AnArtist

I am 26 and have a BSN with one and a half years working nightshift in inpatient physical rehab nursing. I feel like becoming a nurse has made me a better person, but I feel like I am not growing anymore in my current job and I have been thinking a lot about joining the U.S. military. The main thing is that I'm worried I'll get old and not have done anything exciting with my life. I have a few questions though: How many hours per week do you (typically) work when you're deployed? Are you strict night or dayshift or do you have to switch back and forth? What should I study to prepare? Rehab nursing is not exactly ICU. Is the Air Force a good branch for nursing? How do I know if I should join? If I actually meet a good guy, get married, and have children is there a way I can retire honorably? Thanks!

It depends on which program you're enrolling in; is it an ADN or BSN program? Where I live, the ADN program required these classes before beginning: Composition 1, intro to Psych, Introduction to Biology, human anatomy, intro. to chem., & CNA certification. You had to take biology before you could take anatomy, so unless you took summer classes, it would take a whole year to do pre-requisites. The other non-nursing classes: Am. history, Comp 2, Am. Gov., Physiology, Microbiology, and developmental psychology could be taken ahead of time or done simultaneously with nursing school. For the Traditional BSN program I chose, everything had to be finished ahead of time. Comp 1 & 2, Gov., History, Gen. Chem., College Algebra, Statistics, 2 classes of foreign languages, Western culture, arts, Non-Western culture, Anatomy, Physiology, Microbiology, Sociology, Pysch, Developmental pysch, nutrition, and one 3000-4000 level class. At least 67 credit hours. Because nearly everyone in my traditional BSN program took our prerequisites at the same junior college as the ADNs, we had the same restrictions of taking sciences and maths in a certain order. Technically, they could be completed in a year and a half, but not realistically if you wanted to get grades good enough to get into the BSN program. It would be easier to do BSN pre-reqs in 2 years. You have to watch out for the junior college cancelling classes to keep from falling behind. Mine canceled about 1/4th to 1/3 of classes each semester! I also CLEPed sociology, psych, and dev. psych. I recommend this approach entirely if you can study well on your own and the programs you want to apply to accept these. The exams are made by the same people who make Advanced Placement tests for high-schoolers, and the content they test over is basically the same, making it very easy to study from the numerous AP reviews put out for high-schoolers.

I am a nursing student and a Christian. I go to a state school in a very Christian area, so many of the teachers and students in my program also come from a Christian background. Of course, though, we do not about Christian aspects of nursing because it is a state school. I am wondering, for those of you who did go to Christian nursing schools, did they teach you anything special? Like, about how Christians view nursing, about how to deal with patient death, or a way to look at suffering in the world. A lot of people used to tell me that if you had an illness, you either didn't have enough faith, or you had somehow sinned. I really don't agree with this, I don't think it is what Jesus taught, and I really want to stop having nursing school remind me of how people used to blame me for my dad dying of cancer when I was a child. (I'm not even sure what they thought I did wrong! But it still hurts.) I think the best way to do this is to get another perspective.

We need all the prayer we can get. One of the nurses where I work, prays quietly for the patients and staff every shift, she does so silently. I feel very encouraged knowing this. I am a Baptist, personally I believe we should only pray to God, but if a nurse prayed to someone else for me I would take that as a sign that he or she cares very much and wants to help. But it could bother other people if they know you are doing it. I always pray in the car before I go to work or clinical. Sometimes if I'm having to wait, such as if I'm holding pressure on a dc'd IV site of patient on blood thinners, I also pray silently.

Thanks for writing your thoughts... I've thought about ICU when I graduate, and then I wonder how ICU nurses work with this issue. Does it change how you view life?

I'm also in nursing school. It's sort of hard to deal with the fact that there are some patients we can't help enough. You seem very conscientious about your nursing, and I have also been worried that I might miss something important which could hurt my patient. I mean, there is only so much one nurse can keep track of. So I discussed this with a professor, who told me that this feeling is very normal in the beginning, and that is why it is so important for nurses to work together as a team - instead of individually - so there will be more "eyes" and "ears" keeping the patients safe. Or maybe you love precision, (since you are from a science background) and find it nursing stressful because nursing care is something where we have to be ready for our plans to change on a dime. Hopefully you can find a counselor to discuss your concerns. You have to take care of yourself. Maybe nursing isn't the easiest career choice for you, but regardless of your future jobs, you need to treat yourself well.

Take a deep breath and try to put that day out of your mind so you can concentrate on your next tasks. I hope your next clinical goes very well.

CNA work is lowly in that it is hard, there are easier jobs that pay just as much, and you don't have to have as much education. But I have seen so many good CNAs that are so dedicated and really have a heart for this work. It should be considered an honor to be able to provide care for these patients while preserving their honor and dignity.

Um, yes, I've felt stressed. Going in, I told myself the stress couldn't be that bad; after all, my dad died of cancer when I was a kid and I found my pre-reqs enjoyable because I'm a nerd. Unfortunately, that didn't make me immune to nursing school stress. In fact, I think it's made me more susceptible to stress... I keep thinking, "What if I don't study enough and someone else's parent dies?" Then I feel guilty and that makes it hard to concentrate on my schoolwork. The best advice my professors have given me is to pray and write my worries on paper. I have to mentally "let go" of patients that I cannot help anymore and stop worrying about if they got better or worse after I left. Since I did good work; I have done all I could. It sounds that your stress is mainly related to the difference of nursing school study from more precision oriented disciplines such as science. At first I blamed my stress on that, but then I realized that there was also my worry about being responsible for other people's health. You might want to see if there are other contributing factors to your stress. Also, I have gotten more used to the nursing school type of studying and test questions. Take time to read the question carefully and get it right.

Try to find time to connect with your real-life, non-nursing school friends. You probably have deeper friendships than the gossipers can earn by putting others down.

I have used them, especially the one for maternal-newborn nursing, and they are the most relevant materials to my classes - other than ATI Reviews - and much more complete and explanatory. The cds with the books, will not work with my laptop, though, because my computer is apparently too new? (I don't understand this.)

You don't have enough to go on, you need to listen to breath sounds, ask the patient when the pain began, and get vital signs. Ask if the patient is using accessory muscles to breathe; if she is breathing evenly in each lung. It could be that the diagnosis of "pneumonia" was a distracting question and that this "patient" actually has something more serious.

I am sorry that this is happening to you. I would think that your high GPA would allow you to transfer and more academic nursing schools would understand if you transferred, but I am still in nursing school myself. With the extreme amount of information we are given in nursing school, we really need good, accurate teachers to show us what to focus on. It sounds like the stress from this school is something that you shouldn't have to face. Best wishes in achieving your dreams.

I started in my last year of nursing school because I didn't feel I had as much experience as the other nursing students who did do tech work. It has helped me be more comfortable in communicating and interacting with patients and I felt I needed it because I hadn't had enough job experience. If you've had a lot of jobs and already feel that you are good at interacting with patients it might not help that much, though.

I would say to try to stay with "your nurse" and to ignore their behavior as much as possible. If you don't have to have lunch together, then don't. There's plenty of stress enough to be taking care of patients during clinicals without having them take their stress out on you.