ImThatGuy

We know self-teaching is important to anything. However, when one forks over the dollars and sacrifices something else to return to school one generally expects to receive quite a bit of teaching along the way.

It's sounds like a mirror image of my school. We did get "rationales" for our missed questions in what the instructors called "content review," but they never could explain any of it other than saying "that's just the way it is." I don't know how many times I've heard that now. I recall asking once if there was a rate for intermittent suction, i.e. how often the machine sucks, and my reply was "intermittent suction just does it intermittently and not all the time." That's the same kind of deer in the headlights look and answer I got with every question to the point of in the second year I just didn't ask questions anymore because I know they can't answer them. I understand that a person can't know everything, but don't become an instructor of something when you don't know anymore than I know about what you're teaching. The program was poorly managed. Nothing was ever scheduled close to being remotely correct. I agree one should know how to modify and adjust, but...everyday? I was going to be a career changer, but not now. I managed people and elements of an organization. I can't think of any business or other organization that could survive with the moronic nature of our nursing program. My program too has also sucked out any interest I had in being a RN. To me the RN thing is just an ugly requirement of becoming something else. I have a cynical and jaded approach to nursing and want little to nothing to do with it. I thought about dropping out of the BSN program several times over the two years, but I stuck with it because I'd already invested in it and saw it through. Thankfully, my first B.S. degree included all of the prereqs so I didn't waste any other life or expense in pursing that "coveted" BSN. By the time I graduated (May 4th), the chaos and cattiness of the instructors had divided them into factions with one of our final instructors showing a sincere degree of disdain for my cohort and I and literally tattling on anything any student did so that it could be taken out of context and used against the cohort. Eventually, one faculty member belonging to an appeals committee told her to stop worrying about us. My program started out with 24 people, dropped to 14 going into the second semester, and 13 of those survived that. The third semester dropped two more so we went into the end of course exam with 11 people. Of that, I think six passed and five failed. On the retake, two of the five passed. I still have know nothing about what comes next. I have no idea with the NCLEX is scheduled or how I'll be alerted to scheduling it. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. At some point, I'm going to need 2,000 clinical work hours as a nurse to continue on with graduate school for the specialty courses, but I have no idea where I'm going to find that and halfway don't want to. I really have no respect for it or interest in it anymore.

I personally would just stop studying for it. You're going to pass and do well.

Best resource? This guy. http://manlyweddingblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/dr.gif

You can work as much as you want. I did so anyone else can too.

...yet most PA programs require students to have healthcare experience... paramedics, respiratory therapists, and nurses generally comprise the class base

I just finished a BSN and start a psych NP MSN in August with no nursing experience.

I got a bachelor's degree years ago, became a cop although I worked part-time several years ago as a paramedic, and then I went back for a second bachelor's degree in nursing. I was never worried about school or passing, but I was apprehensive about two things: having to suck it up and do their darned, time consuming busy work and looking like a total retard in their school scrubs...which I did.

Cleaning bodies, cleaning beds, moving bodies, moving beds, taking vital signs, taking health histories, doing physical exams, shots, IV's and IV stuff, tubes in urethras, tubes in stomachs, enemas, feeding through tubes, other things involving tubes, and doing things to ugly parts of the body. The most peculiar thing to me was a video we had to watch over making beds. I learned you can change bedding with someone laying in bed although I still think it's odd. I'd rather pick them up, lay them on the floor, change the bed, and put them back, but hey nurses get outraged over that idea, lol. Oh, well, I graduated nonetheless...with honors too if you can imagine. Mostly the clinical rotations are about doing things, on the rare occasion the opportunities present themselves, the way school teaches you to do it and passing. Then you can graduate, work, and actually learn how to do stuff.

Enjoy your summer. Nurse classes will come soon enough and last entirely too long. There really isn't a huge need for anatomy. I can't think of an instance where intricate knowledge of anatomy was required to either grasp something or pass something. The physiology that most kids seemed to have trouble with was fluid and electrolytes as well as acids and bases like Pneumo said. In pathophysiology, they seemed to have the most trouble with the renal system and the cardiovascular system. Aside from that don't sweat. Nurse classes aren't as in depth as they're portrayed to be. Other tips for success; take it all in stride, don't get worked up over it, get past the fact that someone in class will be the most annoying waste of space you've ever encountered, and someone will frequently cry over tension and/or bad grades. You'll pass and everything will be fine in the end. It's not that bad but merely time consuming and often cheesey. N

Sounds hot. And humid.

