Whether is it from a Nursing Instructor or classmate, I keep hearing that Nursing School is HARD, HARD, HARD!!! This is no big surprise to me that is hard, but it seems strange that this is emphasized so much; it seems like people are trying to scare people away from Nursing, or maybe there are other reasons. I've never heard people emphasize this aspect of Medical School to the extent that I hear it about Nursing School. I think medical students know they are doing something hard, and I never hear anyone emphasizing again and again how hard medical school is. Why is Nursing School treated like the most difficult thing to do on the planet? OK, sure it is hard, but to keep emphasizing this makes it almost sound like the person saying it maybe didn't get any respect for how hard they worked, so they want everyone else to be impressed with how smart they are to have made it through. I just never hear Doctors going around saying how hard Medical School was, and I think it because everyone knows it is a hard thing to do. It sounds like Nurses have an inferiority complex. What gives?
Nursing school is not harder than medical school, but it can be confusing due to language that is not concrete. People with prior background of postsecondary education will not find it as hard. There are more nursing students than medical students, so, even if the two were of the same difficulty, there would be more noise from the nursing crowd. Subjectively, I sense that medical students know that it's pointless to complain about the "difficulty" of the courses (but difficulty of the exams is a legitimate complaint): the learning here is not done just for learning's sake, but they lay down a foundation for clinical medicine and the understanding of the human body and its pathologies.
My parents came to the US from Vietnam with Telecommunication Engineering (old degree, I know) but little English, spend 4 years in community college, and came out with their RN, both, while also taking care of me and my newborn baby brother, while on welfare / scholarships / foodstamps. They never complained about the difficulty of their nursing classes, only of their English / Psychology classes
It would be silly of me to comment too directly on the nursing curriculum as I have not seen it. From what I've heard, the difficulty lies in having instructors that aren't used to teaching (compared to medical school faculties who are steeped in academia) and in having courses that were designed haphazardly (the medical school curriculum is standardized in two different methods, systemic or traditional, but in either of those you can basically learn any subject by yourself via simply reading the book).
To figure out the difficulty of nursing school to medical school, first you have to realize that difficulty is subjective: even if one person found a test "very hard," that person could still score an A on that test. Comparatively, another person can find a test "easy" and be content passing that test with a B. Therefore, "difficulty" is subjective and should be viewed in terms of personal values and practical applications.
You should also know what a medical education contains. People who tout the difficulty of premed should realize that the entire point of the premed requirements are to teach the principles of science in the three core disciplines: Biology, Physics, and Chemistry (Ochem is an extension of Chemistry). These subjects have very little to do with medical school, their vestiges found only in Medical Biochemistry. Truthfully, the premed classes were there to teach you how to use the language of science and familiarize you with molecules, cells, and kinetics. I have already forgotten most of my physics and general chemistry, biology and ochem being the only things I really need to remember to make more sense out of Medical Biochemistry.
In contrast, I would hope that, since the nursing programs can be finished in as quickly as 2 years, that most of the things nursing students learn in those 2 years would be relevant.
In medical school itself, the entire first year is very basic science, in the sense that the science is hard to apply to clinical situations. The curriculum would traditionally include: Anatomy, Biochemistry, Histology, Immunology, Physiology, Neuroscience, Behavioral Science. Of these, when was the last time you saw your primary care doctor take a biopsy, prep it, and read it under the microscope right there to see if there's metaplasia? No, he'd send it to a Pathologist. It is the second-year curriculum of Microbiology, Pathology, Pharmacology, Pathophysiology, and Physical Diagnosis / Clinical Skills that prepares the medical student for the wards and the Step 1 examination.
Even then, the very green medical students on their clerkship / rotations are pretty much useless. They have shared responsibility for patients with an intern/resident team. They typically are on a team of 4-8 other medical students. They are there to learn clinical medicine and clinical skills, very little of which were taught in their first two basic sciences year. At this point, the nursing student would probably be more experienced at phlebotomy, suturing, and Foley catheter insertions than the medical student. A nursing student would probably be able to identify and triage a sudden influx of sick patients better than the medical student. But, the medical student has to study every night for the Shelf exam that comes at the end of each rotation through Medicine, Surgery, Ob/Gyn, Peds, Neuro, Psych, etc. In 4th year, there are chances of sub-internship wherein the medical student can attempt to take on the responsibilities of an intern (PGY-1, or postgraduate year 1, and has an MD/DO). But they still cannot write prescriptions.
