RNs and up - Do you really use all of the "gen-ed" course material on the job?

[RomaniGypsy]

I just finished taking another A&P 1 exam, and I just have to ask - do y'all really use all of this stuff on the job? Do you really need to know the difference between a tuberosity and a tubercle, or the names of all of the cranial nerves, or what muscles get innervated by what spinal nerves, or the names and locations of the individual bones in the wrist, etc, etc, etc?

Or, for that matter, do you really need to know about all of the philosophers they teach you about in Ethics, or how to do a 2-way ANOVA (Statistics), or what Lev Vygotsky did with his life (Psychology)? Do y'all use _any_ of this stuff "on the job"?

It strikes me that these classes are a lot like throwing a large amount of mud at a wall and hoping some will stick. I'll remember a few things from each, but I can't promise to remember which indentations are called "fossae" and which bear the name "ala".

I intend no disrespect to LPNs/LVNs when I say "RNs and up", but an LPN I know said that what LPNs and RNs really need to know on account of what they do on the job is distinctly varied. Another student in my A&P 1 class said, today after the exam, that her mom is an LPN and she doesn't even know the nine abdominal regions that we learned about in the first week of class. (My takeaway is that she, and at least the other LPNs with whom she works in that facility, don't need to know even this basic A&P information in order to do their jobs successfully.) With this information in mind, I want to see if what I hear from RNs, NPs, and other "specialty nurses" is substantially different.

I've worn a couple of different career hats in my life and I know that in both cases, I didn't use a lot of what I learned on the road toward being fully qualified to "do" that career. I'm still at a solid "A" in A&P 1 with only one exam to go, but part of me is disenchanted with the whole process because I feel like I'm rote-memorizing a whole bunch of stuff I will never again use after regurgitating it for the exams... and that would be naught but a waste of my time.

[HarleyvQuinn, MSN, RN, NP]

On ‎4‎/‎18‎/‎2019 at 11:08 PM, RomaniGypsy said:

I just finished taking another A&P 1 exam, and I just have to ask - do y'all really use all of this stuff on the job? Do you really need to know the difference between a tuberosity and a tubercle, or the names of all of the cranial nerves, or what muscles get innervated by what spinal nerves, or the names and locations of the individual bones in the wrist, etc, etc, etc?

Or, for that matter, do you really need to know about all of the philosophers they teach you about in Ethics, or how to do a 2-way ANOVA (Statistics), or what Lev Vygotsky did with his life (Psychology)? Do y'all use _any_ of this stuff "on the job"?

It strikes me that these classes are a lot like throwing a large amount of mud at a wall and hoping some will stick. I'll remember a few things from each, but I can't promise to remember which indentations are called "fossae" and which bear the name "ala".

I intend no disrespect to LPNs/LVNs when I say "RNs and up", but an LPN I know said that what LPNs and RNs really need to know on account of what they do on the job is distinctly varied. Another student in my A&P 1 class said, today after the exam, that her mom is an LPN and she doesn't even know the nine abdominal regions that we learned about in the first week of class. (My takeaway is that she, and at least the other LPNs with whom she works in that facility, don't need to know even this basic A&P information in order to do their jobs successfully.) With this information in mind, I want to see if what I hear from RNs, NPs, and other "specialty nurses" is substantially different.

I've worn a couple of different career hats in my life and I know that in both cases, I didn't use a lot of what I learned on the road toward being fully qualified to "do" that career. I'm still at a solid "A" in A&P 1 with only one exam to go, but part of me is disenchanted with the whole process because I feel like I'm rote-memorizing a whole bunch of stuff I will never again use after regurgitating it for the exams... and that would be naught but a waste of my time.

Not only will you need a strong understanding of A&P as an RN, if you plan on progressing to NP, you'll be taking advanced courses to deepen your understanding on pathophysiology so you can effectively diagnose and manage a patient's condition. Regardless of what setting your patient is in, you also need to be prepared to care for them and all of the comorbidities they present with. Patients in orthopedic units can suffer a stroke or MI. As another poster stated, you need to know how the body normally works to understand how disease alters its functions. The body is very interconnected, so it's also important to understand how the systems interact so you are aware of why diseases present with the symptoms they do. It helps you know what to look for, to understand what you're seeing in assessment and procedures.

Ethics is extremely important in our profession. So is psychology. You need to understand both normal psychology and abnormal psychology, human behavior, and psychobiology. It's important to know the unethical way some of our patients have been treated in the past so that we don't repeat this behavior. Our patients trust us with their lives. Statistics is necessary for understanding and performing research. It's also needed with diagnostics, testing, and treatment.

