Homework? How much in 1st year?

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Hey there,

I know this might be a wide open question, with many answers from different people. But, how many hours per WEEK of Homework is there in 1st year Nursing School? Thanks!

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Hey there,

I know this might be a wide open question, with many answers from different people. But, how many hours per WEEK of Homework is there in 1st year Nursing School? Thanks!

I think you're better off speaking with someone a year a head of you in your program as this will vary wildly from program to program.

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I've finished my 1st year and we never had any homework. Just studying our butts off. The only thing we did have to do 1st semester was go to our clinical site a couple days before to get our assignment and look up the meds and diseases are patient had and create a careplan....had to be done by the day of clinical.

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Specializes in IMCU.
I think you're better off speaking with someone a year a head of you in your program as this will vary wildly from program to program.

I completely agree. I think it varies with instructors too.

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Specializes in Critical Care; Cardiac; Professional Development.

Yep, will vary with instructors. Frankly, a lot of it is up to you. A lot of what we had to do was not "turned in for a grade". It was just however much we chose to study.

We were assigned about 450-600+ pages to read each week. Then there was skills lab practice outside of class time. Group community service project to work on. Paperwork and patient research for clinicals. Pharmaceuticals to study for and med math to keep up with. We had two major care plans due over the course of the semester plus two minor care plans due each week. Concept mapping toward the end of the semester. Computer lab. A paper on therapeutic communication. Plus studying for exams and of course for the NCLEX.

In other words, more than you can possibly imagine, if you chose to put in the time.

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Specializes in ER, progressive care.

I agree that this varies widely between programs. Most of the "homework" associated with each course is spending a heck of a lot of time studying and reading. My first year of nursing school and three out of my four junior rotations had clinical "homework" (also known as prep work) where you had to get a ton of information on your patient, look up all of their medications (brand/generic name, SE's, nursing implications for each med) and create a care plan. Depending on the patient, sometimes this would take only an hour or two to do...other times it's a lot longer. I think the most time I have ever spent on clinical prep work was 5 1/2 hours :eek:

I can break down the amount of "work" involved from each of my rotations. Keep in mind that every program is different, but hopefully this will give you some idea and answer your question. Studying & reading a ton is already a given for each rotation. In every rotation I also had to go on an online website (ours is called Springboard; used to use WebCT. Some schools use Blackboard...I'm sure there are others) and each week we had a question that we had to post answers to. We usually had to do two posts/week - one answering the question and another responding to a peer. Some of them can be pretty long!

Foundations of Nursing Practice I: we were in a nursing home for this. Clinical prep work. There was a huge assessment paper due at the end of this rotation, basically we just talked about our patient, did a review of systems and then talked about two nursing diagnoses with outcomes and interventions. We also a lab component and we had skills competencies on 4 areas - ambulation/range of motion, vital signs, IM/SQ injections & a sterile dressing change. We also had to write a process recording from a clinical experience.

Health Assessment: this class didn't have a clinical component, just a lecture and lab component. You learn how to conduct head-to-toe assessments. It was mostly studying/reading and lab was all skills demonstration.

Foundations of Nursing Practice II: here we transitioned from a nursing home to a hospital. Very similar to Foundations I, minus the lab component (so we didn't have to do any skills competencies). Paper was very similar.

Starting junior & senior year, we had to start writing "clinical journals" - basically describing our day, what went well/what didn't went well, what we learned, what we did, etc. For senior year clinicals, we are supposed to include Benner's Domains in each of our journals stating how we met those domains. Some clinical instructors have a journal due every week; others only have a couple due. It just depends.

OB/L&D: For clinicals we had to write a nursing care plan for both mom and baby. They gave us a list of the most commonly-used meds in OB so those were the only things we had to look up/know. We did not go the night before our clinical day to get information on our patient. For our paper, we had to find a lay article (in a magazine that you can get off a grocery store stand, for example) that talks about a woman's health issue, then we had to find a professional nursing journal article talking about the same issue and compare/contrast. Honestly that paper was a pain in my butt!

