gardnerg729

I begin on august 22 and am also excited to get my last year started! We just have to stay focused! Good luck =)

I didn't read all the responses, so I am not sure if this has already been said but...I have seen about 40% of my class not come back for one reason or another. A few left because they felt it was too difficult, some had family issues, but most failed because they expected things to be given to them. I heard countless complaints about tests being tricky, instructors not giving study guides, etc, etc. There is way to much information for an instructor to teach you every single detail. You must be dedicated to your education.

I forgot to mention that there is a VA hospital in Durham which is normally hiring. Their website lists job opportunities. Worth looking into!

I am from the Raleigh/Durham area. This area is saturated with nursing schools (chapel hill, duke, nccu, greensboro, etc) which means many students looking for jobs. Yes we have excellent hospitals; however, I do not think the triangle area is hiring many nurses. If you like the state, I would say more rural hospital areas are hiring more than the triangle. If you choose to relocate to the triangle, I know wake med and chapel hill pay more than duke and Durham regional. But duke does have a good new graduate program. Good luck! P.S. tips about housing: raleigh-expensive, cary: expensive, chapel hill: you can find good deals if your not looking directly in town, Durham: be selective about where you live but cheaper housing.

Then again, you said you are graduating with a biology degree so the science classes might not be too difficult for you. I feel you could handle 12-14 hours pretty easily.

At my university in NC a minimum full time student is 12 credit hours. Throughout my education, I have taken anywhere from 12-16 credit hours and maintained a part-time job and sometimes full-time job. It really depends on your situation though. How demanding are the courses you are taking? I would say if you are doing basic prereqs like history, math, English then you could probably take 14-16 credit hours and work part time. If you are taking hard science classes like microbiology, organic chemistry, etc. then you would probably want to do the minimum of 12 hours. Good luck.

I can't comment on if it will help you get into ns, but once you start clinicals and labs you will be more comfortable with patient interaction and basic ADL skills. I am very happy I worked as a CNA before ns and throughout ns. Good luck

In my nursing program the courses are predetermined and have predetermined times. If you decide to enroll in nursing school, you are basically giving your life over to them! The only thing I have gotten to choose is the time I wanted my clinical to be (example: I could choose Tuesday and Wednesday from 7a-1p or Saturday from 7a-7p). Clinicals are a portion (20%) of the class they pertain to. To answer your questions about how nursing schools test...yes, you do have to read the books (at least skim) because everything in those books are vital to your success as a future rn. BUT, you will probably not be tested directly from the text book information. For the most part, definitions and such are not asked on exams, but you do have to know those things to understand and work through the test questions. The test questions are designed to see if you can critically think through the material you have read and apply it to "real" nursing situations. I try to read/skim through the book/powerpoints before lecture so that I am not clueless when the instructor is teaching. After lecture I read my notes and try to make connections between the book information and the way a nurse applies it to their practice. Example: You will learn about disease processes (book information), but as a nurse you have to know how that disease will affect your patient and how you will provide care (nursing interventions). One more thing, expect to be frustrated when reading the test questions because you will feel like at least 2 out of the 4 multiple choices are correct. They put multiple correct answers on the test because a nurse is supposed to be able to prioritize! Good luck :)

Z track is only for IM injections.

Hello everyone! I am a junior nursing student at nccu. To answer a earlier post, yes you do have to take bridge courses before getting accepted into the program. You take them your spring semester of sophomore year. The bridge courses are patho, health assessment, fundamentals of nursing, and micro ( unless you took micro as part of your prereqs like I did). I found health assessment and fundamentals to be rather easy classes, but the patho was very difficult for myself and most of my classmates. But it is possible to pass, just study hard! I have enjoyed the program so far, and most instructors have been very willing to help me succeed. Another plus is that they are currently building a new nursing building which will have all up to date equipment, which will aide in our success even more. LEt me know if there Are any more questions You want me to answer. Good luck!