Upon graduation, the medical student becomes a doctor and would become an intern. Now they may be permitted to have full responsibilities for their patients on overnight calls, etc., but of course still have the supports of the upper residents and attendings. They cannot practice medicine unsupervised (as in start their own office and actually get paid more than $60k/year), but the supervision may come from afar. Nurses always have a support network. The majority of the time, the intern is not alone. However, sometimes they will be the only person holding down the fort and making the final decision until the resident/attending can be called up to manage any emergencies. It is now that you'd realize the differences between a medical and a nursing education: that of knowing enough basic science and clinical medicine to come to a final decision and accepting responsibility for the life and death of your patients.
As for the actual difficulty of the basic science courses, a lot of the first-year stuff ARE memorization. However, there are second- and third-order questions, and you basically need to know EVERYTHING about the anatomy/histology/etc of whatever the question asks about. There's also some thinking involved in Biochem, Physio, and Immuno, but typically it's not anything like the 4th-order questions with the two-paragraph-long stems in second year:
Thank you to all who responded to my post. I guess I should've clarified that the only reason I asked if NS was harder than Medical School is not because I thought they were both "oranges" or both "apples" (I understand they are very different in their approach), but because Medical School was the first thing that came to mind when I was thinking about what other kinds of schooling are considered very hard.
My point is, I do believe NS is hard, and that it takes tons of effort and time, JUST LIKE Medical School - BUT, to constantly hear that NS is SO VERY HARD implies that the person these remarks are being said to either doesn't know that NS is hard, or isn't capable of succeeding at NS. It seems that many Nursing Instructors spend a lot of energy on their first year students trying to convince them how hard NS is, and that seems strange. Is this just being said to intimidate? I mean, the students are clearly experiencing the difficulty of NS already, so is this some kind of mind game to weed out only those who are "brave" enough to dare to try to succeed in NS?!?
I also don't understand why so many people seem to assume that the only kind of schooling that was obtained previous to NS required memorization without understanding or "critical thinking". Plenty of people that I know with college degress and advanced degrees in a variety of subjects were required in their schooling and on the job to use "critical thinking", to look at the whole picture, think quickly, and choose the best of several possible right approaches.
I don't want to offend anyone. I just don't understand the motivation behind some the things that are said about NS.
I know this topic is over two years old, but I just saw it and I want to give my opinion :) I just graduated. Well 3 months ago. I went through a VERY RIGOROUS BSN program.
Is nursing school as hard as what people told me it would be? Yes. More than I realized. I kept hearing this over and over again as well and didn't believe it. I didn't understand the seriousness of a nurse's job. I understand now doctors make their rounds in the morning and then leave for the DAY to go to their private practices and see other patients there. It is the nurses job to then keep all of those hospitalized patients alive! We make decisions for our patients all day. Do you think the Dr can field calls all day long for every patient he/she has? No. The nurse has to use his/her judgement to decide what is important and what is not and most of the time what to do about it. Also, A LOT of protocols are written for nurses to follow using their judgement so as to not call the doctor unnecessarily. This again requires nursing judgement. We have to understand what is going on and why so that we can decide if we can use a protocol or if we need the dr. Not only that but when we call the dr we are supposed to give a RECOMMENDATION! Because we are the ones there with the patient the entire day. It's required as part of our communication with the physician. I'm not sure how much this can translate to someone who isn't a nurse or hasn't gone to nursing school. But basically, nurses have to be educated on many of the same things as drs in order to take care of our patients properly. We have to know pathophysiologically what is going on with our patients, how the medications effect their disease processes, what to anticipate, how to avoid potential complications, and how to navigate through them when they occur. In addition we have to know how to do the physical tasks like dressing wounds and placing IVs, etc.
Do I think nursing school is harder than med school? I don't know, I haven't gone to med school. I think the only person who could answer this honestly is someone who has done both. Nursing school for me was ridiculously hard. I had a 4.0 going in, I made over 100 in organic chemistry and microbiology (I think 104 and 107 respectively, but it has been a few years). Science is easy for me, I'm good at it. And yet? Nursing school was hard. I graduated with a 3.7. That's still ok but I worked my you know what off and couldn't keep my 4.0. I never got over a 100 in any of my nursing classes. In fact the A's I got were mostly by the skin of my teeth. I think med school is probably harder because I think it covers even more than nursing school and nursing school covers A LOT. But we mostly discussed the most common diseases and most common procedures. I think med school covers even the most random diseases and procedures. I imagine their pharmacology courses require more chemistry than what we covered and I imagine they have to know more medications. But I could be wrong. I haven't gone to med school. I used to want to go to med school, but nursing school has cured me of that, as well as has the profession. Nurses work crazy hard. I think Drs work just as hard and do it more hours a week in most cases. And their litigation is higher. I am no longer interested in being a doctor, not with the way the profession works these days. I am still interested in learning though and if someone would offer me free med school courses just to take to learn (no grades or anything on the line) I'd probably do it just for fun. But I wouldn't want to be a doctor at the end of it! I know that wasn't part of the question but I just thought I'd throw that out there. Basically I think anyone who wants to be a nurse OR a doctor should have to work in the hospital as a patient care tech for a while and see what the environment is really like. Seriously.