Some of the additional courses for general education requirements are for the well rounded education to meet bachelor level. Enjoy the choices you get to make here. I took a basic kayaking course that's added a great hobby to my life. Excellent for stress reduction. Took a music class and Japanese culture class, as well, to meet requirements and enjoyed those. Have I needed them in nursing? Not necessarily, but they were fun and provided an opportunity to explore different areas of interest. Your life can't be all about work all the time. You'll burn out. ?

[FolksBtrippin, BSN, RN]

You've gotten many excellent responses.

It's not so much about what you know, but about how you think, that makes you a good nurse.

You can always look up something you don't know, and pretty quickly too. So you can afford to forget a lot of the details you are learning in A&P, all of the names of psychologists and philosophers, every date, who discovered DNA, etc.

Grappling with the concepts and processing the information will help shape the way you think about things.

For example, statistics is extremely important so that you can understand how research works. You need to be able to criticize research and process the conflicting information out there in a logical way.

Philosophy is really important because you need an ethics basis on which to practice. Nurses without an ethics background are often looking for the law, eg the nurse practice act, to dictate their ethical decisions. Or they are reaching for their personal morality, which is also inappropriate. You are going to need to be able to make ethical professional decisions. You do this by exploring ethical concepts.

While you're in school you can't tell what's important and what's not, what will stay with you and what will float away. That's okay, you're in the valley, you're not on the mountaintop. You can't see the big picture yet. It will come. Right now is for navigating the details.

[ComeTogether, LPN]

I"m an LPN and I still had to take all the same gen eds the RNs did, just saying. I use most of it, yes.

[RomaniGypsy]

So, yes indeed I agree that I got a bunch of good responses.

My thing is this - I'm not going to remember all of this stuff. Who ever does? You learn it for the tests, regurgitate it as best you can, and then later on you forget it. When presented with it again at some point later on, you might remember having gone over it in the past but you still need your memory refreshed, so it's effectively like re-learning it.

I do believe in learning what needs to be known for the job. But to give you an idea of what I'm talking about - I taught high school physics for a year. To do so you must have a bachelor's degree with at least a concentration in physics. I have that. To get it, I had to take classes in quantum mechanics, classical mechanics, radiation lab, numerical differential equations, etc. I remember taking two years of AP physics in high school. We _never_ did anything from any of the classes I just listed.

Therefore, you literally don't need to know that stuff in order to teach whatever physics you will ever teach in high school, even if you teach the AP classes.

I'm sure that you need to know a few things about anatomy and physiology. I'm not saying that that, or stats, or ethics, or psychology, etc. are useless. I just think that we're likely to encounter, let's say, less than half of what we learn.

Look at what some of y'all said. "It's good to know the bones if you're on an ortho unit". Fine. But what if you're not on an ortho unit? Unless you rotate around from unit to unit for your entire career and have the most amazing photographic memory ever, a lot of the time you spent in college-level Anatomy & Physiology will have been wasted because at some point you will have to study it all again so as to refresh your memory.

It strikes me that what one of the posters said would be the most logical solution - that nursing education ought to be like medical education in a sense. Meaning - people learn what every last RN in the country will _definitely_ use on the job, and the advanced stuff that is relevant to specific nursing duties that not all nurses will do, and/or specific nursing wings on which not all nurses will work, gets taught later on as additional course work for qualification to be able to work on that unit or in that specialty. After all, that's how it goes as an advanced practice RN, as I understand... you have to take certain specific education geared toward the specialty you are seeking.

I haven't been blowing anything off. I'm at a straight 4.0 right now, at least if we count the 60 or so credits I have earned since having graduated from college the first time... and I didn't do badly my first time around. I just don't feel like I have a lot of free time right now, with classes and work and a toddler and a pregnant wife, and it's becoming more than a little frustrating that I'm rote-memorizing a whole bunch of stuff that I know I will forget later on and have to look up. (I'm not the only one either. Occasionally the A&P professor asks us to recall something that we had to know for a previous exam and pretty much everyone in the class, nearly all of us nursing students, are like "uhhhhhh......?". The stuff starts to blur together, the "new" stuff replaces the "old" stuff in our memories, and only the most memorable stuff from previous units sticks with us.)

[Oldmahubbard]

Definitely never used an ounce of the A and P or microbiology labs I had to endure.

Complete waste of time and money.

60 years ago, somebody said A and P and Micro have to have a lab component.

The only thing I learned from Micro is that washing your hands makes virtually no difference in the germs you spread.

I doubt that is what they wanted to teach.

I was a A student.

Total waste of time and money.

[buttercup9, ASN, BSN, MSN]

OP

I understand your frustration, you have a lot going on and seem really stressed out.

The way I see it is that you have two choices.

1. you can be pissed off about all the things you assume are useless- ( and search for people who will validate your point of view) which will increase your level of stress and annoyance.

