dreamMaker

Hi Missy, I'm hoping you haven't been too put off by the negative comments you've received. All too often, my colleagues get defensive and suspicious of young people who commit no worse crime than displaying a lot of energy and enthusiasm for their future careers in nursing. They expect you to know everything before you have had a chance to get out there and learn. I am really happy that you are considering a career in anesthesia, and I'm glad you're bringing so much positive energy to the pursuit. You're past academic success proves you are smart, so I'm sure you could improve your performance if you were to slow things down a bit. If you are still serious about a career in anesthesia, you might want to speak to your academic counselor about the possibility of converting to a traditional BSN program. If you stop the bleeding now, step back, take a breath, take a lot fewer classes per term and kick ass on your exams in a traditional program, you will have something impressive to show to the grad school admissions committees later on. You will also have a good story to tell, since you'll be able to show them you had the maturity to assess your situation and take some dramatic steps to improve it. You will still have to face tough questions from them (e.g. "Accelerated BSN programs are hard, but grad school -- especially in anesthesia -- is a lot harder, so please tell us why you think you can hack it even though you couldn't hack the accelerated BSN program"). But I'd rather have you answer that question with a set of good grades from a traditional program than explain a more mediocre performance in a completed accelerated program. The idea is that you want to have some good strengths to play off against any weaknesses in your application. I would even recommend that you take a couple of grad school classes after you finish your BSN just to show them that you can do grad level work without problems. But that's for further down the line. For now, I'd say focus on recalibrating your academic progress through a slower, traditional program, go work hard as a nurse for a couple of years and then get ready to apply to anesthesia school if you're still committed to it at that point. Missy, I can relate to your situation somewhat. I was a very good student as an undergrad, but I wasn't the type who could ace a ton of classes in one semester. I always took the minimum number of classes and made sure I had time to excel in each of them. It wasn't until later on, after I finished my first degree and went out into the world and worked for awhile, that I was able to return to school and kick butt in an accelerated BSN program for second degree students (my first degree was in Latin American Studies, of all things). From there, it wasn't too hard to convince the admissions committee that my range of experiences in school and work proved I'd do well in anesthesia school. Your story will be different, but you will still be able to make a strong case if you make good decisions from here on out. Don't let the haters hold you back. Just keep in mind that grad schools know what they want and it's up to you to make the choices necessary to give them what they want. Hope this helps! If you have any further questions, just let me know. Hugh, CRNA

Hi BeachBum, I did go through an accelerated BSN program and completed a CRNA program. I can answer specific questions about the two, if you have any. I'm not sure a general comparison of the two programs would be that helpful, because they really are apples and oranges, since the level of intellectual difficulty is several degrees higher in the CRNA program and they type of work you do is so different in anesthesia. I will say, though, that being in a challenging accelerated BSN program did help me on a basic level, teaching me to become hyper-organized in my studies. The content of the BSN program wasn't too difficult, but the volume of information compressed into a short period did require obsessive-compulsive organization; a skill that definitely helped my success in anesthesia school. Again, if you have specific questions, let me know. Cheers, Hugh

No problem. If you have any questions about OB anesthesia, please let me know. I love my job and don't mind talking about it!

L and D experience isn't required if you hope to work in OB anesthesia. You will get the OB experience you need in anesthesia school because it's built into the program. Some people do specialize but I wouldn't recommend doing a narrow specialization right out of the gate. Anesthesia school gives you enough experience to be competent, but not enough to give you the necessary seasoning that comes with years of experience. I say that even though I am doing primarily OB anesthesia myself after being in the general OR for only two years after graduating, but I am keeping my OR skills up by continuing to do part time work at another hospital. The primarily OB work is great, but mostly epidurals and spinals, and I would feel very uncomfortable during the occasional crash c-section if I hadn't done a lot of general anesthesia before coming to this job a few months ago. So if you're really looking to do OB anesthesia, I'd recommend going to a general OR with a wide variety of cases right out of school, but do it at a hospital that also lets you do spinals and epidurals. Do that for awhile and you'll be well-equipped to do OB anesthesia next. Even then, I'd still recommend continuing to do some general OR work to keep your skills up.

