Do Not Underestimate the Difficulty Level of Nursing School

[tenjuna]

As I am almost done with my first year of my ADN nursing program, I decided to write this article with some thoughts about where I was a year ago.

I know I am being overly dramatic here, but hey what the hell may as well put my Composition II skills to use.

I started my journey April 2010, after having mulled over my choices for a career change for an extended period of time and deciding I needed to sign up before anything was going to change.

I spent the first 3 semesters taking classes on another degree I was picking at whilst I tried to finalize what I wanted to be when I grew up. I finally decided my greatest asset was my empathy with people and how much I was willing to give of myself for them. This eventually led me to Nursing.

I have always been a natural student. 4.0GPA without opening books, first one done with tests a few minutes after they were handed out, finishing homework before I even left class. I prided myself on all of this and eventually just expected it.

Pride cometh before the fall.

After signing up for the Pre-Nursing program in 2011, I overloaded my schedule to finish the 40+ hours of pre-reqs as soon as I could. All As, no problem.

In the Spring of 2012, I added the CNA license course to my schedule as it became a requirement for the nursing program. I don't know that I even paid much attention to the course, but I did find that I had an excellent connection with the patients. It made me feel like I was on the right track. It also made me feel like nursing was not a big deal, thinking being a CNA was pretty much like being a nurse, right? Sigh.

I bought all of my supplies, uniforms, and books...all ready to go. In my mind taking the courses were merely a formality at this point.

Then came Fall of 2012.

Like anyone else, I was nervous and apprehensive about doing something new, but quickly found that Fundamentals was a piece of cake, labs were no problem, quizzes were a joke...why the hell doesn't everyone take this class, right?

As the instructor handed out our first real exam, it was just another test after the hundreds of other tests I have taken in my life, no problem.

I got a 56.

Now you can imagine the utter shock and nausea I felt when I saw that lonely number on the paper. I panicked, big time. I can only imagine the inner voice of my instructor "muwahahahha my plan is working perrrrrfectly."

I knew then that I was in trouble, and I needed to pull my head out of my place-that-shall-not-be-named and shift my entire paradigm of thinking. It wasn't easy.

I quit my $20 an hour job, spend 12 hours a day studying, and gave up all notion of having a life/girlfriend/friends/fun/food not from McDonald's. And I am still barely passing. It's not a great feeling getting 79% on everything when you have to have a 77% or higher on pretty much everything in order to proceed. In fact it wasn't until a few weeks ago that I was able to feel like I was going to make it. And I know I am going to have to continue studying 12 hours a day and basically not have a life for another 16 months.

I worry about what kind of nurse I will be when I can barely pass my classes. But I DO know I will be the best nurse I can.

Here are some of the things I wish I had known last year

• Commit totally, or find something else to be when you grow up.
• Nurses heavily use and are tested using critical thinking skills. I cannot stress that enough CRITICAL THINKING. If you do not have that particular skill, go buy a self-help book to figure out how. Do it now, trust me just go get it. Stop reading I will wait.
• If you have any thought whatsoever that nursing school is going to be a walk in the park, slap yourself as hard as you can and wake up. Talk to some 2nd year students to get a good idea of what being a 1st year student is like. Find your school's nursing club, they will be more than happy to share their horror stories.
• Go get some books on nurse's stories, there are quite a few but they will give you a great idea of what being a nurse is REALLY like. One of my favorites is a "A Nurse's Story" by Tilda Shalof.
• Do your research, make sure that being a nurse is really what you want. Based on what I have seen in clinicals, it's hard work, it's gut wrenching, it's sometimes menial thankless tasks that go on for hours. It's NOT Grey's Anatomy, ER, or any medical drama you have ever seen.
• Continuing with the last point, go shadow a nurse, or volunteer at an LTC or hospital, get educated.
• When you get actually started in your nursing program READ. ALL. ASSIGNED. CHAPTERS. Then read them again. Once you are done you should probably read them again.
• Study groups are for everything but studying.
• Working and kids and family and social life...forget about it. Make sure everyone is on board with what you are about to undertake. You will not be available, you will be studying. When you are available, you will be sleeping. If you are able to have a life and go to nursing school, I salute and secretly hate you.
• Finally, after all is said and done TRY to relax and enjoy and take it all in...this truly is (at least for me) the most rewarding thing you can do in life. The first time I kept someone from choking to death swept away all of my doubts and fears and all the dumb stuff I did before I got to that point.

