I thought I would share with you my experiences as a straight, white, non-political, low 30's - male in nursing. To avoid doxxing myself, I'll just say that I'm in a top 10 student getting my NP. I want to be very clear, I'm not saying men shouldn't go into nursing, I am saying you should understand what you're getting yourself into. Also, these are just my experiences and you could have a totally different experience.
I have an undergraduate in computer science and completed an ABSN program because I thought I'd like to work with people. The actual nursing portion of my program was great; fundamentals, pharmacology, and pathophysiology are all important classes to master. Unfortunately these courses represented a minority of the coursework. The majority of the coursework was spent essentially preaching socialism to us under the veneer of "community health" and "ethics". Now I get it, I was a little order when I went into nursing and I have a different perspective. But every single community health or ethics class was about how evil capitalism is and how there should be a government program for everything. Full disclaimer, I voted for Hilary Clinton twice and politics isn't my thing. The bias was so overwhelming and they didn't even try to hide it. I realize that socialism / communism is fashionable with the younger crowd, but I wish I would have learned about actual community health or ethical issues in nursing.
Race Issues. Yet another disclaimer, race couldn't mean less to me. We had several lectures and guest seminars from prominent people in campus leadership tell us that it wasn't possible to racist against white people because white people have all the power. It was just ironic because that statement came from a dean at an IVY league school that is a person of color. We had a few students that were obsessed with race. We would be learning about cardiac issues and the medications that you use to treat the conditions. For those that don't know, African Americans typically don't respond well to Angiotensin Receptor Blockers (ARBs) and are typically placed on calcium channel blockers. This one girl in class went on about how it was systemic racism and prior experiences being a slave that causes African Americans to have poor cardiac health. The professor went along with it.
To summarize my ABSN experience, I learned that it was never the patients fault for their own poor outcome. The poor outcome was entirely due to being oppressed because of their race or sex; or there isn't a government program available for them to utilize. The lack of a government program to help afford a generic medication that costs less than $5/90 day supply is probably due to racism.
I'll post about my experience in NP school later, but as a male I'd be aware of the following before I signed up for nursing school.
If I could describe nursing school in one word it would be gynocentric; if you gave me two words, I'd say extreme SJWs.
If you are science minded, put in the extra work and go to medical school. Trust me, I have friends that did this and the majority of your time is spent learning actual medicine. I had a semester long "evidence based practice" class where we learned that grounding yourself can improve your mental health. Grounding, as in grounding yourself to an electrical outlet or going barefoot in the grass. I've taken several classes on electricity and magnetism in my undergrad. "Grounding" yourself will do absolutely nothing but we learned pseudo-science instead of medicine.
If you are a-political or heaven forbid lean conservative; learn to keep your ideas to yourself. I got much better grades on assignments when I learned how to write like the reincarnation of Karl Marx.
Group work can be a very social thing. Group work in computer science focused on results and objective goals, does your code compile? Did your robot fall over and die? Nursing group work is about how people feel about the work. It's less objective and more subjective.
Your program will be mostly run by women and very effeminate men. My program has a prom every year. In all fairness, my computer science department would order bunch of kegs once a month for the students.
I'm not saying don't go into nursing. Nursing is a great profession and it's very rewarding. If I had to do it over again, I would have taken the additional year and applied to medical school.
I'll share more about my experience in NP school so far at another time.
Have you tried socialized medicine? Look at the VA and ask yourself if that’s what you want. Government healthcare is inferior to a market based system in all but one aspect, cost. The government must contain cost by reducing care.
I feel like if the majority of other first world countries can run their healthcare on taxes and ensure healthcare for everyone then why can’t America? Aren’t we supposed to be the greatest? Not only do they do that but people there pay less for healthcare overall and they have a longer life expectancy. I mean we pay the highest for healthcare yet we have shorter life expectancy and worse healthcare outcomes. I don’t know something just isn’t adding up.
I feel like if the majority of other first world countries can run their healthcare on taxes and ensure healthcare for everyone then why can’t America? Aren’t we supposed to be the greatest? Not only do they do that but people there pay less for healthcare overall and they have a longer life expectancy. I mean we pay the highest for healthcare yet we have shorter life expectancy and worse healthcare outcomes. I don’t know something just isn’t adding up.
Why is it that people from other countries come here for healthcare when their life depends on it? If you need life saving medicine in a timely fashion, the US is the place to have it. Wait times at the VA are horrible, same with Canada, and Scandinavia.
thats actual data on wait times depending on country. A lot of the research I’ve done seems to claim the same. So I’m not too sure if universal healthcare causes longer wait times.
And even the difference between Canada and U.S was only an 8% difference. But at least in Canada everyone has the healthcare they need.
