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?

[HelloWish, ADN, BSN]

You are a student and do not realize what you don't know. I found nursing school easy overall and excelled at it but felt proud of myself for the achievement.

I started out on post surgical, oncology floor and felt like I was just doing menial tasks, fulfilling orders, and pushing meds. I left after 9 months due to many reasons. I worked in an oncology clinic for over a year and then went back to critical care nursing as a bedside nurse a couple of months ago. I realized how little I did NOT know when I worked one on one with a physician at the clinic. And then my eyes were truly opened coming back to the bedside and realizing how little critical thinking and how little I understood the big picture in the beginning as a nurse. I am grateful to be back at the bedside to understand the bigger picture. I go home and read about the disease process and try to understand the whole picture. Honestly, stimulation and learning is what you put into it and not what others put into you!

Nursing does require learning and critical thinking skills. Do you understand what your patient's vital signs mean in connection to their diagnosis and medications they are receiving? Nursing school only teaches you the basics of functioning as a nurse. Critical thinking comes later as a nurse.

If you want to be a doctor that is absolutely fine. However, you really don't know what you don't know.

I am going back to school this Spring to become a nurse practitioner. I also found your original post condescending. However, I feel that your post comes from a place of immaturity.

[Jstimmm]

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.

[AlwaysLearning247, BSN]

Just remember, you're a STUDENT nurse, not a real nurse yet. You need critical thinking when you are a nurse and you do not know everything. The real world and student nurse world are two completely different environments. If you think by becoming a doctor your brain will be more "stimulated" you need to actually be a RN on a busy floor with acutely ill patients. When you're a nurse you're not just getting vitals and washing people up. Good luck, hope you find what you're looking for.

[Bonstemps, EMT-P]

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 believe you would have to request to do so from a moderator; you may also be able to unsubscribe from the thread, or alter your settings.

I don't think anyone thinks, or feels, as though you are smarter than them. Ignore the responses that may be genuinely rude, and take to heart the ones that offer advice. If you only wish for advice that supports your beliefs, life may be disappointing; this is, unfortunately all part of soliciting advice from a body of dynamic people who do not know you and were introduced to you only by your disinterest in their field. Had you been more established, or perhaps if you had more carefully developed your inquiry, the results may have been different.

TL;DR: Sorry you didn't enjoy your experience; contact a moderator.

Best of luck.

[Jstimmm]

You are a student and do not realize what you don't know. I found nursing school easy overall and excelled at it but felt proud of myself for the achievement.

I started out on post surgical, oncology floor and felt like I was just doing menial tasks, fulfilling orders, and pushing meds. I left after 9 months due to many reasons. I worked in an oncology clinic for over a year and then went back to critical care nursing as a bedside nurse a couple of months ago. I realized how little I did NOT know when I worked one on one with a physician at the clinic. And then my eyes were truly opened coming back to the bedside and realizing how little critical thinking and how little I understood the big picture in the beginning as a nurse. I am grateful to be back at the bedside to understand the bigger picture. I go home and read about the disease process and try to understand the whole picture. Honestly, stimulation and learning is what you put into it and not what others put into you!

Nursing does require learning and critical thinking skills. Do you understand what your patient's vital signs mean in connection to their diagnosis and medications they are receiving? Nursing school only teaches you the basics of functioning as a nurse. Critical thinking comes later as a nurse.

If you want to be a doctor that is absolutely fine. However, you really don't know what you don't know.

I am going back to school this Spring to become a nurse practitioner. I also found your original post condescending. However, I feel that your post comes from a place of immaturity.

I fully understand what my patients vital signs mean in connection to their diagnosis.. so much that I would like to be the one making the diagnosis. I feel that your judgement comes from a lack of knowledge of the whole situation. 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. I have studied everything from pharmacology, A&P, histology, chemistry of the body, and so on since the time I was a child, and then again in college. This makes a situation where now I am in nursing school and am understanding things beyond the year of schooling I am in. I understand things the way a second year medical school student could understand and identify things. This has come from my instructors who are constantly appraising my critical thinking skills and telling me that they believe I understand the overall picture. I do not think I am smarter than others, this comes from the studying of the disease process and body systems for many years before this because I have always wanted to become a physician. I thought that there may be someone else out there who was like me in this way.. the only person that I have actually been able to connect with in a mature way about my thoughts and feelings is one of my professors who is also teaching at a medical school and practices medicine, and another doctor at a clinical site. They understand my thoughts.. I have realized that I will not gain the understanding or connect with any nurses on this level.

I am paying to get an education for things that I mostly already know and this is frustrating. Maybe I had fantastic A & P teachers, I do not know. When you speak of connecting the vitals to the diagnosis and understanding the body systems, I fully understand and that is what is so aggravating because I feel as if I am learning the same things over again- and am not going to be able to do much about the problems that these people are having since I am the one carrying out the orders and not making them. I know I will be better at helping patients if i go to medical school and become a doctor. Call me what you'd like, but it is super frustrating when one semester after another, you are given assignments and new tasks to carry out for things that are so far behind you.. you will not understand this unless you have been through it.. and tried to stick things out to realize that you have more knowledge than the career path you choose. That doesn't make me arrogant, that is going to make me a doctor. Good day.

[Jstimmm]

I understand where you are coming from and believe that this is a genuine reply. I will take your suggestions into consideration. Thank you for replying.

[Bonstemps, EMT-P]

I think it is easy to see why you are offending people - the way you are framing it is making it difficult for people to appreciate, as the emotional response is understandable.

Medicine, or the study of it the level of a Medical Doctor, is not 'beyond' nursing. It is not a study that is 'below' another. Your responses have consistently framed it as a situation in which you see nursing as a rung below medicine in regards to knowledge, critical thinking, etc., The professions should not be, from a practitioners stand point, hierarchical; rather, they should be seen as professions that require different ways of thinking and acting, that focus on different professional goals, and perhaps depend on different skills. They work together to benefit a patient. To improve lives.

I get the sense that people are struggling with relating to you because of the way you are communicating the way you view nursing. You say that you have more knowledge than the career path you chose ; maybe when it comes to chemistry or biology. I don't doubt that one can tease truth from that, but you must understand the way that any one with evolved empathy would analyze that statement. It puts nursing below medicine. That is what people are perceiving from you; this is a career, a life long love, a passion for people. The way you presented your understanding of it does not honor that.

I hope you find the answer.

[Bonstemps, EMT-P]

I understand where you are coming from and believe that this is a genuine reply. I will take your suggestions into consideration. Thank you for replying.

Not sure who you are talking to (the quote buttons will help people know you are talking to them) but, at the end of the day, you are still part of this community and I wish you the best.

[Jstimmm]

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.

[Bonstemps, EMT-P]

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 think you described this much better and I think you should discuss medicine with your mentor and genuinely looking in to preparing for the MCAT, which would be the next step. Follow what you think is best for you.

[Jstimmm]

Thank you!

[Wuzzie]

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.

This is what you should have said in the first place. Like I said before you would have received lots of support. Nobody here would want to force you to be a nurse if that isn't where your heart is. But don't forget. If the medicine gig doesn't work out there are lots of nursing roles that might actually suit your interests. There are advanced practice nurses, research nurses, educators, innovators. All of those areas at least touch on what you are describing.