Beloved Nurse Professionals (long)

Miss Chybil RN, BSN, RN · Jul 31, 2007

I just finished my pre-reqs, so I can't help you with your nursing questions. I can offer you some overall advice.

ONE DAY AT A TIME.

That's all you can do. One day at a time, one class at a time and one assignment at a time. You will be amazed at what you can do.

Good luck!

allnurses Guide · Jul 31, 2007

First off, congratulations for daring to make a change in your life and following a dream. Takes guts! :balloons:

Second, education is never wasted: pre-reqs serve a lot of different areas, not just nursing. English, math and psych apply to life, not just nursing. Once you get back into studying, it will become clear if more schooling is what you want to keep to doing. I want back to school after more than 20 years, let me tell you I was really paranoid about my first paper! I'm only doing one class a semester, so its taking 5 years to get my MSN, but I'm enjoying the journey (albeit a very looonnng one). :mortarboard:

Third, remember most people come in here to vent and slough off things that anger them: the high points and really enjoyed things get to be spoken of and shared at home, with someone live to celebrate with. Same reason newspapers print about all the terrible things on the front page, and the good stuff gets a couple of paragraphs on the homeliving or society pages; people love to hear the "bad" stuff and commiserate. I feel no great urge to come in and say, "yep, had another routine night, 8 or 10 psych patients, 4 kept overnight until crisis comes in, short 3 nurses, 45 patients in a 20 bed ED at any given time, cardio verted the guy that tried to die with a really weird EKG, no helicopters this time" - that IS a routine night for me and plenty of others. Nothing in particular stands out. Well, the cardioversion was pretty interesting, but hardly unique. And it only lasted about 15 minutes out of the 12 hours. So don't get freaked out by the multiple negative posts. I had a great time at school, with some very supportive fellow students and professors; and so far in grad school only one professor I'm not impressed with.

If you care about people, nursing is a great way to show it. If the gritty parts turn out not to be for you, there are still other ways to help, and those pre-reqs can help there too. I worked as a candy striper when a younger teen, a nurse's aide in high school, and never had a doubt this is what I wanted. Not everyone went that route, and are perfectly good nurses no matter what road they traveled.

Good luck! You'll do fine :smiletea2: Come on in, the water's fine!

ramonmalino · Jul 31, 2007

Jules,

Don't worry about being smart enough it's going to be difficult, I won't lie to you, but it's rewarding too. Study Study Study, it's the best thing you can do.

Nobody but you can answer your questions about whether or not you will be a good nurse. All types of ppl become nurses from the truly compassionate who may not be exceptionally book smart, to the exceptionally book smart who make awful nurses because they have no bedside manner.

Can you cut it? Good question, once again only you know the content of your character. Take everything in stride. The best advice I can give is to let everything roll off your back. In my travels I have only met one or two truly mean instructors, and even they didn't mean anything personal by their actions or comments. As for RNs and Pts. just hang loose and roll with it. I'm sure you've run across mean ppl in your profession, apply the same coping skills.

The first semester will be the hardest, but stick with it. As for how we knew we could make it through school? Well, since I won't graduate til may I can safely say... I still have no clue if i can make it through, frankly I'm pleasantly surprised I made it this far, but I've kept my nose to the grind stone, and was lucky to have incredible professors and clinical instructors who were very knowledgeable and a close knit group of students (a few who are over 40) to ***** to.

nyapa, RN · Jul 31, 2007

Give yourself a chance. Take a deep breath...and take the plunge if that is what you want to do. It is stressful to make a decision to do something different. But from the sound of it, you also need to consider home/financial situations if you are working two jobs.

Nursing can be really stressful, but you will probably come up against the worst and the best experiences expressed in this forum, because this is a place where we share these things. Look for the latter in this site, you don't have to look far. Hope to count you amongst our numbers

locolorenzo22, BSN, RN · Jul 31, 2007

Hey, I went to school for Radio too! Switched to Accounting, then decided I couldn't just stare at numbers all day! Now I'm 1 year from finishing school, you CAN do it, just take it one day at a time!

Tweety, BSN, RN · Jul 31, 2007

It's not that bad at all. We come here to vent our concerns and it seems overly negative. You will come across snarly patients, fellow students, instructors, and nurses but mercifully they are in the minority. Most of us are good people.

Natkat, BSN, MSN, RN · Jul 31, 2007

Be patient with yourself. There are days when you will feel like a complete failure, but you're not. We all started at the beginning. We didn't know what the heck we were doing. We were scared to touch a patient. We wondered how we were going to study everything they threw at us.

Allow yourself the opportunity to not know what the heck you're doing; to have days when you doubt if you made the right decision; to wonder if you'll ever figure things out. But one day it starts to come together and the thrill of finally understanding something will be so rewarding. But that day is slow in coming so hang in there.

I have to admit that this board put scary thoughts in my mind too. But I kept an open mind and I found out that it really isn't all that bad. There are days that are more challening than others, but I've been in worse situations so that helps me keep it in perspective.

I realize now that yeah, people do come here to vent, and that many of the posts here are a result of frustration or just a bad day. Nursing school is stressful because you spend a very.........long..........time learning things before you can do them on your own. That was a new experience for me. I'm used to spending a few weeks to a couple of months mastering a new job skill. Once I accepted that I can't learn nursing that fast, I was okay and I stop beating up on myself.

Best of luck with your schooling and future career.