I am an Arkansan and a Razorback fan!!

Why? It's a pretty fun spectator sport.

I did rotate with a school nurse (RN) in community health. She provided (never gave) quite a few medicines. Assisted some kids in checking their blood sugar and giving insulin, i.e. she got the kits out of cabinets for them. She checked urine ketones on one. She provided a several inhalers for asthmatic kids to use themselves. She gave two different kids tube feedings, and ironically I had just stopped one's mom with him in the car the day before and written her a ticket for disregarding a traffic control device, no proof of insurance, and no child safety restraint, and she straight cath'd a spina bifida kid twice so he could pee. Add into that the sundry scrapes and bumps with lots of placebo ice packs. There was no giving out OTC meds like we got when I was in school. Then again, when I was in school, a chronically ill kid didn't go to public school or get medical treatments while there, but the rest of us were all healed with Tylenol and Pepto-Bismol - no matter the ailment. Fevers, pukes, ear aches, and rashes were all sent home. When I asked why she wanted to be a school nurse she replied, and I'll paraphrase but get really close, "I used to work hospice but that got to be too much with people always passing away all the time, and I wanted more time to spend with my kids. I get out of school when they do, and when I'm here I don't do anything! This is the best kept secret in nursing." All jobs have their pros and cons, and it's certainly worth bragging about when you get a job where you can be relaxed all day instead of running around shooting people up with meds every 30 minutes. I'm not diminishing the role of the school nurse at all. It's great.

You're really getting worked up by this, aren't you?

OP, I understand your predicament. I like biology and assumed nursing school would be more biologically and medically oriented than it its. If you're there to learn about physiology, pathophysiology, and pharmacology on a cellular level then you're going to be short changed. You won't get that. I didn't at least, and this was a BSN program with specific course titles reflecting those areas. I think natural resource conservation would be more interesting as well. I admire that you're thinking of doing that instead. I went through paramedic school many years ago just to learn. It wasn't a long program, at least not in the amount of time I'd have to put in to be successful and "learn," and it wasn't expensive either. Once I finished the teacher, who also owned an ambulance service, asked me to come to work for him so I did. It was a decent extra job and one that I held over the next couple years off and on, but it wasn't for me. Now, I'm not a "delicate" person as you claimed to be. I'm actually a career police officer and a bit unique in that nothing I've written above tends to fit in with what one thinks of as a cop. However, I'm not a hands on guy....at least not when it comes to healthcare. I like to learn about it. I want to know exactly why something works, but I do not want to be the one necessarily doing it. I'm fine with assessing people. I've been doing it for years, but once it comes to getting what I refer to as "intimate" with them then heck no. Leave me out of it. When nurse teachers talked in class about holding hands and rubbing backs I almost gagged. I don't electively touch random people or try to foster meaningful connections with them. I'm a great listener, but as my clinical faculties have said time and time again, I'm "not very giving of myself." I debated for YEARS about doing a paramedic to RN program so that I could efficiently move on up the healthcare food chain and do something else. I finally joined a "generic" BSN program last August having finished all of the prereqs from a previous B.S. degree, but I've been uncomfortable since the first day. Fortunately, I never had to quit working, and my monetary expense hasn't been that great. I can eventually coerce myself into working enough, on a part-time basis, to remunerate myself for it. Anyway, I have to run, but the point to this, and I write this on my very last day thereby completing this BSN program, that I was hesitant because I knew I didn't want to be a RN. I assumed at some point I'd assimilate, but I haven't. If you really don't think it's for you then run the other way. Trust yourself. I always do and did except with this. If you'd like to PM or something then hit me up. Plenty of people have had very rewarding careers as nurses, but the role of a RN isn't a role I want.

I'm not surprised. The underlying point is that an EMT basic is not given a wide array of medical knowlege, however, he is trained in specific medical and traumatic emergencies. That said, they don't work with much beyond bandages and oxygen. I say this having worked as an EMT and paramedic. A school nurse isn't going to have a lot of medical supplies handy to implement a lot of measures so the scenarios presented making the case that a school nurse is a difficult job and not one for a new grad isn't that great.