It's worth it, just don't underestimate it.

See you in the trenches!

Cain

[tenjuna, MSN]

I am a 42 year old single father of 2 teenagers living with me, trust me I know all about "non-traditional". My problem has been that I am going from being a computer nerd with 25 years of analytical thinking about nothing substantial to being a critical thinker where people's health outcomes are involved...so I have to spend a lot of time trying to put what's in the book into the perspective of a patient's issues. It's a long tedious process that requires almost all of my attention. I consider myself to be a pretty smart overachiever, but this stuff is just plain hard (for now, I feel like I am A LOT better at it than I was 6 months ago.) And if 12 hours a day of studying and thinking and note cards and Google and WebMD and everything else I do is not effective enough, then I don't know what would be.

I would love to be able to incorporate a life, girlfriend, friends all that stuff into this, but I know if I take my eyes off the prize I am doomed. I absolutely understand that a lot of people can do it, and I probably could too if I really wanted to, but why take the chance?

Just my 2/100 of a dollar. Your mileage may vary.

[Elkay]

Yup, 2 classes for me, yet they are 2 six credit classes. Meaning, its like taking 4 three credit classes. It isn't like taking JUST 2 classes. Its the lecture time, studying, testing etc of 4 classes slammed into one.

It sure sounds easy to those who think they are only one or two classses ..what's the big deal. Until you are actually buried in those "only" one or two classes you have no idea of the amount of reading, studying etc you will be doing.

And, my program requires an 80 average in order to be considered passing. Get a 79.9, guess what..you FAILED and do not get to move onto the next class.

So do you actually get kicked out of the nursing program all together if you get lower than 80% on any tests? =O

[tenjuna, MSN]

Probably means 80% or higher for the final grade, that's how it is for me anyway.

[CT Pixie, BSN, RN]

So do you actually get kicked out of the nursing program all together if you get lower than 80% on any tests? =O

No, you fail the class if your final average is less than an 80.

[ebinbrooklyn]

^Critical Thinking and Clinical Judgement...Best Book Ever. Search for it on Google or Amazon. One of my nursing professors gave it to me to assist in my test anxiety many moons ago...made me a better nurse!

Speaking from a failed nursing school once perspective, "critical thinking" IS a huge part of nursing...bringing those classes from the beginning to the nursing theory; your sciences, English, arts, even philosophy puts its all together...and once you enter the field, there's STILL more learning, even after 2, 5, 10 years and beyond. People who choose to enter this profession must be prepared to continue to learn, and practice as such...nurses who have been in the field will tell you "When you THINK you've seen it all, then you get the pt that will make you think otherwise."

I suggest for those who are struggling to get those recommended books...pay full price for those, and rent, buy used, or utilize the library-that's what I did when I went back to get my BSN. Those recommended books helped me MORE to bridge the textbook and the lecture.

As for when I got my Critical thinking book? When I failed ADN school, I went back to a PN program (after I finished my prereq's...took a while lol). That program helped A TON of us with test anxiety. They were focused one king sure we had the "critical thinking" as a base. It helped me succeed when I returned to school to go to the next level.

See you out there...:)

THANK YOU! buying it NOW!

[SpookySqueeek]

Thank you, this is awesome!

I'm now in my final semester of an ADN program, and like OP, I'm one of those good students who underestimated just how challenging nursing school would truly be.

My first go 'round I tried working full time nights along with school and had to leave the program after the first semester because I started sleeping through work and tests. I had to get myself into a spot in life where I could do school and not have to work before I went back. Many of my classmates work, some even full time. Many have children. I admire them and wonder when they sleep. It can obviously be done, and each of us has our own limits. Just try to get yourself into a position that if you find you can't keep up, you can drop down to working part time/quitting, and have family or friends watch the kids a couple days of the week. You will be stressed, you will get burnt out, but with good social support from family, friends, classmates, you'll get through it. Also, especially if you're one who does have a lot of other commitments, utilize your breaks for actually taking a break. Nursing school is a marathon, not a sprint, you have to pace yourself.

At the beginning of our program one of our instructors said something very enlightening to me. Our classes each semester are only 9 credit hours, but that's really just because they couldn't include more hours and still have it be an associate's degree. They also held a family night at the beginning of the program so we could have family come in and hear straight from our instructors that they'd "give us back" in two years.