Mental Health: No clinical prep work. For every Springboard post, we had to include 2 professional nursing journal articles, which I hated because sometimes finding those articles can take forever. We also had to do 4 alternative experiences - at least 2 of them had to be interactive (such as going to a group therapy session like an AA meeting or support group or listening to a speaker...you could also shadow a psych nurse). For the other 2, we had the option of either reading a book or watching a movie that talks about mental health issues (there are a TON of movies out there!). Instead of a paper, we had to write two process recordings.

Older Adults: There was usually a ton of prep work for this class because you're dealing with the elderly who usually have a long list of comorbidities and are on a ton of medications (but not always!). We had to take online quizzes each week. The paper was a case management paper - the whole point was to choose a patient who was being discharged, conduct a home visit and see how they are doing after being discharged. This paper was probably one of the shorter papers I have written.

Adults: Basically a med-surg class. A lot of prep work. I think the hardest thing about this class was the paper - we had to do a fluid & electrolyte paper on a patient and include 4 nursing diagnoses - 2 focusing on a fluid problem and the other 2 focusing on an electrolyte problem. We had to incorporate a ton of pathophysiology related to these as well as outcomes and interventions. My second favorite class!

Critical Care: my favorite class BY FAR, but we still had a lot to do. This class had a lecture, lab & clinical component. No prep work the night before. Basically they gave us a whole packet of information including common drips and other meds used in the ICU/ICU step-down units that we were required to have a knowledge base on. We had to do weekly EKG worksheets, and we also did some ABG worksheets. The "paper" was more like a case study - you pick a patient, talk about their history and incorporate pathophysiology on their admitting diagnosis. We had to talk about their meds (limiting to 6-7 of the most important meds) and then had to formulate 2 nursing diagnoses with interventions and outcomes. We also had to include 3 day's-worth of lab data and talk about that. It was a lengthy paper and took me awhile to do. Our lab component consisted mostly of EKG workshops...one day we had different stations set up - one on central lines, suctioning with both an open and closed suctioning system, ICP monitoring, etc...and every day we had a simulation with a patient where we had to intervene. We also did a "mock code blue" which I honestly thought was a lot of fun :D

Community/Public Health Nursing: I am just finishing this class right now (I have the final tomorrow, and then I am done **THANK GOD*** :yeah:) I must say, I really hate this class! We had 6 pop quizzes (unannounced) and they would drop the lowest one. Thankfully we had no Springboard assignments or Evolve tests to take. The lecture material was extremely pointless and irrelevant to a lot of things. The clinical itself varies depending on your site - some students went to the local Health Department, some went to our Community Center for Nursing, some taught in schools, some went to centers with MRDD clients...I had my experience with hospice and home health nursing. I lucked out and ended up on an IV infusion team for my home health nursing days, where I got to hang a lot of IV antibiotics, draw labs off PICC lines (sometimes through a peripheral stick), do wound care/dressing changes and PICC line dressing changes. I also did a lottttt of manual BP's, pulses and assessments - both for home health and hospice. For hospice, I mostly followed around the nurse (aside from vitals and assessments). The PH rotation focuses a lot of "education" but it really depends on where you are placed - those students that were teaching in schools did a TON of education. I think one of the worst aspects was the paper - it was a group paper, and originally you were supposed to literally go in your car, drive around a community and do a community assessment. This time, they had us go on "Second Life" (kind of like The Sims, but The Sims is actually fun...Second Life is not), pick 3 islands and do community assessments based on that. It was extremely frustrating. We also had to give a group presentation talking about our findings.

I have two rotations left...pediatrics and my practicum.