Yes, I have. Thanks! I'm "supposed" to start a master's program this fall to be a psychiatric nurse practitioner. The sad part is, at some point, I'll need 2,000 hours of clinical experience, which is the equivalent of one full-time year of work, to start the clinical courses. The core such as research, advanced patho, adv. pharm, etc. I can do now. After biding two years in nursing school I can't put forth the time and expense of going to med school and PA school options are so few and far between that it's almost easier to go to med school. I suspect there will be quite a lag between getting my core courses done and entering and completing the clinical courses.

That's all stuff a basic EMT could handle straight out of school.

The thing about going to medical school with the intent of becoming a psychiatrist is that you don't have to become a psychiatrist. You'll finish your first two years of medical sciences and then move into your clerkships and rotate through the major specialties and have some electives. That's your time to explore. I think medical school programs are set up so much better than nursing programs that I envy them and would rather be a doctor if the opportunity had been more available. If you finish medical school you'll have a MD or DO and can apply (although you'll do this while in school) to any residency program you like to specialize in whatever you like assuming of course you're accepted. In psychiatry, you're theoretically unlimited although you'd run into problems if you tried to start doing a lot, particularly billing insurance for a lot, outside of your board certified specialty. However, you're a licensed physician though. As a psych NP you're pretty much locked into that and potentially bound by a collaborative physician, and if you go to nursing school with the sole intent of moving immediately into advanced practice you're going to get flack from others who think you have to either pay your dues first or learn this "vast" array of nursing knowledge before you could ever be successful as a nurse practitioner.

You don't necessarily "need" a BSN to get a MSN. You'll just need a bachelor's degree and likely some added prereqs such as health assessment, for example. Most associate's programs don't include that in the curriculum while bachelor's programs all seem to, and that's probably a prereq course for most nurse master's programs.

there's no hype. medical-surgical is merely a hodge podge of sick and surgically-oriented patients. the book chapters will be stuff like preop, intraop, postop, respiratory, cardiac, endocrine, and on and on with each body system. it seems to typically be a two course sequence, and as "in depth" as some suggest that it is - i find it's not. i was kind of disheartened that nursing school wasn't as detailed as i'd been given the impression it was. in the hospital the patients will be waiting to go to surgery, those back from surger, sick people just laying in bed waiting to heal or die, and even some undergoing rehab. everyone in my class hated working on med-surg units which the vast majority of our clinical experiences were.

I was a paramedic and then a police officer (and currently intend to remain a police officer), and I'll finish a BSN program later this week. It's my second bachelor's degree, and I'm not at all content with nursing. I'm not used to interacting with the same person for long periods of time nor do I want to be, the things nurses do are what I term "too intimate" for me to do with patients, and it's not an appealing job to me. I'm all set to start a psych NP program this fall, and I think that'd be cool. I like the provider role, as I've seen it. The reason I actually chose this route was because I was in a rut and wanted change, yet fortunately I've climbed out of that rut and am enjoying what I do. Why didn't I become a doctor? This was a more available opportunity where I could continue to work a full schedule and continue to live. Med school wouldn't have allowed for that.

I was the same way and not too interested in learning about obstetrical care, but I got through it. They turned out to be perhaps the easiest clinicals. The teacher knew I wasn't into it and never forced the issue. I stood in on some deliveries, and yeah it's gross, but I'd actually delivered a baby on my own years before so it wasn't new. I will say that in the nursery rotation I never touched a baby, lol.

I feel what you're saying, OP. I'm in the same boat...sort of. I thought I was going to make a career change when I got into nursing school. I was in a rut with my existing career and wanted something new. I really never went through a formal application process since the program was new the director was taking anybody with a modicum of qualifications. I made a call and got in. I graduate (actually I'm not going) Friday, and I have no desire, at all, to work full-time as a registered nurse. I think the provider role in an outpatient setting is pretty cool, but nurses don't do a lot that I find appealing. I used to be rather interested in medicine and healthcare, but I realize now that nursing is not medicine and am thus disinterested. I'll probably stick with my current career although since last summer I have experienced a renewed vigor and savor going to work. At any rate, I'll take the NCLEX, but I have no intent to apply for a nursing job at least not in the near future.