How many hours of sleep did you get a night when you were in nursing school?

Nursing Students General Students Nursing Q/A

Nursing school is demanding. Students often report they are struggling with sleep due to the heavy course load, clinical placements, and studying requirements.

My friend says she only gets about 4-5 hours of sleep a night while in NS. I can't function without a minimum of 6-7 hours of sleep and am starting to get nervous and think that maybe I should start training my body to get less sleep (if thats even possible for me).

Have you experienced this while in nursing school? How many hours of sleep did you get per night?

Now this is very interesting some only 2 or 3 hour sleep due to studying others 8 or more what is the difference are some of the schools more demanding than others?

Specializes in Emergency.

Have to agree with the posters above that sleep is critical. Sleep deprivation makes you dangerous. Someone who's only getting 2-3 hours sleep per night d/t school work is doing something wrong.

Specializes in ER/Trauma.

I worked 2 jobs while going through school.

On average, I slept between 3-5 hours a day.

cheers,

Specializes in Mixed Level-1 ICU.

It's such a myth that nursing school is so terribly hard.

We all did it, along with millions of others. It did not devour every waking moment as some believe it must in order to be triumphant.

It's nursing school...not law school/medical/school/or The Sorbonne

I always got 8 hours a night! I wouldn't have been able to handle it or to pass anything if I hadn't made the committment to get my 8 hours of sleep per night.

It's such a myth that nursing school is so terribly hard.

We all did it, along with millions of others. It did not devour every waking moment as some believe it must in order to be triumphant.

It's nursing school...not law school/medical/school/or The Sorbonne

I agree however it is very time consuming.Throughout my second semester I had to study 8 or 9 hours a day,the classes were so hard.

Specializes in Geriatrics, Transplant, Education.

I slept 6-7 hours per night while in nursing school. I also tended to nap for 1/2-1 hour on most afternoons or late mornings in between classes.

I also worked 1 part time & 1 per diem job, and was the treasurer of two campus clubs.

I was the only nursing major in my year to graduate from our school's honors program (which required a detailed thesis on a subject within your field, over and above any papers or projects already required by your department)

I graduated with good grades. It's possible to do a lot while in nursing school & still sleep--it's all about time management & prioritization!

i got 8 hours of sleep per night as well. i function better. i would study everyday except Sundays, for about 4-5 hours, more if i had a test the same week

While in Nursing School, I had to work full-time, 48 to 56 hours/week. My old job was ending. Management had given us ample warning of closure, hence, nursing school. They also paid for Nursing School. No part-time option. Frankly, I made too much money to quit. I averaged 2-3 hours of sleep, if I was lucky, and studied during the day-- 4-5 hours.

I'd study when I could--half/hour here, 2-3 hours there. I learned to make flash cards. I carried my books everywhere. If I could have laminated the books, showered with them, I would have. I studied in my car while stuck in traffic, waiting for a snowplow to clear roads, just about any spare moment.

My first Clinical Instructor gave me some valuable advice about grades. "No one is ever going to ask you if you made an A in Med-Surg." My grades were average--not spectacular--just average.

Specializes in CVICU.

Sleep - average 4-6 (obviously more on nights I didn't have to work). Worked mostly full-time and went to school full-time.

Study - what's that? Who has time between work and school!? Ok, seriously, I maybe did 1 hour of school work per day.

Specializes in pediatrics, public health.
Did you work while you were in nursing school and if so how many hours a week did you work?

I did a one year accelerated BSN program. We were in clinicals 24 hours per week (3 8-hour shifts or 2 12's), plus another 10 to 20 hours of theory/skills lab per week, plus study time on top of that. We were advised that it wouldn't be possible to work even part time given the accelerated schedule. Frankly, I think I could have easily worked at least part time if it weren't for the fact that I'm a single mom of a boy who had just turned 5 when I started school -- so most of my non-school hours were spent with him. We had plenty of people in our program working part time and a few who even managed to work full time, but I don't think any of them had young children.

I agree with others who have said there are lots of things much harder than nursing school. When I was in my early 20s, I completed a PhD program in Chemistry. This was far more demanding than nursing school, both in terms of class/study time and in terms of working in the laboratory (the chem major equivalent of clinicals). I never could have done this and raise a child at the same time!

Before entering nursing school, I took some prerequisites that were accelerated, including a Human Anatomy class which was condensed into 4 weeks but was the equivalent of a 15 week semester long class. This was way harder than nursing school itself proved to be. In fact, that professor in that class gave us the first of a series of what I came to think of as the "boot camp" speech, i.e. the "this is the hardest thing you will ever do in your life and you're crazy to even try it. Kiss your family and friends good-bye until this is over, you will never see them again" speech. Thankfully, this speech never proved to be true, and if it had been true, I would have quit. How dare they tell me to kiss my family and friends good-bye! Good thing that I figured out before I starting nursing school that this was a load of ........!

The school I attended had a focus group of recent grads of the accelerated BSN program a few months ago -- we all agreed that nursing school wasn't nearly as hard as we had been forewarned it would be. This is not to say that it was easy but really, if you can handle your prerequisites, especially the sciences, you can handle nursing school.

That's my $0.02!

Diane

Specializes in CVICU.
When I was in my early 20s, I completed a PhD program in Chemistry. This was far more demanding than nursing school, both in terms of class/study time and in terms of working in the laboratory (the chem major equivalent of clinicals). I never could have done this and raise a child at the same time!

OMG, I just finished Gen Chem I & II and wanted to kill myself. Those classes alone required more from me than most of nursing school!

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