Need some help with a self study- ACUTE care

SusieQ1234 · Mar 25, 2009

Hello fellow nurses,

I am hoping someone out there will be able to help me formulate an idea or at least hear me out on this. I guess sometimes, even as a student, we need to vent. I am entering my fourth year of the BScN program (woo! almost done) and we are only given the opportunity to take 1 nursing elective, the one and only elective I wish to take is acute care (you have theory, labs, and clinical in the ICU/ER). It's an amazing course, with good reviews every year. There are only 16 spots for this class (and I have a class of 120). To give you an idea of the other electives offered : they are health informatics, women and aging, and epidemiology which have no clinical or lab components. As you can guess, I didn't get in, the registration opend at 7:30 the other morning, and 20 sec. later it was full, my computer was a fraction of a second slow I guess. Do you think this is fair? For those few of us who REALLY wanted into this class have no such luck. I have tried emailing profs, advisors, etc. there is nothing they can do to accommodate us. There is only one option left- a self study course. Because I couldn't get into acute,I want to do a self study course that involves clinical in the cardiovascular ICU and time spent with an advanced practice nurse (cardiology). I was thinking about a large project around cardiovascular health- and lifestyle pre/post MI with a recent literature search and some type of paper/presentation- but I really want to focus on the clinical. Can anyone PLEASE give me some ideas or advice on the self study course? I want to learn a lot and make it better than the acute course they are offering- because I feel I wanted in that course just as much as the next person and have had the opportunity stripped from me. I feel like a big baby here, and I know sometimes life isn't fair- but there are just so many things wrong with the program I am attending and this was the last straw for me. Feel free to post on here or PM with some ideas around cardio acute care, or just any comments you may have!

thanks a lot, feels better to vent =)