2. You can accept that this is what you have to do in order to reach your goals. Being mad about it won't change anything. It will only succeed in you being annoyed, which helps no one.

If someday you want to work for whoever it is that determines what is and isn't required for nursing education, then more power to you.

Oh- and if your annoyed now, wait till you learn about nursing diagnosis!

And though I've read a lot of posts by Oldmahubbard and agree with many, I just don't agree with this one.

[herring_RN, ASN, BSN]

3 hours ago, Oldmahubbard said:

Definitely never used an ounce of the A and P or microbiology labs I had to endure.

Complete waste of time and money.

60 years ago, somebody said A and P and Micro have to have a lab component.

The only thing I learned from Micro is that washing your hands makes virtually no difference in the germs you spread.

I doubt that is what they wanted to teach.

I was a A student.

Total waste of time and money.

Just in case the quoted post is not a joke:

Quote

Why Wash Your Hands?

... Germs can also get onto hands if people touch any object that has germs on it because someone coughed or sneezed on it or was touched by some other contaminated object. When these germs get onto hands and are not washed off, they can be passed from person to person and make people sick...

https://www.cdc.gov/handwashing/why-handwashing.html

References:

Variations of Bacterial Populations in Human Feces Measured by Fluorescent In Situ Hybridization with Group-Specific 16S rRNA-Targeted Oligonucleotide Probes: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC106730/

Hand washing for preventing diarrhoea: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18254044

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17446290

Effect of hand hygiene on infectious disease risk in the community setting: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18556606

Handwashing and risk of respiratory infections: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16553905

The effect of handwashing with water or soap on bacterial contamination of hands: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21318017

[herring_RN, ASN, BSN]

I began nursing as a CNA. Then took a year working one weekend shift a weed while attended LVN school and worked as a hospital LVN for many years. As an LVN I took almost all the CE classes offered for adult nursing.

When my kids were in high school I worked four eight hour night shifts a week while attending an ASN program after taking prerequisites. (Sometimes I got to be monitor observer.)

Because as an LVN I's taken the "Critical Care Entrance Class" I was offered a transfer to CCU and gladly accepted.

I later did an online BSN for my ego. I wrote many papers. One my faculty adviser used in a text book in his name. I'm glad I did it then for two reasons.

1. I did learn a lot, researching and working on those papers.

2. I didn't have to go back to school in my late 50s years later when a BSN became necessary for most hospitals.

My facility helped with tuition to take advanced critical care. I was in class with nurses planning to be a critical care clinical nurse specialist. Those classes were required for them. I only took one class at a time. I never finished grad school, but learned a LOT that helped me care for my critically ill patients. It was worth the time and money, in spite of being a drop out.

[ComeTogether, LPN]

It may not be the information you use but the process of learning it that gives you the life/study skills that you need to have in order to go to nursing school and succeed as well as in everyday life. Although I understand a lot of people think many are unnecessary, I don't think most of the classes I took were a waste of time at all.

[PeeWeeQ, ADN, RN, EMT-B]

5 hours ago, RomaniGypsy said:

My thing is this - I'm not going to remember all of this stuff. Who ever does? You learn it for the tests, regurgitate it as best you can, and then later on you forget it.

It doesn't have to be that way and it shouldn't be. How many nurses work in the exact same specialty their entire careers? From what I've seen, not a lot.

A nurse is literally a jack of all trades, master of some.

Look, I work 40-48 hours per week while in a program where I am constantly reminded by my instructors that working that much while doing this program is not recommended and I'm maintaining As and Bs...

I used to think like you did. "Why do I need to know all of this?" Now, the nursing theories---I agree---crap. But, the A&P, Pharmacology, Alterations--why would you WANT to skimp on that when you are training to be a medical professional?

You also never know where you might end up. When I was an infantry medic in the Army, I didn't go lazy on my regular soldiering like shooting, moving, and communicating, or my knowledge of infantry battle drills. Why? Because you never know what kind of situation you may end up in, no matter what your 'specialty'. What if you're forced to float somewhere else? What if you work in an ER? CCU? Med/Surge? You'll see all kinds of things, like people with comorbidities that cross 'specialties'.

Do yourself and future patients a favor and change your attitude about it. Yes, SOME of that stuff is too deep and you'll only see it in a test, then forget it. Once you start seeing patients in clinicals, you'll figure out what you need to know and what you don't. I think you'll be surprised how much of that knowledge that you really do use...

Good luck!

[Leader25, ASN, BSN, RN]

Yessssss and by the way drop the y'all.

[ThatChickOmi, ADN, RN]

Trust me, you'll need to know your anatomy and physiology, not only for general nursing, also pharmacology. It's not always all fluff.