looking back, are there courses that you thought were not necessary?

[nowIamRN]

At my nursing program, we have to take two semesters of Fundamental of Nursing. Now, i'm not saying this course is unnecessary, but two whole semesters of learning what "therapeutic communication" is , just sames like waste of time to me. And to cap it off, we had to have Intro to Nursing too, which was basically the same as fundamental. Oh and i can have two semesters of organic chemistry but not pharmacology? of these two, which one i'm i going to use most of?!!!!

I mean there are other courses i wouldn't mind spending two semesters learning.

Take for instance pathophysiology, i wouldn't mind two semester of this, in fact i would totally welcome it! i think it is particularly important for nurses to know disease processes and how they affect our patients. Another course i would love to have two semester of is Health Assessment. This is one of the core process of nursing and yet our school sort of breeze through it.

Instead of nursing school bombarding us with unnecessary stuff, why not focus on things that are actually useful for when we graduate and enter the workforce.

so what about you? any courses you wish had been cut off or ones you wish you had spent more time with?

[ImThatGuy, BSN, RN]

A lot of your training IS seemingly useless, until you need it. I would agree that ADN nurses in our state are shortchanged in so many ways. They cannot chart in our hospital, because for some reason they are denied access to our computers. Well, how the HECK are they supposed to learn the legalities and proper documentation formats, if not as students with an instructor to correct them? I had an instructor come around before shifts end to eyeball my charting before I wrote it. (Paper charts, long ago). And yes, i have to agree that some of the courses may not be immediately applicable to the real world, but they are valuable; just seemingly secondary to what a new grad needs to function on a floor. I get a little riled when EMT to RN's talk about how IV's, intubation skills and ACLS protocols are MUCH more important then boring class work. Actually, knowing how to deal with a stressed out, non-compliant patient and/or their hostile, angry, ignorant family can be MUCH more valuable to a new nurse. I can teach foley insertion in 10 minutes, I may have to spend HOURS calming down an incipent riot when a family member feels "dissed".

I was taught to deal with ignorant people in a teacher prep program. I did this my first year out of college.

I was taught to deal with hostile people in a paramedic program. I did this off and on as a part-time gig.

I was taught to deal with non-compliant people at the police academy. I call law enforcement my career.

It was all a waste of time and expense. You don't know how you're going to react until you're exposed to it, and you develop your own styles to deal with it. I'd say trying to teach this in a college class would be a waste of time. Learn your own mechanisms to de-escalate a situation. When someone is screaming in your face the book goes out the window.

Hopefully nursing school won't go into it. No need.

With regard to comments about EMTs, I agree wholeheartedly. Their education is limited. I went to a conference once and an EMT there was describing bacteria as "tiny little bugs that cause disease and eat stuff."

It'd be great to teach them more, but it doesn't make economic sense. They're "technicians" so the education period shouldn't be lengthened. Algorithmic healthcare is best for many of them. Further degrees will only cost them more of which few will see any return in income. With billing what it is they have enough trouble keeping a private service afloat much less having to pay technicians more money. It's a troubling field. This isn't a slam to EMTs. I am one. :)

[GHGoonette, BSN, RN]

Some of the posters have opened a subject that is like a red rag to a bull from my point of view, and that is the limited amount of in-hospital experience which today's students are getting.

My training, back in the eighties, was more of an "apprenticeship" , in other words student nurses started work at teaching and training hospitals and were sent to college to study the theory for an average of 4 months a year. After 3 years, assuming you passed both the theory and clinical parts of your education, you were awarded your Diploma in General Nursing, and could then continue (if you so wished) to study in other fields of nursing. The benefits of this training system were, firstly, patient care; obviously, with all those students working in the various departments, you had an excellent staff/patient ratio. Secondly, it enabled us to learn all those vital clinical skills, as pointed out by the "Oirish" members!

Even in those days, there were nurses doing degree courses, but they still had an extensive clinical component that they had to complete.

Now, of course, the emphasis seems to predominantly "book learning" with next to no practical experience. I recently handed over a patient in ICU to a sister who didn't know how to set up an Aquapak! It seems to me that in their quest to achieve respect, nursing councils and other governing bodies have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Nursing is a hands-on profession; I believe the training should also be hands-on.

