guy... he just gets frustrated by the ineffici9encies because, on shifts like this one, they keep him 3 (unpaid) hours late and who enjoys that?

I've yet to come across a doc that, given some time and some nurturing, I can't win over.

Docs are just regular people and pretty much act like that.

I see a lot of nurses contributing at lot to the us v. them perceptions... perhaps as much or more than the docs.

I once had some residents ask me what the nurses thought about them. They were stunned to hear that the nurses think they're snobby when they, the residents, feel like the nurses close ranks when they come up to the nurse's station.

Pre-meds? They don't even count... any more than do pre-nursing students. Until you're in the trenches, you have no idea what you're talking about and have no idea how interdependent we all are on each other... docs, nurses, rad techs, RTs, pharmacists, security/cops...

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I pointed this out to someone actually, like i don't understand why they assume pre meds are the smartest kids on campus with the toughest lives like it's not a competition??? our nursing school is one of the best in the nation and statistically the highest student SAT/ACT scores ended up in the BSN program and that pre med is just a bunch of courses that coincide with tons of majors b/c pre med is no where near med school.

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Specializes in Case mgmt., rehab, (CRRN), LTC & psych.

I suppose my views will go against the general grain...

There tends to be a difference in the types of students who opt for pre-med versus pre-nursing. For instance, we simply do not hear of pre-med students who struggle with 7th grade level dosage calculations or seek to be admitted to programs with low GPAs.

Nursing attracts its fair share of dreamers. Some of these dreamers lack the academic horsepower to work through the curriculum. I know I might receive some blowback for my thoughts, but sometimes an opposing view stings.

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There are plenty of low GPA/low stats med students on SDN seeking admittance. I always found it funny how even some of those students still managed to be arrogant not only towards the nursing profession (nursing isn't an option for some as they refuse to "downgrade"), but fellow med students or med professionals who advised them to opt for DO schools since prereqs could be retaken without penalty, or go for PA or podiatry. Some didn't want to opt for DO because they craved those MD initials. You had dreamers who would choose Caribbean schools in hopes of returning to the USA and matching into anesthesiology, orthopedic surgery, etc., aka tough residencies for American-based med students.

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I suppose my views will go against the general grain...

There tends to be a difference in the types of students who opt for pre-med versus pre-nursing. For instance, we simply do not hear of pre-med students who struggle with 7th grade level dosage calculations or seek to be admitted to programs with low GPAs.

Nursing attracts its fair share of dreamers. Some of these dreamers lack the academic horsepower to work through the curriculum. I know I might receive some blowback for my thoughts, but sometimes an opposing view stings.

That's a very big generalization to make especially since at lots of universities the nursing schools are far more competitive than the generic BS in biology. It is lame that many pre meds use this philosophy and automatically assume all nursing students are far dumber and wouldn't be able to maintain high gpas.

Also pre meds aren't doing any dosage calculations that's why you don't hear of them... (all it is is just general courses in varying sciences, a pre med concentration isn't even a major and is literally useless if you don't get to med school)

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