I also forgot to mention that for EVERY class, we had to take online tests in our time that didn't count for anything. The amount varies per class. In my first year of nursing school and when I took my gero rotation, we had to do these things called LSRNs (learning systems RN). We had to do several for each class, and we had to spend a minimum of 60min taking the test and 60min to review our answers. They took FOREVER. Now they changed from LSRNs to using Elsevier Evolve where we take tests on that. Some of the exams are proctored and are graded (such as during my critical care rotation) and others are not. It just depends. The Evolve tests do not take nearly as long as those LSRNs.

whew that was long!! :dzed: Hope I didn't bore you with all of that information! :lol2: :redbeathe

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thank you for taking the time to write this, I really enjoyed a glimpse into nursing school!

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Hey there,

I know this might be a wide open question, with many answers from different people. But, how many hours per WEEK of Homework is there in 1st year Nursing School? Thanks!

Depends on a lot of factors:

What is your current GPA?

How much did you study previously?

Do you want to do well or barely pass?

How fast to you absorb information?

As a rule of thumb, figure 15-20 hours per week if you want to excel. 5-10 if you want to spend your nursing student career wondering if/when you will be booted from the program.

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I completely agree. I think it varies with instructors too.

Everyone in my program has the same instructors....hence why I said it depends on the program.

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Specializes in IMCU.

I used to laugh about people who said it took them 8 hours to do a care plan. Then I had to do care plans that took 8 hours. It stopped being funny very quickly....:)

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Specializes in ER, progressive care.
thank you for taking the time to write this, I really enjoyed a glimpse into nursing school!

:)

One more thing I forgot to mention - math tests!! Nursing math isn't very difficult - you need to know conversions (such as g --> mg --> mcg, L --> mL, how many mL are in 1oz, how many mL in a teaspoon/tablespoon [more relevant for peds], how many lb in 1kg) as well as basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. There are simple formulas to remember, or you can solve by using dimensional analysis (which I hate) or ratio/proportion (which I love when it comes to critical care math!) For dosage calculations, I highly recommend Calculate With Confidence by Deborah Gray Morris. It was a requirement at my school and it is excellent - I have gotten a lot of use out of it. It walks you through solving problems and will show you different methods depending on what you like to use, then there are ton of practice problems to try. The book also comes with a CD with more practice problems. Here were the math tests I had to take:

FNP1: basic nursing math, such as conversions (how many L are in a mL? how many mL in a teaspoon/tablespoon?) as well as simple dosage calculations, such as figuring out how many tablets or capsules you will give (50mg of a drug is ordered; there are 25mg tablets available. How many would you give?) For liquid meds/IV push/injections, you would have to figure out how many mL you would give (50mL of a drug is ordered; you have 125mg in 5mL of syrup available. How many mL would you give?) We were allowed to use calculators.

Older Adults: probably one of the hardest math tests I have taken because we weren't allowed to use calculators, and it was all IV stuff. We had to figure out mL/hr (1L of dextrose over 8 hours. How many mL/hr would you set the pump at?) and gtt (drops)/min (you need to give 100mL of fluid in 1 hour. The drop factor is 15. How many gtt/min?) - it was all long-hand division which is easy to mess up if you ask me...

OB/L&D: we were allowed to use calculators for this one...basically over stuff I already mentioned.

Adults: same as above. We also had to do heparin calculations (units/hr and mL/hr)

Critical Care: This test was tough! We were allowed to use calculators on this because of the math (and when you are working with vasoactive drugs, you better make sure your math is RIGHT! Use of calculators is encouraged in critical care areas). An example would be: Patient is on dopamine 10mL/hr. Hanging is dopamine 400mg/250mL. Patient weighs 60kg. How many mcg/kg/min is your patient receiving? also mcg/kg, mcg/min, mL/hr.

Don't let the math freak you out - practice makes perfect, just like with anything! ;)

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[quote:)One more thing I forgot to mention - math tests!!

This is the scariest part for me, too. At my school there is a dosage test every quarter, if you don't pass, you are out of the program!!! I believe in the first year you can retake a dosage test once, after that, NO, you are out!! I took a separate class called Dosage Calculations, got an A and I think I really understand it but I will spend the summer brushing up before fall.

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