Combining Peds and Women's Health Courses

flightnurse2b, LPN · Feb 21, 2008

i am taking Maternal-child/Peds combined right now and it is ALOT of material. i wish it was two separate classes. our lecture is once a week, 5 hr class. last week i took 24 pages of front and back notes, and this week i have a test on it. it is so much important information crammed in i feel like i just can get a good grasp on it, all i am doing is memorizing. my instructor is wonderful and very knowledgeable, but it is just overwhelming.

future L&Dnurse · Feb 21, 2008

As a student I think I would strongly prefer #1, simply because my experience with a peds rotation and an ob rotation is that both of them cover a TON of material and trying to do both at once sounds extremely hard.

mysterious_one, ASN, RN · Feb 21, 2008

I agree with the above mentioned posts and opt for number 1. This it how it was done at our school. Both subjects cover a lot of material and I can't imagine having to read and study out of two different textbooks several chapters at the same time. It would be to confusing, it is hard enough as it is. One thing at a time, please!!!!

madampomfrey · Feb 22, 2008

I am currently taking an ob/peds class. We are doing it like option 2. We meet for 4.5 hours once a week. The first 2 hours are ob then we have a 30 minute break followed by 2 hourse of peds. I like this because listening on one subject for 4 hours can be difficult. We also have biterm clinicals. So have the class is in peds clinical while the other half is in ob clinical. So, splitting up time works best for us. :nurse:

natrgrrl · Feb 22, 2008

Choice #3 would be hard for me to get used to because it is presented differently than all of my other courses. I think it would make taking tests more difficult because of learning ALL the assessments, etc. in one class period. There is so much information presented in nursing that this way would just confuse me.

I would prefer #2 because it would break up the 4 hour lecture like it was 2 different classes. How would you test students? One test per instructor or would it be a combined test?

#1 seems like the logical way to proceed and would probably help me with recall during the tests but I would still prefer #2.

Good luck and I hope our input helps you out.

Penguin67 · Feb 22, 2008

Many thanks to all of you who responded so far to my post. I really appreciate your feedback, and will probably take your posts with me to our next planning meeting. It is really important to have student feedback as we create this new course.

Thanks again to all of you and good luck in your nursing programs as well! :yeah:

richardjboro1 · Feb 22, 2008

I have a possible suggestion. Our faculty divided it up a little different. We cover OB as one course along with fundamentals. Then, we do peds throughout the rest of the curriculum (thus far). This way, we learn the Differences, rather than the similarities. I like this method and feel combining peds and ob in one course would... be rather overwhelming. Our program is a traditional BSN program.

Let me know if that helped or you have other questions,

Richard

iHeartNICU · Feb 22, 2008

We did our peds and OB together and while I enjoyed and did well in both it was just too much information at a time. I think option 1 would be the best approach and wish we had done it more like that. That way it's like you are learning one subject in an organized manner rather than two subjects and being in different aspects of each one. That just makes it too confusing I think. The way we had it seemed very random and what we learned in peds seemed to have nothing to do with what we were learning in OB. I vote number 1.

carolinapooh, BSN, RN · Feb 24, 2008

I was in an ABSN program (just graduated in December) and in our school, OB and Peds are taken in the 11 week summer semester, though as two separate classes. We had 5 weeks Peds or OB clinical and then 5 weeks of the other one. I have to admit - the instructor for OB taught it to us backwards - we started with birth and went backwards to prenatal - so those of us who had clinical first would have some background when we started. But she did it in such a way that we had no problem understanding it.

If I had a choice between your options, I would rather go with number 2; it's the closest to the way I had it and since I actually did sit through four hour lectures of the same class, I know that splitting the lecture time really would help break up the day.

One suggestion I would make to whomever is teaching your OB course is to have lots of hands-on opportunities and demonstrations. Our instructor explained effacement by pulling a turtleneck sweater over a baby doll's head, and I swear to you I didn't get it until she did that! (I even explained the process to my pregnant sister-in-law by pulling one of her older daughter's dolls through a turtleneck, and the reaction I got was, "Oh, THAT'S what they're talking about!")

So those are my suggestions: number two and hands-on demos. :specs:

arciedee · Feb 24, 2008

For my school maternity and peds are combined into one course. In my program (a direct-entry master's program), the lectures during the first half of the semester was dedicated to maternity, the second half to pediatrics. Unfortunately there weren't enough clinical faculty or placements to ensure that we were all in maternity clinicals at the beginning of the semester and pediatrics at the end so that our lecture and clinical content would be congruent. About a third of the class ended up doing pediatrics clinical without any lecture content on pediatric issues and their clinical instructor had them doing a lot of extra reading to make up for it. Of course once they moved to maternity they'd already had ALL the lectures on that, so perhaps they had a better clinical experience because of it. Regardless I would make sure that the clinical and lecture content were in agreement.

For my school's undergrad program I think they handle it a bit differently. The students have lecture twice a week with one being maternity, the other being pediatrics. Their clinicals last the duration of the semester, one being maternity, the other being pediatrics (I think they did shorter clinical days than we did and they used the bed lab far more for clinical than we did). While I can see advantages to this approach, the students I talked to said that it had its own challenges.

I think your first two options could work okay. The third is an interesting idea, but I think it could be challenging to actually implement.

trepinCT · Feb 24, 2008

I like option #1..but either way, its a lot of material to cover in one semester..I am second semester, 1st year and we have OB and Psych!! 2 4 hour lecture a week and 2 4 hour clinicals.(one for each).one lecture day is OB, the other is Psych(they even break down our exams to 2 25 question exams for each instead of one 50 question exam..worth same amount as if we did teh one 50 question exam)..but the amount of work is unbelievable...we have 2 process journals due for psych(with care plans and med sheets with it)..plus a medication presentation , lab papers to due, clinical weekly papers to do...for OB we have med sheets to do every week, lab papers to do, clinical prep papers to do, a teaching plan that we had to outline, submit for grade, the we have to actually teach it and have one week to hand in revised outline, and a paper on how the whole thing went.then the usual newborn assessment, L& D sheet to fill out.oh, yeah, then there are the skills labs to go to followed up by a skills verification from that lab and paperwork to do for that..I completely gave up on reading and focus on powerpoints..this semester is killing me!!!! Its a 2 year program so they need to do what they can when they can...did I mention my kids are being neglected??? LOL... :bugeyes:

whatever you do, try to keep it smooth so that your students dont feel like they are jumping all over the place..this semester would be 2x more difficult if they didnt have an organized system..