How to prepare for accelerated program

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I am getting ready to begin my pre-nursing science classes before applying to a nursing program in 1 year. The whole program including the pre-nursing classes is accelerated - course work is online. For instance, each science class is 8 weeks long - I need all my science classes, I also need a couple of non science classes and patho and pharm.

Did any of you (nurses) go through an accelerated program? If so, I would love to get some advice on how to prepare for making it through. The clinical portion is 15 months. If I get in, I want to be as prepared a possible beforehand.

My plan to to make all A's and study very hard with all the sciences. I don't how that will help prepare me, but I am also reviewing a lot math. It use to be a horrible subject for me. Now, I am working to become proficient at math.

For instance, I see there are lots of Barron's Easy books and cliff note style books out there. I would love to know which ones are good to pick up and any essential info that will help me to excel in the entire program!

Thanks a bunch! :-)

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How to prepare. What a question :) Is your Accel program online, or just your pre-reqs? I am over halfway done with my online Accel program...things I wish I would have known/done:

-Get into a good routine. Go to bed/wake up at the same time each day. Make sure you make time for exercise or whatever you do for stress-relief.

-Prepare good study habits. Accelerated programs are not the time to experiment with good study habits. If taking notes is your preference, get fast at it, use good shorthand, and only write down the important topics.

-Make sure everyone else knows that you will have no life :) Sad, but true. You are doing an Accel program so you don't have to spend 2-4 years in school...these 15 months will be tough.

-Don't be afraid to use resources. If your instructors don't provide you with videos or notes, go find some. Make sure they are GOOD sources, though. YouTube videos are nice to have on hand...a lot of professors/nurses/doctors/etc. post public videos.

Good luck...you can do it :)

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Specializes in Adult Internal Medicine.

You take all your classes accelerated and online then apply to a clinical program for completion? Did I understand that right? Or are you just taking the pre-req classes online then applying to an accelerated program?

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I do all of the theory work online and at an accelerated pace. Once we get through 1/4 of the program (all of which is theory), we go to campus for 2 weeks for lab and our first clinical. After that, the school sets each student up at a clinical facility within 50 miles from home for the most part. We have one-on-one precepted clinicals with a nurse, and an instructor does site visits twice per clinical.

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Specializes in Adult Internal Medicine.

But you don't have to apply and get accepted again to do clinicals?

Is this an accredited program?

Just curious :)

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Accredited yes. Two applications no. http://Www.uwosh.edu :)

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Know the developmental theories of Erikson, Maslow, Piaget. Nursing instructors were always asking me to apply these theories or tell what stage of the developmental life cylcle a patient was in, in order to determine the patient's needs and develop a care plan.

Some schools are still all hepped up about nursing diagnoses and "The Nursing Process." And they might wander all over the garden paths when teaching students "The Nursing Process." ADPIE, or sometimes ADOPIE Nursing process - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://cfcc.edu/pn/documents/Module5.pdf

But it's not that complicated. It's really just a roadmap to assess p't, convert a medical diagnosis into issues and tasks that a nurse is allowed to do (nursing diagnosis the nurse can use), decide what the desired outcomes are, formulate a plan, implement the plan, and evaluate it's effectiveness. Rinse, lather, repeat. Assess, assess, make changes as required.

The school I attended was a diploma program that didn't run the conventional nursing units. It chopped topics up and gave us part of it one term and part another. The clinicals were rotations that were not sync'd with the lectures. etc. Accelerated RN (I investigated that type of curriculum to see how it's laid out, before I went diploma) looks like it'll have you doing the same double and triple efforts, because most of those programs are teaching two or more unrelated units of nursing concurrently in a semester. I don't know about you, but I learn better by totally immersing myself in something, staying on ONE TRACK, until I learn it, and then I move on to a different topic. With that school's "integrated" curriculum, I had a heck of a time as a perfectionist and an exacting technologist studying all about pregnancy, motherhood, child development, med-surg, learning the drugs (I aced the calculations, in my sleep, lol), etc, all in fragments and all at once. I didn't know anything about nursing or patient care or major illnesses or pregnancy or kids or anything, before I started. And our clinicals were always some topic either ahead or behind the lectures, so it was like going to two RN schools at the same time. Just too much "new" for me to really learn well. It just overwhelmed me to have to be CRAMMING totally unfamiliar material all the time. Relentlessly. I hated it. I never found a solution. I burned out after 12 months and left. I advise chatting with students who already went through your program, last year, to see what the killer terms are and how they coped with it.

Anatomy: Learn where the veins & arteries are relative to each other. Be able to look at a body and picture circulatory system, have a good mental pic of the bronchial tract, etc., know how the heart and lungs work and what all they do, know how the kidneys work. I took A&P a couple of years before I started RN school and it constantly annoyed me to have to go back and look up stuff that I could not instantly remember. RN school is all about time. You NEVER have enough time. ANYTHING that you can learn and memorize and understand thoroughly now, and carry around in your head, will help you to be more efficient in learning the nursing theory material later.

You'll have to cite references out the wazoo, every time you write a paper or a care map or care plan. Learn and memorize how to write up the APA citations for textbooks, chapters of edited books, etc. You always need to cite a book or other appropriate reference, and type up that reference, because a RN must be able, for liability reasons, to cite a source that is the basis of your decisions on the job. (Nurse just can't do something because it seemed like a good idea.)

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Specializes in Adult Internal Medicine.
Accredited yes. Two applications no. Www.uwosh.edu :)

Ahh good! I was a little nervous as there have been some schools popping up that let people take prereqs that aren't accepted anywhere else, then don't let them into the clinical program. Sounds like this is not one of those, phew.

For prep:

Get an anatomy coloring book and use it!

Review your developmental stages.

Familiarize yourself with the nursing process.

Take a look at basic micro: what's gram positive vs gram negative.

Get into a schedule of study time an free time. Need a good balance.

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Thanks, yes it is online. I have completed a 2 year online certification in nutrition, so I am familiar with online education. However, this is accelerated, so I am sure I will be in for a shock! Thanks for your tips! I need to reiterate to everyone, that I will have no life for a while! LOL!!

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Thanks for the tips everyone!

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