Our educational system is in a mess. That impacts on nursing education and subsequent practice. Students in high school are taught to pass tests which rank them with other states...and of course there is competition between states as to who is smarter at taking tests. Now, we only learn something that is worth knowing. Fast forward to nursing school. Nursing students desire to learn "nursing stuff." Some have made comments about the other stuff they have to learn as being "useless." You may be bored in these courses because they are wasting your time and you don't feel there is anything to learn. In high school and nursing school, there is a lot of lectures and students are made to read a lot of stuff, then have to take tests. Everything is oriented to taking tests so that the school can prove that you know it. All this contributes to anti-learning which is why you get the "useless" courses comments.
My solution: Learning is accomplished by doing...period. If you want to learn to swim, get in the water. Get the theory later when it becomes more meaningful to you. The old diploma nursing programs almost had it all together. So, I'd train new students as CNAs with lot's of hands on practice. Keep going up the clinical ladder while adding theory so that students can apply the theory to what they have already done versus learn the theory then do the clinical. Keep adding in speech, history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, management, etc. and show how it is relevant to nursing (and might be argued even more important) practice. Knowledge is considered a set of facts, but it's not knowing facts that is important, no matter what your teacher told you. It's how you got that knowledge and what motivated you to "get that learning." Otherwise, you're just learning unrelated facts and are bored to tears. If you can integrate all of your courses (knowledge) into what you consider fun, then you can hopefully integrate it into other aspects of your life.
SmilingBluEyes
20,964 Posts
hmm how is that measured? Just curious.