Psychiatric & Community Nursing Semester

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Hello, everyone!

I'm in my final year of my school's nursing program :woot: and my fall semester is Psychiatric/Mental Health Nursing & Community Nursing... I don't know how to prepare! I have loved every semester so far (fundamentals/pharm, med/surg, peds/ob) but have heard mixed things about this one. Have any of you had either of these classes? What did you think? How did you study? I'm the type of person that likes numbers/facts and I feel like these courses won't offer that.

Thanks in advance!

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I had both mental health and community health in the spring and to be honest I wasn't crazy about either course and was very happy to finish out the semester. I thought I would not like mental health at all and actually liked it and its clinical quite a bit more than community health, which I found to be boring and not very useful unless you want to be a public health nurse. I enjoy being in the hospital so I did not like the clinicals for community health either which were primarily in elementary/high schools, the county health dept and people's homes. I found that I did not have to study much at all for community health but did have to study and read quite a bit for mental health. Overall I would not call either of those classes difficult when compared to other nursing courses.

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Can you tell me if this is a BSN program? I have done the quickie Mental Health course in my ADN program. Lots of twisted questions on tests dealing with mental health. To me it didn't seem to prove I had any knowledge. It just proved I could think another way. I found the child psychiatric facility clinical dull and boring. I went to an adult facility and the conversations were very odd with the extremely mentally ill individuals there.

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Truckinusa - not sure if you are talking to me or the OP but I am in a BSN program at a CA State University.

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Truckinusa - not sure if you are talking to me or the OP but I am in a BSN program at a CA State University.

I just wanted to clarify. I read some of the BSN psychiatric textbooks for extra clarification and they are much more in depth. The most irritating thing for me is my teachers used the old textbook. I spent good money on a textbook that was current and they pulled all their tests and test banks from the old textbook. There was a whole lesson on drug addiction which was left out of the new textbook, but they decided to include it in the lesson anyway. I guess I am dull. I just like to read the material and take a test without any tricks or confusion.

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truckinusa - I'm in a BSN program at Northern Michigan University. Thanks for your input, I've heard that clinics for Mental Health can be boring but the patients can be interesting at times. We'll see when I get there I guess!

danielle11 - I also enjoy being in the hospital so I feel like I'll feel the same way you did, enjoying psych a little bit more than Community. I've heard this semester is a bit easier than others so that's a relief. I'll probably also spend more time studying for psych as I can picture myself working on a psych unit before being a public health nurse. Thank you!

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