Not sure about nursing

dope a mine · Nov 23, 2011

What topics in particular are you having trouble with? Thats odd how your grades are going down. Mine did the opposite, went from Cs to As as I adjusted to the testing styles. At this point of the semester its suppose to "click" and everything should be making more sense than it did in the beginning.

TC3200 · Nov 23, 2011

Hey all,
...I just don't know what they're trying to teach me anymore. It's like they took a bunch of different puzzles, dumped them into a bucket, selected a handful at random and decided that would be the material for the class.
Does anyone else feel this way? Whenever people ask for more details in lecture the response is generally, "that's beyond the scope of this class." End of discussion. Sometimes it's like they skipped most of the knowledge-acquisition parts of school and went straight to discussing test-taking strategies.

YES! I just went through almost a full year of a diploma school that was exactly like that. And I had the good grades at first, and then dropped and yo-yo'd after that.

I really think there is a divider line between how "nursing think" (and the education for it) is done, and how men and physicians and technologists think and how they process information, and how the physician's training is done. Nursing, to me, seems a circuitous route, when I think in a direct straight line. The Nursing Process is diagnosing patients (but can't call it that because only doctors can diagnose), so they call it Assessing. A medical diagnosis is something a doctor makes and a nurse can't do. So, it gets translated into a Nursing Diagnosis, and then you have your Nursing Interventions that are actions and tasks and decisions that a nurse can actually make.

A physican spoke to our class for 1/2 hour on pain and pain meds, and what he'd use or not use and why, and that 15 minutes for IV and 1 hour for oral opiates is where the effectiveness peaks and we need to be assessing that patient when the med is wearing off. And that only took 30 minutes to present, and I still remember all of it, to this day, without having to look at my notes. Effective, efficient, compact, easy to remember. My nursing instructors, on the other hand, stood up there and lectured at us for 6-7 hours daily, M/T/W, with one 5-10 minute pee break per hour, and an hour off for lunch. And I have no idea what they talked about, after the first 3 hours.

If they are teaching you legal issues, the rudiments of The Nursing Process, basics of cardio, how to take vital signs, make beds, bathe, lift, roll, move patients, it probably all does look like a hodgepodge. I think everyone's Nursing I is more or less like that. Just memorize it, try to do well on the tests, and keep in mind that you will somehow use that information later. It won't just go away. The development process and Freud, Piaget, Erikson and whoall will never go away. Nursing school will keep asking you what developmental stage is a patient in, and how's it affect the nursing interventions that you do. Growth and Development are on the NCLEX. All schools teach to the NCLEX, perhaps more than teach how to be a good floor nurse, because good NCLEX pass rate is seen as the school gives a good education.

Now, here's where I'll give free advice: If your school is teaching what is called an "integrated curriculum," the whole program until perhaps your last term will look like a random box of different puzzles mixed together and you continually are studying bits and pieces of different topics and the curriculum is always shifting around.

I felt like Nursing I was a hodgepodge, then Nursing II was an actual hodgepodge of med-surg, mother and newborn, intro to psych, intro to community nursing, and lots more. Block curriculum is more like and entire semester of med-surge, or mother-baby, or whatever, and you cover one subject thoroughly before you move on. I found the "integrated" format was very difficult to learn, because it kept jumping from smattering of this to smattering of that, failed to cover any one thing intensively, thoroughly, and long enough to make it stick, my clinicals were not coordinated in any way with what I was studying for lectures, and it was really time-consuming, inefficient, and exactly like taking two different nursing programs at the same time, and having both of them on different tracks. Most schools, either LPN or RN, teach a block curriculum, and I think we can presume it's because they found that it was more effective and efficient for the student to learn the material from that format. I see schools converting programs from integrated to block schedule, but I don't see any changing from block to integrated.

loriangel14, RN · Nov 23, 2011

Just hang in there and eventually it will all come together and make sense. What you are getting now is the foundation. You have to learn things in order and the foundation for nursing has to come first. Yes you will learn stuff that you won't see how it fits but eventually it will all come together.

erinberrin, CNA · Nov 23, 2011

Hey all,
I'm in my first semester of nursing school and I'm starting to feel a bit hesitant about the program. Everything started fine. I got A's on my first couple rounds of tests, but now they're starting to plummet to C's [this is abnormal for me]. I just don't know what they're trying to teach me anymore. It's like they took a bunch of different puzzles, dumped them into a bucket, selected a handful at random and decided that would be the material for the class.
Does anyone else feel this way? Whenever people ask for more details in lecture the response is generally, "that's beyond the scope of this class." End of discussion. Sometimes it's like they skipped most of the knowledge-acquisition parts of school and went straight to discussing test-taking strategies.

:lol2: I found in real life..nothing is like school..you know..

I can tell you this when i studied and attacked everything somehow I got to involved and it was just a matter of common sense..was it that easy?? oh it was..dont ever over think that is what i tried to remember..just simplify it if its beginning an unnecessary migraine..

TC3200 · Nov 23, 2011

Yes, but if Andy is not making the points to stay in the program long enough, it will never come together. I just dug out my Nursing I binder and looked through it to see what we covered in that. It was all over the road. Nursing theories, human development theories, legal issues, some rudiments of pharma, etc. I struggled, with a capital S, in that class.

Looking back on it one year after, I understand it, I know how it's used, they metered out some more bits and pieces of the same things in N2 and N3, and dammit, still didn't cover it thoroughly. I FEEL HELD BACK! So, I'll look for a different teaching approach that doesn't P me off and waste my time with inefficiency and deliberately metered learning.

