Physiology...

[labchic]

Is it just me or is Physiology so much harder than Anatomy? I've taken big 2 tests so far and haven't done too good on either one and I've studied my rear end off for both of them. I think the teacher is trying to get us to do critical thinking and I'm not doing very well at it. I've still got a B and I'm already accepted into a nursing program but ...what if I can't do critical thinking?!? Aaaaccckkkk! I'm getting a little nervous that if I can't critical think in physiology will I be able to once I get into my nursing classes? Anybody else experiencing this?

[shortnorthstudent]

I haven't watched the utube videos, but I am an audible learner and I listened to taped lectures over and over while reviewing my notes. I also think that it helped that I had anatomy previous term and it was fresh so that I could basically trace the systems through the body as I studied.

Good luck. Just try a few different study methods and see which ones work best. Definitely do some every day. You cannot cram for physiology, at least I couldn't have done it. As important as the grade is, it's equally important that you don't just cram for a grade and then not know the material afterwards. You'll need to absorb a lot of it for the future.

[labchic]

Thanks for the input everybody. It really does help me:)

[chansen]

Anatomy is great - it's a good base for understanding your body's design and for making sense of everything else you will learn. It's your foundation, and everyone knows a solid foundation is never a Bad Thing™.

But physiology, and especially pathophysiology, are the rest of the house, without a doubt. Don't skimp on your journey of knowledge through these courses, as they become the walls and rooms on top of that foundation for your clinical setting. Is it more difficult? Without a doubt! Your foundation was just brick on top of more brick, rote memorization of hundreds of images, cadaver and model locations, but your physiology not only rests on your foundation, but interacts with other parts of the house. What you learn about cell structure and channels and gates interacts with each room in this house, as support structures. Learning endocrine functions interacts with each room in this house. Homeostasis is such an amazing and rewarding area of study to have an understanding of how our amazing bodies work, and why they do the things they do.

Once you get into your clinical settings and your traditional nursing school classes such as pharmacology, you want those walls and rooms to be finished, properly taped and floated, painted, wired to code and ready for the furnishings you're now learning. Things become so much easier if you look at a sofa and know it goes in the living room because the living room is finished. Otherwise, the furniture shows up before you're ready and you're trying to shove it off to the side while you play catch-up on with physiology. Imagine each class from this point on doing one of two things - furnishing the rooms you've created (integrating into the foundation and structure you've created with your A&P classes - knowing how these things fit in, and most importantly, why) or trying frantically to juggle the furniture while you're still trying to paint the rooms (anything you do beyond this point becomes more rote memorization if you don't understand how and why it affects the body).

I guess this is just a long way of saying yes, it's harder, but it's such an important step along the way that trying for any short cut or quick path or not giving it the attention it deserves can have disasterous results with the rest of your schooling. Not that anyone here is suggesting taking short cuts, I just want to make sure physiology is getting its proper respect

[jngnurse, CNA]

That is why it is much better to take them as a combined class meaning, like Anatomy and Physiology I and Anatomy and Physiology II than taking them as a single entity!