preparing for nursing school

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Hello everyone!

I'm 28 years old. I've recently within the last year decided I would like to go to nursing school. I've been interested in the idea for about 4 years actually, but being a mom and my husband in school made it tough. Within the last year I've started to do more reasearch and I've already picked a school. I'm starting from scratch so I need to take all my prerequisites first. What I was wondering is if anyone has any suggestions on what I can be doing in the meantime to prepare for nursing school? I'm looking for maybe any good books or blogs to follow? This site so far has been really helpful and alot of my questions have been answered. It will be a while before I actually start any nursing classes but I'm so excited to be starting on this journey soon that I would like to get opinions and a good feel of what I'll be up against and what I should expect.

TIA

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Hey!

One of the best things I did before I entered nursing school was work as a CNA. It gave me so much insight to the nursing field and made me feel comfortable interacting with patients before my first clinical rotation. During that time I was able to familiarize myself with common medications and observe skills/procedures. It was truly an excellent (and very humbling) learning experience. If you are able to commit to a part time job, I would highly recommend it!

If that doesn't fit into your schedule, then you could consider following some nursing blogs and research the topics that are being discussed whenever you have some free time! :)

I hope that was helpful :)

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Thank you so much I didn't even think of that! I would love to do something like that to get a little experience.

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Specializes in Neuro.

I second becoming a CNA or the like. I did not do this & now in the thick of the program I definitely feel my classmates with that experience have a slight advantage.

Joining AllNurses while doing my pre-reqs was my "prep" for nursing school. The nurses on here give you a real idea of what nursing is, good, bad & ugly. I've learned much from reading about their experiences.

The only real prep for nursing school you can do now is set a good foundation for yourself in your pre-reqs. Don't just do well but understand the concepts. You will see the chemistry, bio, micro, patho, A&P & Psych again in nursing school!

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Crash course on YouTube has a very interesting anatomy course. I tried to watch one every day. There are a lot of great channels that teach nursing too. I like Sarah at registered nurse RN. I found this website helpful for lurking and getting an idea of different attitudes and nursing cultures. I also did some free quizzes from an app called nclex rn mastery. Figuring out how to answer questions without actually knowing the material is a good skill for nursing school. Binge watch "Scrubs" on Hulu? I already had a flexible job, so didn't want to add extra work while in nursing, but they have a position called nurse tech that you can do right away (here in NY I think you need training to be a CNA) and see some healthcare from the inside.

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