Help here please!

TexasPediRN · Mar 5, 2006

First off, congrats on deciding to do nursing :) Its a wonderful profession and I hope you love it as much as we all do!

With that being said, I'm a little skeptical that an RN program, or even LVN for that matter, doesnt require biology or chemistry. I went to a 4 year college and got my RN, BSN. I took 1 year of chemistry, 1 semester of microbiology, 1 year of anatomy & physiology, statistics, and a general math course.

Have you checked out the course schedule for their RN program? There has to be science classes in there...go to their site and check out the outline of their RN program just to be sure. It will say like 1st semester, these courses, and so on.

It is helpful to know what classes they do require. As for math courses, you do use some math in nursing. You need to figure out drug calcuations and stuff along those lines.

I wish you luck but please check out the course outline to find out about sciences required- I just find it very odd that neither of those courses are required for an RN program.

-Meghan :nurse:

Daytonite, BSN, RN · Mar 5, 2006

I think you are smart to be thinking about this. Some nursing programs incorporate these sciences into their nursing curriculums rather than have you take these science classes separately. It's not done that way at most colleges, but it sounds like yours is doing it that way.

If you can afford to do it, just audit a biology and chemistry class. All that requires is that you usually get the permission of the instructor, but you don't get a grade or have to take the tests. You usually have to pay some kind of tuition though. I don't think it even shows up on your transcript, but ask the school. Basically, all you want to do is just sit there and listen to the lectures. I ran across a website for one of the California state colleges about a month ago where all their chemistry class lectures were videotaped and online! I was listening to one of them and couldn't believe it--it was like being in the huge lecture hall! Brought back memories. Of course, I can't remember exactly which college it was at the moment, but I think it was San Francisico State or UC San Francisco. Some of the larger colleges do tape their lectures although not all of them give the general public access like that. However, some do have those lectures on reserve in their college libraries so all you have to do is go to the school's library to view them. That is another possibility. Third, if there is another junior college near you that has beginnner's classes in biology, chemistry and math (pre-algebra) go there and never mention it to your current school.

Since I have been re-taking all my math classes starting with pre-algebra (working up to Calculus) I can recommend a sight called www.interactmath.com which I have used for two of my math classes: intermediate algebra and trigonometry. It has just a whole slew of exercises from a huge list of math books published by Pearson and is capable of generating new problems on the spot. Do some self-help by starting with pre-algebra and work up to beginning algebra. Look for the books by Martin-Gay and go into the exercises for her books. We've used two of her textbooks in algebra that included videos that she made and she did a really nice job of explaining the material. If you're willing to shell out $29 you can get access to Math XL at the same site which will give you access to video taped snipets of step by step examples of how to work certain types of math problems. The nice thing about the interactmath problems is that they will show you how to work every single problem they give you if you ask the program to do that. It is a very patient tutor. You only have to download two drivers in order to access their software programs and it's all free (except Math XL).

Please check out the sticky threads in this forum and the general nursing student discussion forum. There have been a lot of postings of helpful websites for math, chemistry and biology that you should check out since you have the time. I have a large listing of anatomy and physiology links as well. While I find many by doing websearches, I also find a lot by just going to the websites of colleges and exploring whatever the science and math departments and their faculty have posted publicly on their computer system. I also explore any links they provide for their students. I am always amazed at the information I find. The Internet is certainly the New Library.

kurkowsa34 · Mar 6, 2006

Thank you both for your input. Very good information and I will check it all out. The nursing program does incorporate their science and math into the program, I just wanted to know if there was something I could do to try to get prepared before starting. I am very excited about doing nursing and look forward to a long and rewarding career.