Why is it that people from other countries come here for healthcare when their life depends on it? If you need life saving medicine in a timely fashion, the US is the place to have it. Wait times at the VA are horrible, same with Canada, and Scandinavia.
Because surgeons make very significantly more money here, so the better surgeons come here to get rich.
And those wait times, you know why they exist? Because people don't have to choose between remortgage their home or go to the doctor, and that's only for routine care. Emergencies get treated immediately, but new boobs can wait. There's no waits in the US because people have to die instead of seeing a doctor.
Have you tried socialized medicine? Look at the VA and ask yourself if that’s what you want. Government healthcare is inferior to a market based system in all but one aspect, cost. The government must contain cost by reducing care.
I second this statement, they contain cost by ultimately reducing care and quality of care delivered. The VHA is a basket case of epic proportions. Any good news or data is based on manipulations and cherry picking, it is a dog and pony show, smoke and mirrors, or a shell game to make even the scant good numbers look good. How do I know? Been there done that (Decades). The government should not run ANYTHING! When they run everything, it's called Socialism or Communism. And its not pretty.
Didn't read the rest of the commentary but this is literally modern day "higher "education. I have advanced education in the humanities and its no different. You need to tow the party line to do well. I literally had to formulate papers against my own beliefs because I knew there would be grade repercussions. I remember seeing this brewing when I was a undergrad student in the late 2000s and it just got worse.
Can't dabble into wrong think. Just suck it up and do what you got to do then forget the BS when you graduate.
Didn't read the rest of the commentary but this is literally modern day "higher "education. I have advanced education in the humanities and its no different. You need to tow the party line to do well. I literally had to formulate papers against my own beliefs because I knew there would be grade repercussions. I remember seeing this brewing when I was a undergrad student in the late 2000s and it just got worse.
Can't dabble into wrong think. Just suck it up and do what you got to do then forget the BS when you graduate.
Same to a large degree in theology (though the wrong think can be far left or right depending on school). My school is one of the few that is still liberal in the sense of free thought but it's an exception to the norm.
As someone who was in medical school and dropped out, I'm glad I did. I am science-minded, but I didn't want to be in $400,000 of debt and go through the schooling of medical school. Things aren't always better on the other side, but I guess it depends on you as a person and your perspective.
As a white man in nursing, I also can't stand the sexism and racism I face every day.
In school, any time I got a right answer in class, my female classmates would condescendingly say, "Oh, good for you. You're so articulate."
When I said I was confused about something, they'd say, "Oh, sweetheart, don't you worry your pretty little head about it."
Don't get me started on being a white male at the bedside. When I go to a patient's room, they are always saying "Oh, Doctor, thank God you're here!" And then I say, "No, I'm actually your nurse." They say, "You, a nurse? No way. I mean, a man can't be something as important as a NURSE?"
I haven't been on allnurses in a while but the email with your topic caught my attention. I am not a Democrat or Republican, they both suck. I mostly align with the Libertarian party. Let's just say I knew my views would have been looked down upon in Ethics and similar classes. I knew enough to just keep my mouth shut. Being at a religious school it had the worst of "both" political parties from a Libertarians point of view. Way too much time talking about needing more programs and more money to make sure everyone is 100% covered for 100% of the outcomes without any care of the effort they put into trying to provide for themselves. The flip side they lectured about restricting rights of women, LGBT ( I don't even know if that is the right letters these days..), etc. The thing that drove me the most crazy that I kept my mouth shut was when they brought in someone who worked at the school and hospital not with a medical background, but with a religion education, to tell us how giving a woman a total hysterectomy to treat an ectopic pregnancy was not an abortion and was ethically OK but treating the pregnancy by just removing only the non viable fertilized egg and leaving the reproductive system in tact was abortion and wrong. To take it a step further, it was morally acceptable to this person to let the woman die from the ectopic pregnancy and NOT refer her to another hospital that would treat it differently. This woman advises doctors at the hospital what is ethical or not for their procedures!! Anyway, if you are smart enough to look past the obvious BS from our school, they are very highly respected for the quality of the education given and the job rate at graduation is near 100%. I could do without the socialist agenda and human rights restrictions based on religion. I am done with the "fluff" classes so hopefully I don't run into that again.
Bobognnp
26 Posts
I feel like if the majority of other first world countries can run their healthcare on taxes and ensure healthcare for everyone then why can’t America? Aren’t we supposed to be the greatest? Not only do they do that but people there pay less for healthcare overall and they have a longer life expectancy. I mean we pay the highest for healthcare yet we have shorter life expectancy and worse healthcare outcomes. I don’t know something just isn’t adding up.