Andy, I have three suggestions for you:

1. If you are in an "integrated" curriculum, immediately put in applications at a different school that teaches it by "block, " and jump ship as soon as you can. Block is the gold standard; integrated has been abandoned, for the most part.

2. Post exactly what topics you are covering. Since I had a scrambled eggs and tossed salad curriculum for a full year, I may have some documents or some insight from farther down the road. Or not. But post it, and maybe someone here can help you translate it and see where it fits into the big picture of "doing the job."

3. You simply may not be putting in enough study hours on it. The people who succeeded in the integrated program that I just left said:

Skip the required readings

Study the Powerpoints from class and go over and over it

Only if it's unclear on the Powerpoint, go read just that section of the book.

Don't mess with extra stuff like the online questions, the study guide, etc.

Just work on what they gave you in class. You don't have time to do extras.

Memorize! The school may say don't do that, but DO do that, because you have to know it and carry it around in your head.

I wasted a lot of time on trying to "do it all" for that integrated program I left. Staying in any nursing program is all about racking up the required points. Test-taking is not all straight knowledge. It's applying, and decision-making, and prioritizing, and by Nurse II and III, you'll be doing more prioritizing, where 2 to all of the answers are correct, and you pick the MOST correct one, or the highest priority.

Nursing education process wants to cloak everything in an alternate language. Your problem is to translate it to whatever computes in your brain. This has been a woman's profession for a long time, and they seem to like a meandering approach, and wander all over the place, and then tie it all together later. If you think like a man, or a technologist, you want to see the BIG PICTURE, first, and then it makes a lot more sense where these nursing tidbits are leading you. But I'd be willing to bet that the school you are at is taking the "do as I say and just learn it" approach.

The tests require you to know the knowledge, and be able to puke it back. But the NCLEX style questions won't ask you to do that, directly. They take the circuitous route, and make you arrange the puzzle pieces, and discard some, even. Or prioritize. Get that Success book on test taking strategies, because part of this, if you are presented with a question you can't answer, is closer to gaming-the-system than any other process that I could name. http://www.amazon.com/Test-Success-Test-Taking-Techniques-Beginning/dp/0803618948

and maybe Fundamentals Success http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Success-Applying-Critical-Thinking/dp/0803627793/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322068548&sr=1-1 or later edition

AND put in the time! This is rote, grind, memorization. Don't let them kid you. You go over and over the stuff for as long as it takes you to know it forward and back. Women who think in that drifty/dreamy/circuitous way apparently have an easier time of it. But the analytical and hands-on and detail-oriented techie types are just going to find all of this wandering around very contra to the way they have been programmed to think.

anonymousandy · Nov 23, 2011

YES! I just went through almost a full year of a diploma school that was exactly like that. And I had the good grades at first, and then dropped and yo-yo'd after that.
Now, here's where I'll give free advice: If your school is teaching what is called an "integrated curriculum," the whole program until perhaps your last term will look like a random box of different puzzles mixed together and you continually are studying bits and pieces of different topics and the curriculum is always shifting around.

Yes, it's an integrated program. I guess the idea of knowing something superficially and then going to the nursing homes to participate in treatment scares me, and I get overwhelmed. My grades are still adequate [i'll be making Bs this semester instead of As like I thought I was going to have], but I'm going to make it work. Transferring isn't a realistic option for me. Thanks for your advice. I'm glad to hear someone else had a similar experience :).

anonymousandy · Nov 23, 2011

2. Post exactly what topics you are covering. Since I had a scrambled eggs and tossed salad curriculum for a full year, I may have some documents or some insight from farther down the road. Or not. But post it, and maybe someone here can help you translate it and see where it fits into the big picture of "doing the job."
3. You simply may not be putting in enough study hours on it. The people who succeeded in the integrated program that I just left said:
Skip the required readings
Study the Powerpoints from class and go over and over it
Only if it's unclear on the Powerpoint, go read just that section of the book.
Don't mess with extra stuff like the online questions, the study guide, etc.
Just work on what they gave you in class. You don't have time to do extras.
Memorize! The school may say don't do that, but DO do that, because you have to know it and carry it around in your head.
I wasted a lot of time on trying to "do it all" for that integrated program I left. Staying in any nursing program is all about racking up the required points. Test-taking is not all straight knowledge. It's applying, and decision-making, and prioritizing, and by Nurse II and III, you'll be doing more prioritizing, where 2 to all of the answers are correct, and you pick the MOST correct one, or the highest priority.

2. The list of topics is really long, but I've got most of it down. The last ones are: Oxygenation, I/O, Incontinence, Delegation, Community Nursing, Postmortem care, HIPAA and other legal stuff, Communication w/ special needs patients, Different note-taking strategies [e.g. narrative, charting by exception], Nutrition [we talked about vitamins for about 3 minutes in one class], and the list goes on. The patho class is the only one I still have an A in, so I'm not worried about it. There's a lot of political discussion thrown into class too, so I have to learn proper euphemisms [e.g. independent practice vs. dependent, collaboration, delegation (applied to CNAs, not us)].

3. My study-habits have changed. I started the semester reading everything, and now I only read my patho book, and study from the topical outline. I've never found a lot of benefit from studying powerpoints, but I think I'll give it a try for the program. Thanks!

Btw, all our tests are NCLEX style with maybe 10% knowledge-based questions.