Believe your instructors when they tell you you cannot memorize everything. You can't, but even if you could, it wouldn't help because you need to be able to generalize the information they give you and apply it to different scenarios. If you can get into a productive study group, do it. They exist, and it's very helpful to go over things with a different perspective. My best study buddy was actually a student who was weak on theory and she was great at asking me questions about basics that I had just taken for granted that forced me to really look at the why behind them.

Also thank you for the book recommendation! Just ordered it :) I may almost be through, but I'll still take all the help I can get.

[AnneF]

Great post!! Thank you for sharing.

The tests for me were a total shock to the system as well. The whole "Every answer is right, but which one is the best?" Drove me insane for my first few terms. I would come out of so many exams feeling great thinking I aced, just to get the test back with a C because I got all of the SELECT ALL THAT APPLY questions wrong.

Also to note when studying diseases, don't just study the basics for the disease, study the patient interventions!! I remember thinking the questions would be "What is Parkinson's disease?" lol they are not at all, you gotta know the meds (side effects, black box, interventions, dosing), symptoms, complications, and how you will deal with that patient on the day to day.

Then I go to clinical and my nurse tells me, "beware... nursing school is NOT nursing..." say what?!?! lol anyway thanks for the post!!!

[ebinbrooklyn]

Great post!! Thank you for sharing.

The tests for me were a total shock to the system as well. The whole "Every answer is right, but which one is the best?" Drove me insane for my first few terms. I would come out of so many exams feeling great thinking I aced, just to get the test back with a C because I got all of the SELECT ALL THAT APPLY questions wrong.

Also to note when studying diseases, don't just study the basics for the disease, study the patient interventions!! I remember thinking the questions would be "What is Parkinson's disease?" lol they are not at all, you gotta know the meds (side effects, black box, interventions, dosing), symptoms, complications, and how you will deal with that patient on the day to day.

Then I go to clinical and my nurse tells me, "beware... nursing school is NOT nursing..." say what?!?! lol anyway thanks for the post!!!

This is also good to know! I have some background on diseases from A&P but does anyone have any recommendations as to books/study guides on the topics.

[AnneF]

This is also good to know! I have some background on diseases from A&P but does anyone have any recommendations as to books/study guides on the topics.

I actually like my nursing texts (thought I know many do not) what I found was it's all about where you look. Most of the time in the text it will give a lengthy explanation on the pathophys of the disease, and then afterward it will go into what the patient will actually experience, and what as a nurse you have to look out for (at risk and actual nursing dx etc...). I just realized I was spending too much time on the patho (which is still important) but not enough on the nursing aspect, which is the majority of the test.

[DizzyLizzyNurse]

Some of us worked full time because we HAD to. I was always so jealous of the people who didn't have to work.

[demeanor89]

THANK YOU!!!

I am in the SAME POSITION!! I entered nursing school with a 3.5 GPA and am struggling so bad! I'm already in my first semester and am already going downhill. I have gotten only 60's and 70's on all my tests (thankfully I'm still passing due to backup assignments I am doing very well in ). As for those who work, there is a woman in my class who works full time and is still managing with mostly A's in my program. She's very smart, but how she manages, only god knows. And it's funny cuz my program is accelerated..only 16 months long before we become nurses. I do join study groups, read the material, but I think test taking is also part of it as well which I'm weak in. But these tips are helpful..I hope to pass by this semester and hopefully next semester I'll whiz through these tests.

But def taking all these tips!!

[AWanderingMinstral]

No, nursing (school) is not for the faint of heart. I scanned your post and some of the responses. Without my study group, which often amounted to myself and one other student, I would not have made it through nursing school.

Sadly, nursing school doesn't have to be as challenging as it often is. I earned a nursing diploma, a bachelor of science degree, and a master of science degree and I found that nursing instructors (both clinical and didactic) are some of the most insensitive people I have ever met. Instead of approaching a student after s/he has done poorly on an exam and helping them determine why they did poorly (and develop a strategy to improve their performance), they often, well, did not care. I find that pretty ironic considering we are in a caring profession. Of course, the grading scale (i.e. earning less than 76% means "failure") does not help. I recognize that it benefits no one to "push" someone through a program. However, an educator's role is to assist a student in discovering what makes them "tick."

So, I encourage each of you to persevere and realize that no one can ever take away your education AND that there are as many different types of nursing as there are types of students and learning styles.