Need some advice for my upcoming med-surge semesters

Double-Helix, BSN, RN · Apr 23, 2011

I can't speak to the difficulty of your program, the amount of work involved, the paperwork, etc. because I don't know what school you attend. For those questions, I suggest talking to a nursing instructor or the director of the nursing program who will know the program requirements and be able to give you better advice.

I do know that the final years of any nursing program usually require quite a bit of work outside of class. That means that it's not unreasonable to plan to be up late at least twice a week studying or working on a paper. It may be hard, but it's not impossible.

The biggest obstacle seems to be your clinical requirements. Do you get to choose which days you are in clinical or will your job work around that? Many students in my nursing program work and have families, but many are not able to work full time during the last couple of years (4 year program). It's probably better to plan to take the time off than to decide to work and end up over your head and fail the program. What are your job options? Will they allow you to work part time? Financially, how much do you need to work?

This is a tough situation. Find out as much information as you can before making your choice. Good luck!

Ashley

orsrt05 · Apr 23, 2011

Thanks Ashley,

It's encouraging to hear that you had students towards the end of the program who were still working and they had families and such. This seems to be a murky area to inquire about. No one can give me a clear cut answer when I ask them at my school. I don't know if it's because they don't want to be misleading and make it sound easier than it really is; or they're worried they're gonna scare me out of the program. I cant figure it out.

The school I am attending is Westchester Community College in Valhalla, NY. I attend school through the tuition voucher program through 1199. I have no student loans or bills at the current moment and I will not have to take any student loans out cause my tuition for the next two semesters will be paid for as well.

I have two obstacles at this point. #1 - Whether or not I could afford to switch to part time or take an educational leave from my job. I would have to take out a personal loan, if I can get one, to cover my mortgage payments until I can finish the program. #2- My job will give me off the two days per week required for my clinical rotation during my 4th semester, but, I will effectively have no days off from work.

Of course, my ideal situation going forward would be to take an educational leave from work and take out a personal loan to cover my mortgage. But what if I can't do this? This is where I am asking all you nursing students who possibly had to make this same decision, what did you do or not do and how did it work out at the end of the program in terms of your workload?

Bob_N_VA · Apr 23, 2011

I cant speak to your program, but I can say that the med-surg courses are the heart of the nursing program and probably will take the most to get through. I am in a similar situation, working full time and going to school 2 nights a week and every other weekend. I would do my utmost to stay debt free if possible and that means continuing to work and go to school. It really takes the support of your spouse to get you through the program, he/she has to pick up the slack till you get finished. At the very least, I would start out the semester working and see how well you do, you might surprise yourself.

ImThatGuy, BSN, RN · Apr 24, 2011

We don't have a "med-surg" course, but we have a couple that I believe are comparable called acute care and complex care. Those two are interventional courses since the pathophysiology, assessment, and pharmacology components are largely completed in other, separate courses. I like it that way too. Everything is much more focused and hopefully more detailed. I like detail. However, if you don't retain well then this program wouldn't be for you, I guess. The kids that aren't doing well seem to be the ones that can't retain and apply.

That said, we don't have that much paperwork to do compared to many students that rant on here. We don't even keep journals of our clinical day although I think we may have to in our public/community health course since we won't have an instructor with us. Back in our foundational course we had to create care plans. Although easy to do they were just something extra that got in the way of achieving other life goals. Once that semester was finished that requirement was over. The acute care and complex care requires us to fill out these pre-printed note cards with pertinent information. They're supposed to be done (in theory) the night before we went through rotations, but I always got there about 30 minutes earlier, filled it out, and I had no problems with that.

One patient each semester requires about a 12 page form to be filled out, and most that information can come off their chart after a quick skim. The rest you can interview the patient about or hypothesize an answer. Being a bachelor's program we also have some papers to write particularly in the research methods course. That class sucks although the tests aren't hard. The rest of the courses are a cake walk in comparison.

There isn't much homework, but the busy work (what I call it) always comes at the most inopportune times and is worth a trivial number of points. Frankly, if you made a 100% on every test and skipped all the extra assignments, in most courses here, you could still make an A, lol. I mostly make A's on my tests so I pick and choose the extra assignments based on work, etc. I do work a lot, and that's a larger focus for me compared to school.

But my program is apparently different than most. We don't have a lot of foolish work to do, we can sit down during rotations, and a lot of our patient contact is self-initiated rather than dictated. There's one clinical instructor, who I can't stand, that is a hovering type of person. I haven't had her yet, and hopefully I won't.

newstudentrn · Apr 24, 2011

I would like to offer just a bit of advice. I work currently full time (3 12 hours shifts) on the weekends Fri Sat Sun for a local hospital while attending school fulltime during the week. I have found that dedicating my weekends to work and my weekdays to school has really worked out nicely. Am I always missing out on happenings in my life? yes, absolutely. Ultimately it is just a means to an end. Basically what I am saying is that it can be done, and it will be difficult. You just have to decide that for a very temporary period of time, your schooling will have to be your priority. I am currently finishing my 3rd semester in an ADN program and will be starting my last semester in August. (woo hoo!!) I have done it, but you will find that you just have to rearrange priorities. I would not recommend taking out loans or anything like that. What if (God forbid) something happens and you do not complete your program? Now you have a loan for something that you haven't got anything to show for. Just food for thought. Hang in there!

orsrt05 · May 21, 2011

Sorry for the late response everyone, finals beat me down!!! But I passed Nursing 2 with a B and Microbiology with a C+!!!!

Anyway, thank you everyone for the advice so far. After passing Micro, I will not have any other classes to take along with Med - Surg Nursing 3 & 4. My schedule for my third semester will be Monday night lecture, Tuesday afternoon to night clinicals and Thursday night lab. Even though my class schedule has decreased from 5 days a week to 3, I know my workload will be just the same if not more now that I will be starting Med-Surg.

In terms of care plans during Med-Surg semesters, will there be one due every week you attend clinicals? During my clinicals in my first semester, we were introduced the concept of doing a care plan and we handed in one care plan by the end of the semester. During my second semester, it was pretty much the same except we did a Medication Teaching plan, a Case study & Discharge Summary which both consisted of multiple Nursing Diagnosis with long term and short term goals plus multiple interventions. Is this the quite the bit of paperwork that I will be staying up late doing during Med-Surg? Will the care plans be different than the ones we were doing previous to Med-Surg? I am very comfortable doing care plans so far, so I am curious if the care plans seem to get more difficult as the program advances or there is just more of them to complete and hand-in?