I've seen a couple comments on here disparaging community college nursing students & I think it is unfair. My school (a community college) has the best NCLEX pass rate of ANY school in our state (Ohio). In fact, we're the only school in the state with 100% pass rate. Our program requires Biochem and Microbiology as well as the usual A&P I & II & numerous Psych courses. I am no slacker student and I consider myself intelligent (I took AP Calculus in 12th grade with As, solved a problem no one in the class, including the teacher could, won awards for being the highest achiever on the Americanism and Government test given by the American Legion, was accepted to summer programs at Barnard College, was accepted to schools like Fordham and Purdue when I was a new high school grad in 2001, and will one day win a ton of money on Jeopardy lol). Nursing is no cakewalk at my community college.
It is not the material that is challenging. What I find to be more challenging are the NCLEX-like questions and the sheer volume of work required. I have a pretty good handle on the NCLEX questions, however, some of them are just ridiculous. Community college students work just as hard as BSN students, we have to do and learn most of the same things in a much shorter amount of time. Community college should not be looked upon negatively, but as a stepping stone towards a brighter future. For example, after I graduate and pass boards, I plan on working PT at a critical shortage facility to get some of my loans paid down while doing an RN to MSN program. After that, I may consider a DNP program. My other goal is to do some travel nursing and see the world. Just because you start your nursing education at a community college, doesn't mean you're less of a nurse. In fact, it means you're smarter because for the first two years (really with prereqs, it's longer than that), you're saving money! I just think it's really inconsiderate to disparage others who work just as hard for their degree.
Also, idk why everyone is saying BSN programs don't make you take organic chem. Every program I've looked at most certainly does. And statistics is nothing to sneeze at either!
Ok I'm probably the only person who has actually been to medical school and nursing school. I was a student at the Ohio College of Podiatric medicine some 15 years ago. Feet....not my thing, I didn't get into Medical school and opted for podiatry school instead. Following med school I went back to teaching. I have several degrees a BA in English, a BS in Biology, a M. Ed, in Reading and TESOL, and at one point was in a doctoral program. Long story short now I am in Nursing school.
No, Nursing school I snot as difficult as med school. However it seems like Nursing students complain more about the level of difficulty. I'm convinced this is because of the critical thinking aspect. And certainly I've noticed that those who complain the most truly don't have much to compare nursing school with.
Like one poster said Nursing school is what you make it. I didn't study like crazy, I have 3 kids, a husband who works 60 hours a week etc. I studied 3-4 days prior to a test maybe 4 hours a setting. I studied alone without study groups, and to say the least I did well even with a plate that was overflowing. I'm a 4.0.
Again is nursing school hard...maybe; I just think it depends on your realm of experiences. Was med school harder...hell yeah. But you'll never hear a med school student say ohhh whoa is me med school is so hard. Nursing students just stop it!! You don't get brownie points or sympathy just because you didn't get to have a social life. And the reality is you can work and have a family in nursing school people do it in med school as well. My husband is a doc and he worked part time while in school when the loan money ran out.
Ok I'm probably the only person who has actually been to medical school and nursing school. I was a student at the Ohio College of Podiatric medicine some 15 years ago. Feet....not my thing, I didn't get into Medical school and opted for podiatry school instead. Following med school I went back to teaching. I have several degrees a BA in English, a BS in Biology, a M. Ed, in Reading and TESOL, and at one point was in a doctoral program. Long story short now I am in Nursing school.
No, Nursing school I snot as difficult as med school. However it seems like Nursing students complain more about the level of difficulty. I'm convinced this is because of the critical thinking aspect. And certainly I've noticed that those who complain the most truly don't have much to compare nursing school with.