1.for next semester, i'm thinking about taking herpes virus reseach as a class this semester, (lots of pre-med/dental students take this class, however, the professor from this research said i can take this course because i took two general chem w/ lab, biology and microbiology). do you think it is that necessary for me to take this course? not necessary. but, take some type of research; it can be a tough course in any event, but see if there is one that isn't as stressful and take that if you prefer. 2. other than nursing courses what classes exactly did you guys take? such as science, did you take organic chem(not the basic one, but those organic level that pre-med studenst take), physics, biochemistry or microbiology during bsn program? what others would you suggest? any of the courses you mention will certainly make you a stronger candidate and make you better prepared for crna school. the more of those you can take, the better. 3. i'm thinking about doing several internships during every summer, what kind of internship do you think will be helpful and interesting? i don't think there's an internship that will specifically be helpful, so choose what's interesting to you. more important than an internship for crna purposes is making sure you arrange to shadow a crna for a day. even better, find out what type of practice crnas are doing in your city or surrounding area and try to shadow more than one crna in places where they have different duties and/or different levels of autonomy. that way you can get a better sense of what we do, and you will be able to speak intelligently about the diversity of practice crnas engage in. 4. actually i'm not american and i've lived in us for only 2 years, i've taught myself english since i was 14(i"m 19 right now), so i do not have any problems with speaking (i've learned english from watching movies and lots of people think that i was born here, because i don't have any foreign accents) however, i'm sort of struggling in nursing courses right now, i'm not sure it is because the way i study, or i do not understand the concepts cleary. yet, one thing for sure is that i do study all those exam materials perfectly, but when it comes to the exam, i cannot find the answers of questions that requires thinking and thorough understanding. could you give me some suggestions for this, how did you guys study? if you're struggling, make sure you are taking the least amount of courses possible per semester. fewer classes will make it easier to concentrate on the classes you are taking and maybe perform better. your intelligence is probably sufficient to do well, but the language issue means that you need extra time to absorb and understand the material. also, take a ton of practice nclex exams. that will help you get more used to the weird language of exam questions. sometimes you probably have the requisite knowledge but get tripped up by tricky language on the exam. doing practice questions and reviewing the ones you miss will help you get used to that language. that's what you need to do for now. if you end up going to anesthesia school, bear in mind that the above advice will no longer apply, because you will have little control over your schedule and you will have no time for practice questions, at least during the first year of the program. so practice as much as you can now to start training your mind for exam-taking and hopefully you'll be better equipped by the time you go to crna school. i did have several classmates who had language barriers similar to yours when i was in crna school. they did struggle a little more than the rest of us, but they made it through. so did one native speaker who had a learning disability but enough native intelligence and determination to make it through. good luck, hugh thx~!

I was an accelerated BSN student who fielded some close questioning about my motivation and lack of clinical experience when I went in for my interview. As nurselizk mentioned, the strength of my academic acheivement before and through the BSN program made up for the lack of experience, as did clarity about my passion for anesthesia. This is just one of those gray areas that don't have an obvious right answer. Whatever path you take, do the best you can and remain clear about your motivation, and you should do fine.

It's completely a personal issue. I relied heavily on mine during school. Examples of where it came in handy: While reading my assigned texts, I often used my PDA to elaborate on passing references to drugs or issues that I wasn't familiar with. In class, if lecture touched on something I didn't know, I could quickly keep up with the lecture by filling in the blanks with a lookup on the PDA. Organizing study time and my complex schedule with many classes and assignments, the PDA was always there to help me. In clinical, if I was reviewing a patient's chart and ran across unfamiliar drugs, my PDA was there. If I ran across an unusual comorbidity and needed to look up anesthesia implications, the PDA was there. If I was engaged in a task that required recall of a specific detail (e.g. type of equipment to use, or dosing), the PDA was there. When it was time to log my clinical cases for review by my school and future employer, I used the PDA. When I needed to look up something on the web and no computer was around, you guessed it, the PDA was there. So for me it was invaluable. I had classmates, however, who either had photographic memories or were technologically challenged, and they managed to do just as well as me in class and in clinical. I don't understand how, but that's me. Probably if you've been practicing as a nurse for awhile, and you've already mastered a difficult academic program at some point in your education without a PDA at your side, you have the internal resources necessary to do well without the crutch of technology. I may have done well without the PDA too, but I'm really glad I had it. Especially when I was able to find the answer to a question that CRNAs and MDs around me couldn't answer off the top of their heads (a rare occurrence, but it did happen!). Hugh

I use a bunch of Skyscape applications on my iPhone, including: A2zDrugs AHFS-DI AnesthesiaDrugs ClinAne2 DrDrugs DrugGuide EmergAir Handbook of Pharmacology and Physiology in Anesthesia Practice Labs360 MGHAnes7 NurAnes Stedman28 StedmanSE3 I also have downloaded a couple of anesthesia texts from Amazon to the iPhone Kindle application. iPhone applications I have include: Epocrates Essentials Emergency Medical Spanish Mediquations Sedation ACLS PALS PubSearch Plus MedAbbr RSI I'm the first to admit that I have way more stuff than I need to use on a regular basis, but I can say that I often use Epocrates (quick lookup on drugs), AHFS (great for more in-depth understanding of drugs), Anesthesia Drugs, MGH Anesthesia. The range of anesthesia texts available for iPhone kindle seems to be expanding, so it's worth checking there to see if anything meets your needs as well. I do a lot of OB anesthesia, and I've got a couple of good books from Kindle on that topic, for example. Cheers, Hugh

There are benefits to both, but keep in mind Palm's popularity has waned with the advent of Blackberry, improved versions of Windows Mobile and of course the introduction of the iPhone. I was a long-time Palm user, had accumulated a large number of Palm applications (drug guides, medical dictionaries and texts, etc.) and was reluctant to jump to another platform mainly because of my comfort with Palm and the cost of replacing many of those applications for the new platform. But after I graduated and took jobs that paid for the acquisition of "educational" items like applications for mobile devices, I made the switch to the iPhone and I haven't looked back. I have nearly all the same applications I used to have on my Palm devices, and I enjoy using the iPhone much more than I did any of my previous devices. It also is more stable than any device I've had before, and I say that even after I had to return my first iPhone because it was defective (the return process was easy). So you can probably find good reasons to use any of the major platforms, but if you're asking whether the iPhone is worth trying, the answer is definitely yes. It would have given me everything I needed when I was in school if it had been around then, and it probably would have made my life easier, since it's integration with e-mail, contacts and calendar functions in both Outlook and Google is nearly seamless (I was almost strictly an Outlook person for organizing things while in school, but have since turned almost exclusively to Google and the iPhone). If you have any specific questions about the iPhone, let me know. Cheers, Hugh