I do not belittle nursing degrees; I just feel that nursing as a profession needs to get back to basics and put the students where they most need to be-out there with the patients.

[wooh, BSN, RN]

Aaaah! Someone tell me you liked/thought was useful any class besides science... give me a sociology, a psychology, an economics... Anything.

You can lie to me.

Loved my sociology class. And considering just about every single one of patients has social issues...

The longer I'm a nurse, the more often little tidbits from my "useless" education come in handy. The skills you can pick up on the job. The knowledge of 50 different minute things so I'm making an educated decision instead of just following an algorithm, that takes education and experience.

(I'm the old fuddy duddy saying, "You'll understand when you grow up!")

[DogWmn]

Yikes I graduated from LPN school in '72 (yah yah I know the dark ages) and we had a huge list of skills we had to get checked off on BEFORE we could graduate. Each term we had one really looong day of college classes and 4 days of clinicals with 2 hours after a full day on the floor in the hospital "school room". The last term of school during our clinical days (4 days a week 7-3:30) we were expected to take a FULL patient load including meds, get and give report and to learn time management skills, then after our full day we had an additional 2 hours of class at the hospital going over skills there was even time to discuss our pt/family issues and how to deal (we had psych but no soc) A&P and an integrated science class specifically for LPN's that included some chem and micro. We did patient care plans, assessments (yah I know we aren't supposed know how to assess:rolleyes:). We didn't learn to insert IV's at that time (law wasn't changed until after I graduated) but we learned to monitor them including gtt counting, know what drugs were going in and adverse effects, change bottles (that's right glass bottles) without meds and dc IV's. We also learned all about blood transfusions and monitoring. We had quite a bit of pharmacology but in my state at the time most places required an additional pharmacology course to pass meds (that I took after graduation). We roatated on med-surg, peds, ortho/neuro and 1-2 weeks on ED, OB, OR and psych. I went to school in a fairly rural area and the staff really helped us out a lot knowing we'd be working side by side soon and they loved us because we would take over a lot of the basic patient care stuff that cna's do today. Even some of the docs got into the act. One doc noticed I was interested in the OR, asking questions (quietly) and didn't go green:lol2:, so he went to my nurse instructor and I learned to scrub in and actually got to hold a retractor and hand a few instruments when he was closing. I doubt that would happen today. A couple of the girls wanted more OB and they got it, of course they had to come in on eves and weekends to get it but to them it was worth it. We were allowed to pursue special interests like OB, OR, ED if we were willing to add additional clinical hours on weekends and the staff was there to mentor us. I did some additonal OR and ED on weekends, I never worked in those areas but I learned a lot that certainly added to my over all skills and knowledge on one shift in the ED I put in more foleys and and NG's than most do in a year of school.

I loved my LPN school it was really tough but when I graduated I felt very confident in the skills I learned and could manage a full load of patients right out of the box with only a few weeks of orientation.

[morte, LPN, LVN]

if you want to go to nursing SCHOOL, then find a diploma institution....otherwise you need to understand that there are criteria that need to be met to get that ADN or BSN.

[LilgirlRN, ADN, RN]

Most of what I do everyday has nothing to do with just about anything they teach in nursing school. I work in the ER, we got no careplans unless you call treat and street a care plan. We don't use nursing diagnosis. A&P was helpful. Psychology helpful. Sociology? The professor standing up in front of 150 or so kids telling us about how he and his buddies used to j^*k off together kinda ruined the class for me. My clinical instructors were helpful, things that just made common sense like... if the patient complains of dizziness even if you saw them skipping down the hall a few minutes ago, they don't go anywhere unassisted. Don't get the consent for surgery signed until AFTER the doctor has talked to them. If you're wasting narcotics with another nurse actually watch them wase it. The pen in your hand is the most useful instrument you have at your disposal, chart what you did and the patient's response to it. If it's not charted that you instructed the patient not to get up without assistance and they fall and break their hip. Last but not least... TOUCH the patient!

[pagandeva2000, LPN]

Most of them...just kidding...

Sociology made no sense, neither did English Literature. The patient doesn't care about my opinion about poetry. I felt it was wasted energy.