Like one poster said Nursing school is what you make it. I didn't study like crazy, I have 3 kids, a husband who works 60 hours a week etc. I studied 3-4 days prior to a test maybe 4 hours a setting. I studied alone without study groups, and to say the least I did well even with a plate that was overflowing. I'm a 4.0.
Again is nursing school hard...maybe; I just think it depends on your realm of experiences. Was med school harder...hell yeah. But you'll never hear a med school student say ohhh whoa is me med school is so hard. Nursing students just stop it!! You don't get brownie points or sympathy just because you didn't get to have a social life. And the reality is you can work and have a family in nursing school people do it in med school as well. My husband is a doc and he worked part time while in school when the loan money ran out.
Mantra: I can do this!
THANK YOU!! You are so right. Lets shut up and do it. Ha!
Again is nursing school hard...maybe; I just think it depends on your realm of experiences. Was med school harder...hell yeah. But you'll never hear a med school student say ohhh whoa is me med school is so hard. Nursing students just stop it!! You don't get brownie points or sympathy just because you didn't get to have a social life.
Nursing school steals your soul...but then again I am double majoring in spanish and nursing and working 30 hrs a week as a CNA and still maintaining a 3.5 gpa.... so maybe its my own fault. It can be done, maybe not with straight A's but it can be done
Fun fact I didn't know until nursing school: nurses are legally liable for carrying out a doctor's orders. We are supposed to know when to question/hold an order and do it. So, no, it's not just the doctor taking responsibility for a life. A lot of people have died not only because a doctor was not thorough enough, but also because a nurse didn't catch the mistake. Even as a student in clinicals I've seen orders that made absolutely no sense for the individual, and they were held and eventually dropped.
As for the sample MCAT questions someone posted a long time ago, those aren't that scary. Seems there's a big gray area of what should expected in the core sciences between schools. My exams looked nothing like that. Being able to identify anatomy, like the components of the carotid sheath, was far from considered a display of competence.
Since my experience in pre-nursing science courses was very different than what's been described in this thread, I wouldn't take being told how hard nursing school REALLY is very seriously. Only I would know that for myself. I manage. It's harder for some than others. Some adapt to it more easily. A lot of elite programs in the country have students who complain about how bad the faculty is. Smaller schools no one has ever heard of may have the opposite atmosphere. And finally, the NCLEX is not representative of all the knowledge needed to be a nurse. Like a poster said, it's a relatively short test that is more of a formality. The amount of pressure on this one exam is kind of silly.
I have no idea how I would compare the nursing and medical programs. I'd imagine medical school is much more broad, to say the least. Wouldn't assume it's easier. Probably is harder. Definitely longer. Doctors absolutely make life and death choices, and that's a great responsibility. My point is that nurses are also responsible for those choices, and that requires a wider knowledge base than the NCLEX, HESI or ATI can assess. I know plenty of students who get great grades, but will not be the greatest nurses.
Hi, I'm in my first semester of nursing school and like you, I was told that nursing school was REALLY hard! By any means, it's not EASY but it's not near as hard as what people made it out to be. I feel as if I'm an average student. I made a's and b's in my pre reqs, and scored an average score on my entrance exam. I'm married and still work part time. I don't study all day everyday. Actually, I rarely ever study and still make A's and B's on my nursing tests. When I do study I make the most of it, sure I could sit there all day and study or I could study effectively for a few hours and be done with it. As compared to A&P I really wouldn't compare nursing school to that at all. It's on another level of thinking. Critical thinking is taking what you've learned and applying it to something else. Nursing school is achievable and really only as hard as you make it out to be. And anything worth having isn't going to be easy! Best of luck to you!!
Nope it isnt. Medical school is a beast of its own. Nursing school "seems" hard because is a combiantion of heavy sciences, common sense, and the ability of coming of with your own interpretations about a concept (aka. critical thinking), which many people are not used to.
The thing is that nursing school is more open when it comes to the people they will accept into it. You have people from very different background, and life situations ( working , parenting, etc). Medical school is very selective, and tends to pick the best of the best, academically speaking, so most of them are used to a rigorous type of program.
But ill never compare what I have had to learn in nursing school ,to the vast amount of knowledge that some of my acquaintances in medical school had to. As nurses we do get to learn a lot, and are responsible for catching the mistakes that a physician may make, but i would never consider the curriculum i went through "harder" than that of medical students. Challenging it is, hard i wouldn't say so, it just requires a shift in mindset.
