Is my school the only one?

Nursing Students General Students

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I have seen a lot of recent posts about the different nursing courses that some are required to take for their nursing program.

My program literally has 4 nursing classes, 8 credits each. A 3 credit pharmacology class, and 2 one credit pharmacology classes. But the nursing classes are just Nursing I, Nursing II, Nursing III, and Nursing IV with clinicals every semester.

It seems like this is not the common layout for a nursing program. Just curious, what classes does your program include?

]Not in school yet but here is my CC's set up

30 hours Pre-req/Gen ed Classes.

Fundamentals of Nursing (1st Semester) - 8

]Medical Surgical Nursing (2nd Semester) - 5

Psychiatric Nursing (2nd Semester) - 4

Maternal Nursing (3rd Semester) - 4

Pediatric Nursing (3rd Semester) - 4

Advanced Adult Medical Surgical I (4th Semester) - 5

Advanced Adult Medical Surgical II (4th Semester) - 5

Nursing Concepts (4th Semester) - 2

Here's the deal -- every nursing program provides the same basic, required content and clinical experiences (with some minor differences among states). How a particular program organizes and divvies up that content and what it names the courses are entirely up to the individual school. Some states are making more of an effort to standardize nursing curricula across the state. However, this is one of the things that makes it so difficult to transfer among nursing programs. But, since all the programs within a state meet that state BON's requirements for content and clinical experience (or they wouldn't be approved to operate), it doesn't really matter how many individual courses there are or what they are called (however, I certainly don't mean to suggest that there aren't significant differences in quality among programs -- the standards set by the BON are the minimum to be allowed to operate; there are programs that are satisfied to meet the bare minimum, and programs that choose to go "above and beyond.")

Specializes in ICU.

My school goes by semesters, but the classes are broken up into 4 and 8 weeks each.

Semester 1

Fundamentals of Nursing and Lab

Med/Surg 1 with lab

Clinicals

Semester 2

Med/Surg 2 with lab

Pharamcolgy

Clinicals

Mental Health Nursing

Semester 3

Complex Med/Surg Nursing

Med/Surg Lab

Clinicals

Semester 4

Nursing for childbearing and childbearing families

Lab

Clinicals

Specializes in Case mgmt., rehab, (CRRN), LTC & psych.

If I recall correctly, my nursing courses were labeled according to the type of nursing.

So I had classes that were titled advanced med/surg nursing, psychiatric/maternal health nursing, OB/maternal health nursing, community health nursing, pediatric nursing, and so forth. Pharmacology and dosage calculations were incorporated into each class, so I had no separate pharmacology course.

Specializes in Pediatrics, Emergency, Trauma.
Here's the deal -- every nursing program provides the same basic, required content and clinical experiences (with some minor differences among states). How a particular program organizes and divvies up that content and what it names the courses are entirely up to the individual school. Some states are making more of an effort to standardize nursing curricula across the state. However, this is one of the things that makes it so difficult to transfer among nursing programs. But, since all the programs within a state meet that state BON's requirements for content and clinical experience (or they wouldn't be approved to operate), it doesn't really matter how many individual courses there are or what they are called (however, I certainly don't mean to suggest that there aren't significant differences in quality among programs -- the standards set by the BON are the minimum to be allowed to operate; there are programs that are satisfied to meet the bare minimum, and programs that choose to go "above and beyond.")

This.

As care as my program; I had Med-Surg I-III; As well as Fundamentals, Health Assessment, Maternal/OB, Peds, Mental Health, Research Nursing, Public Health, and Leadership Nursing.

They were labeled as 300 and 400 level courses.

My program keeps all the courses separate. Thank goodness. I couldn't imagine having to complete an entire semester/module due to not passing one class.

Im enrolled to start pre-reqs this coming semester but my school is

Summer: Nursing 100- Intro to nursing - 1 credit

Semester 1: Nursing Concepts 1 - 9 credits

Semester 2: Nursing Concept 2 - 9 credits

Semester 3: Nursing Concepts 3 - 9 credits

Pharmacology/ Pathophysiology for Health Care professionals 3 credits

Semester 4: Nursing Concepts 4 - 9 credits

Contemporary Concepts in Nursing - 1 credit

Specializes in Forensic Psych.

We had what's called an Integrated Program set up like yours, OP. We covered each area (ob, peds, psych, med-surg, fundamentals, etc) each semester, and each semester was organized by acuity.

The idea was that you'd be better prepared for NCLEX if you built on every concept throughout the entire program, but I'm not really buying it.

I am not in the program yet..I have to take two pre reqs and the TEAS before applying but this is what my school has:

Nassau Community College - College Catalog - Nursing (A.S.)

SUNY Delhi - RN to BSN

[TABLE=width: 375]

[TR]

[TH=align: left]irst Semester[/TH]

[TH=align: left]Credits[/TH]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]AHS 131 Anatomy and Physiology I[/TD]

[TD]4[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]ENG 101 Composition I or

MAT 102 Introduction to Statistics or

PSY 203 General Psychology I[/TD]

[TD]3[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]NUR 101 Fundamentals of Nursing[/TD]

[TD]8.5[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]Total Semester Credits[/TD]

[TD]15.5[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=colspan: 2] [/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TH=align: left]Second Semester[/TH]

[TH=align: left]Credits[/TH]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]AHS 132 Anatomy and Physiology II[/TD]

[TD]4[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]ENG 101 Composition I or

MAT 102 Introduction to Statistics or

PSY 203 General Psychology I[/TD]

[TD]3[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]NUR 105 Introduction to Medical Surgical Nursing[/TD]

[TD]8.5[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]Total Semester Credits[/TD]

[TD]15.5[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=colspan: 2] [/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TH=align: left]Summer Session[/TH]

[TH=align: left]Credits[/TH]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]ENG 101 Composition I or

PSY 203 General Psychology I or

PSY 216 Lifespan Human Development or

SOC 201 Introduction to Sociology

[/TD]

[TD]3[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]MAT 102 Introduction to Statistics[/TD]

[TD]3[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]Total Semester Credits[/TD]

[TD]6[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=colspan: 2] [/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TH=align: left]Third Semester[/TH]

[TH=align: left]Credits[/TH]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]AHS 202 Medical Microbiology[/TD]

[TD]4[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]Humanities Elective[/TD]

[TD]3[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]NUR 203 Comprehensive Nursing Care I[/TD]

[TD]8.5[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]PSY 216 Lifespan Human Development[/TD]

[TD]3[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]Total Semester Credits[/TD]

[TD]18.5[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=colspan: 2] [/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TH=align: left]Fourth Semester[/TH]

[TH=align: left]Credits[/TH]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]ENG 102 Composition II[/TD]

[TD]3[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]Humanities Elective[/TD]

[TD]3[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]NUR 204 Comprehensive Nursing Care II[/TD]

[TD]8.5[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]Total Semester Credits[/TD]

[TD]14.5[/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

Specializes in Neonatal Nurse Practitioner.

My nursing classes are

Sem. 1 - Patho, Pharm, Health Assessment

Sem. 2 - Nursing 1, Nursing 2

Sem. 3 - Nursing 3, Nursing 4

Sem. 4 - Nursing 5, Nursing 6

Sem. 5 - Transition to Practice (NCLEX Prep), Capstone Project, Preceptorship

Fundamentals, med/surg, OB, Psych, Peds, Community, Research, and Management are all mixed up in Nursing 1-6.

Its interesting to see the variety of nursing program curricula!

My BSN/RN program curriculum is as follows

Junior 1

Health Assessment (Lecture and Sim Lab) 4 credits

Pathophysiology 3 credits

Introduction to Professional Nursing 3 credits

Psychiatric/Mental Health Nursing (Lecture and Clinical) 5 credits

Junior Two

Pharmacology 3 credits

Managing Care of the Adult I and II (Lecture and Clinical of 10 credits, so I & II) 10 credits

Healthy Aging 2 credits

GenEd course (Drugs and Society) 3 credits

Senior One

Nursing Research 2 credits

Maternity Nursing (Lecture and Clinical) 5 credits

Care of Infants, Children, and Youth (Lecture and Clinical) 5 credits

Managing Care of the Adult II (ICU) (Lecture and Clinical) 5 credits

Senior Two

Leadership 3 credits

Community Health (Lecture and Clinical) 5 units

GenEd course (Foundations of Death, Dying, and Bereavement) 3 credits

** the managing care of the adult lectures/clinical I, II, and III are also known as Med Surg. Except III is clinical in the ICU.

Total = 67 credits

I was on the waiting list for an ADN nursing school at a community college in California. They had the same situation. I was under the impression that many of the community college nursing programs in the Bay Area and central California were like this, but I could be mistaken. I'm in an accelerated BSN program in Oregon now and they follow a state-regulated schedule where the classes are named according to their subject matter, but I don't much about it. I'm just going with the flow. :)

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