[VICEDRN, BSN, RN]

I have to go against the trend. I am a new grad and I am either learning new skills for the first time or using skills often that I rarely used or had the chance to use in nursing school. Quite frankly, skills are easy enough to pick up.

Like most new grads, my unit is mostly staffed with nurses with a great deal more experience than me. Their skills are far superior and their assessments are quicker. They can also more readily identify what sort of disposition the patient is likely to have. (I work in an ER)

HOWEVER, the purpose of all of the book learning is to gain compliance among nurses regarding certain procedures and activities and to increase the nurse's ability to safely care for his or her patient and reduce potential nursing and medical errors. A LOT of the nurses have no idea why they do certain things or why its important that such and such is done. Naturally, their compliance goes down and in turn, the nursing staff loses its credibility.

Also, I note that sociology and developmental psych are important depending on where you work. Developmental psych very important in peds. Sociology very important when addressing concerns that are community specific.

[K+MgSO4, BSN]

if you want to go to nursing SCHOOL, then find a diploma institution....otherwise you need to understand that there are criteria that need to be met to get that ADN or BSN.

I personally am not saying that we should go back to skills only in "school",( I think there may be a cultural divide on the way that that word is used).......but like some one posted about English lit what in the world is that going to do for your pt?? A class on how to write for academic essays is essential including referencing systems that your uni uses.

Statistics in itself does not seem useful to me as a purely mathematical subject................how many of your class are nurse researchers without further education? Health statistics are important however to see how we should be educating our patients and where the nurses of tomorrow should be focusing.

However dealing with conflict is an everyday occurrence and yet most of my conflict resolution comes from the job I had as a student as a supervisor in a bar.

I have done my share of research proposals and thesis and recognise the need for a well rounded education - lets not cut personal & professional development (e.g communication and diversity) Psych (eg Maslows' hierarchy of needs).

Maybe I am seeing this in a different light than a lot of AN, being educated in Ireland where our education is more specialist rather than the broad education of US nurses (maybe trying to squeeze too many topics into one course?? Adult, psych, intellectual disability, midwifery, child) The first 3 are 3 DIFFERENT undergrad degrees and the last 2 require a degree in one of the 3 before you can enrol in the course. In my adult (also called general because you work in a GENERAL hospital rather than a psych hospital or maternity hospital) we touched on the other subjects and done short 4 week placements in each of the areas other than what the title of our degree was.

[morte, LPN, LVN]

I personally am not saying that we should go back to skills only in "school",( I think there may be a cultural divide on the way that that word is used).......but like some one posted about English lit what in the world is that going to do for your pt?? A class on how to write for academic essays is essential including referencing systems that your uni uses.

Statistics in itself does not seem useful to me as a purely mathematical subject................how many of your class are nurse researchers without further education? Health statistics are important however to see how we should be educating our patients and where the nurses of tomorrow should be focusing.

However dealing with conflict is an everyday occurrence and yet most of my conflict resolution comes from the job I had as a student as a supervisor in a bar.

I have done my share of research proposals and thesis and recognise the need for a well rounded education - lets not cut personal & professional development (e.g communication and diversity) Psych (eg Maslows' hierarchy of needs).

Maybe I am seeing this in a different light than a lot of AN, being educated in Ireland where our education is more specialist rather than the broad education of US nurses (maybe trying to squeeze too many topics into one course?? Adult, psych, intellectual disability, midwifery, child) The first 3 are 3 DIFFERENT undergrad degrees and the last 2 require a degree in one of the 3 before you can enrol in the course. In my adult (also called general because you work in a GENERAL hospital rather than a psych hospital or maternity hospital) we touched on the other subjects and done short 4 week placements in each of the areas other than what the title of our degree was.

I was purposefully attempting to make the point of the difference between training and education.

And i quite agree that the generalist education/training in the USA is hard to meet in the two/three/four year time frame....I think the spelcialist would be the way to go, to maximize the time spent learning

[gentlegiver, ASN, LPN, RN]

We were required to take a course called 'Computers in Nursing". First day of class we learned how to turn the computer on. The average age of my classmates was 20 something. We actually knew more about computers than our instructor!

[m_aidez]

I've only taken one course that I think will not help me in my career, and it was an elective called "Politics and film." It is beyond me why I took that course.