Morsetlis
2 Posts
Nursing school is not harder than medical school, but it can be confusing due to language that is not concrete. People with prior background of postsecondary education will not find it as hard. There are more nursing students than medical students, so, even if the two were of the same difficulty, there would be more noise from the nursing crowd. Subjectively, I sense that medical students know that it's pointless to complain about the "difficulty" of the courses (but difficulty of the exams is a legitimate complaint): the learning here is not done just for learning's sake, but they lay down a foundation for clinical medicine and the understanding of the human body and its pathologies.
My parents came to the US from Vietnam with Telecommunication Engineering (old degree, I know) but little English, spend 4 years in community college, and came out with their RN, both, while also taking care of me and my newborn baby brother, while on welfare / scholarships / foodstamps. They never complained about the difficulty of their nursing classes, only of their English / Psychology classes
It would be silly of me to comment too directly on the nursing curriculum as I have not seen it. From what I've heard, the difficulty lies in having instructors that aren't used to teaching (compared to medical school faculties who are steeped in academia) and in having courses that were designed haphazardly (the medical school curriculum is standardized in two different methods, systemic or traditional, but in either of those you can basically learn any subject by yourself via simply reading the book).
To figure out the difficulty of nursing school to medical school, first you have to realize that difficulty is subjective: even if one person found a test "very hard," that person could still score an A on that test. Comparatively, another person can find a test "easy" and be content passing that test with a B. Therefore, "difficulty" is subjective and should be viewed in terms of personal values and practical applications.
You should also know what a medical education contains. People who tout the difficulty of premed should realize that the entire point of the premed requirements are to teach the principles of science in the three core disciplines: Biology, Physics, and Chemistry (Ochem is an extension of Chemistry). These subjects have very little to do with medical school, their vestiges found only in Medical Biochemistry. Truthfully, the premed classes were there to teach you how to use the language of science and familiarize you with molecules, cells, and kinetics. I have already forgotten most of my physics and general chemistry, biology and ochem being the only things I really need to remember to make more sense out of Medical Biochemistry.
In contrast, I would hope that, since the nursing programs can be finished in as quickly as 2 years, that most of the things nursing students learn in those 2 years would be relevant.
In medical school itself, the entire first year is very basic science, in the sense that the science is hard to apply to clinical situations. The curriculum would traditionally include: Anatomy, Biochemistry, Histology, Immunology, Physiology, Neuroscience, Behavioral Science. Of these, when was the last time you saw your primary care doctor take a biopsy, prep it, and read it under the microscope right there to see if there's metaplasia? No, he'd send it to a Pathologist. It is the second-year curriculum of Microbiology, Pathology, Pharmacology, Pathophysiology, and Physical Diagnosis / Clinical Skills that prepares the medical student for the wards and the Step 1 examination.
Even then, the very green medical students on their clerkship / rotations are pretty much useless. They have shared responsibility for patients with an intern/resident team. They typically are on a team of 4-8 other medical students. They are there to learn clinical medicine and clinical skills, very little of which were taught in their first two basic sciences year. At this point, the nursing student would probably be more experienced at phlebotomy, suturing, and Foley catheter insertions than the medical student. A nursing student would probably be able to identify and triage a sudden influx of sick patients better than the medical student. But, the medical student has to study every night for the Shelf exam that comes at the end of each rotation through Medicine, Surgery, Ob/Gyn, Peds, Neuro, Psych, etc. In 4th year, there are chances of sub-internship wherein the medical student can attempt to take on the responsibilities of an intern (PGY-1, or postgraduate year 1, and has an MD/DO). But they still cannot write prescriptions.
Upon graduation, the medical student becomes a doctor and would become an intern. Now they may be permitted to have full responsibilities for their patients on overnight calls, etc., but of course still have the supports of the upper residents and attendings. They cannot practice medicine unsupervised (as in start their own office and actually get paid more than $60k/year), but the supervision may come from afar. Nurses always have a support network. The majority of the time, the intern is not alone. However, sometimes they will be the only person holding down the fort and making the final decision until the resident/attending can be called up to manage any emergencies. It is now that you'd realize the differences between a medical and a nursing education: that of knowing enough basic science and clinical medicine to come to a final decision and accepting responsibility for the life and death of your patients.
As for the actual difficulty of the basic science courses, a lot of the first-year stuff ARE memorization. However, there are second- and third-order questions, and you basically need to know EVERYTHING about the anatomy/histology/etc of whatever the question asks about. There's also some thinking involved in Biochem, Physio, and Immuno, but typically it's not anything like the 4th-order questions with the two-paragraph-long stems in second year: