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.
We did petri dishes for various conditions, came back a week later. I learned that even thoroughly washed hands are still very germy. Almost as germy as the doorknob.
I don't say there is zero point in hand washing, but there was a small lesson in it.
Otherwise that course was a complete waste of time.
Part of the reason is that so few people today die from infections, unless they have underlying conditions.
I felt that Micro spent way, way too much time emphasizing infectious disease, which is not what 99% of my nursing career has been like over 30 years.
We did petri dishes for various conditions, came back a week later. I learned that even thoroughly washed hands are still very germy. Almost as germy as the doorknob.
I don't say there is zero point in hand washing, but there was a small lesson in it.
Otherwise that course was a complete waste of time.
Part of the reason is that so few people today die from infections, unless they have underlying conditions.
I felt that Micro spent way, way too much time emphasizing infectious disease, which is not what 99% of my nursing career has been like over 30 years.
So few people die of infection? Are you kidding? Have you never smelled necrotizing fasciitis? Taken care of anyone with sepsis? Everyday stuff in an intensive care setting.
"My truth", "careers are BS", "not my dream job", "stuff I'll never use"---yup, you've honestly just confirmed that you basically are or are just like a whiny millennial. And, don't give my that crap about 'labels' either because I just don't care.
"Your truth"---no such thing. There's true and there's false. You may have opinions, but there is only one truth.
"won't change the world"--this is another unfortunate misconception like the 'dream job'. Relatively few individuals on this planet have 'changed the world' on their own. It's a collaborative effort. That's not skepticism or pessimism, its simply a quantitative reality. You'd be better off and be less disenchanted if you stick to what human beings are really here for--each other. You CAN make a difference in people's lives, and, that's what the what the world is really made up of...
"Careers are BS"---I've heard variations of the same thing over the last decade now from the same generation. "People weren't made to have careers." Not true--we just don't take as good of care of ourselves as we used to, even when we possess the knowledge to do so. That said, yup--your body is going to break down a bit every day no matter what you do. Wanna be a job bum, moving from career field to career field for the rest of your days? Well, good luck providing any financial stability for your family. Unless you already have a pension from somewhere else, you might want to look up what history, experience, and statistics say your chances are of doing very well without a 'career'.
"Not my dream job"--Some people have theirs land in their lap, some people find it after a lot of hard work, but the reality is that MOST people don't find their dream job. The hard truth is that most people have to work to find a balance between work, family, and what makes them happy. That's just life. I know the younger generation thinks they can arbitrarily change that little bit of reality, but it hasn't been panning out too well for them so far.
"Stuff I'll never use"--ah yes--spoken like one with years of experience in a given field. I've at least got a bit of experience in the medical field--I think maybe you should be an EMT or Paramedic. What you 'need to know' and the 'stuff you'll use' is a bit more defined. You don't have QUITE the autonomy (I'm going to draw the ire of a few paramedics with that statement for not expounding on my point--yes, I know that it's not completely true--autonomy may not be the right word). What I mean is, what you can and cannot do as an EMT or Paramedic is defined more by protocol and algorithm and is a much more specialized field (pre-hospital care)--nursing is all over the place. You also spend more time with patients as a nurse and have to apply a more broad approach to medicine and all-around patient care. To be fair, I'm just on my way to a 'career' (there's that dirty word) in nursing too, but, having spent time as an EMT and a military medic, I'm very rapidly learning the very important differences between pre-hospital and in-patient care. One isn't necessarily more difficult, but, they are very, very different.
I'm also in my mid-40s and came to the place I'm at having spent 15 years in one 'career' that I left before it became a dead end, 3 years in one that I loved that came to a premature end (my 'dream job', if you will--driving locomotives), and another 13 years, throughout all of that, in part-time endeavors like the military, firefighting, and EMS. In my humble experience, people with your attitude (one of arrogance and entitlement) don't last long in any career where they start off thinking they know what they 'need' to know and 'don't need' to know. That attitude on the railroad, in the military, and in the fire/EMS service will get you and/or someone else killed. I doubt the stakes vary too terribly much in the nursing field.
It seems you're trying to find as many people as possible who will validate your feelings of frustration, and, inevitably, you have and will get a few. I'm at the PEAK of stress and frustration--I work full-time, go to school full time, I have 4 kids (my oldest is 20, youngest is 12), and a wife who is MORE sick of my schooling than I am. Sleep? What's that?!? But, it's all temporary. It's crap that you just have to push through, and, if you're THIS frustrated THIS early on, and you are THAT concerned about your time, I really doubt that this is the program or 'career' for you...
Specializes in Critical care, tele, Medical-Surgical.
17 minutes ago, subee said:
So few people die of infection? Are you kidding? Have you never smelled necrotizing fasciitis? Taken care of anyone with sepsis? Everyday stuff in an intensive care setting.
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In 2005, More Than 18,000 Deaths Attributed to MRSA, CDC Reports:
I think one person dying too soon is too many if it could have been prevented.
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... Hospital-acquired infections continue to be a big problem in health care, with 4 percent of patients getting a new infection while hospitalized, a study finds. And 11 percent of those infections turn deadly...
In the big picture, it's quite a small number of the people who die.
Per statistics.
Sepsis is almost always accompanied by underlying disease that makes them vulnerable.
My point is we seem to emphasize the wrong priorities in our training.
The last I knew, it was still cancer, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, etc, that was still killing most of the people.
No hate for the people who deal with infectious disease. You are needed.
Even if there are other diseases that cause more deaths, every nurse will run across infectious diseases if they work in a hospital or out in the community. Just because something isn't always fatal doesn't mean you don't need to really know your stuff in that area or understand the foundations and principles of infectious disease.
In the big picture, it's quite a small number of the people who die.
Per statistics.
Sepsis is almost always accompanied by underlying disease that makes them vulnerable.
My point is we seem to emphasize the wrong priorities in our training.
The last I knew, it was still cancer, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, etc, that was still killing most of the people.
No hate for the people who deal with infectious disease. You are needed.
No offense, but this is way off, opinion or no.
Developing effective treatments and precautions (e.g. antibiotics, vaccinations, sanitation, sepsis protocols, sterile techniques) for infectious diseases were what paved the way for heart disease, cancer, etc taking over the top spots in terms of human mortality in the first place.
But theres more:
1) Now, just because we have effective treatments, you seem to argue that these pathologies are irrelevant? In fact, its just the opposite. Infectious diseases are among the things we spend the most time and energy in healthcare fighting. That infectious diseases arent among the top causes of human mortality (in developed countries) is actually a testament to how important our education in microbiology is. It's one of the great triumphs of modern medicine.
I don't know where you work, but I can certainly tell you that in my all-purpose icu where we see a broad array of the illnesses affecting our community, battling infectious diseases eat up a whole lot of our time and effort. Cancer isn't more common; we are just less effective at treating it.
2) We are seeing a huge uptick in both antibiotic resistance and disease epidemics. There is no reason at all to think we can afford to let our guard down where microbial pathogens are concerned.
My biggest problem with microbiology class was that I took it before I had the background knowledge and experience to properly contextualize it to learn as much as I wish I had.
My biggest problem with microbiology class was that I took it before I had the background knowledge and experience to properly contextualize it to learn as much as I wish I had.
I agree with everything you said @Cowboyardee, but this especially resonated. Micro was many moons ago for me. I use the knowledge daily at work - and today's microbiology course would benefit me even more.
Med Term doesn't require me to know all of the little details that I learn in A&P, especially when it's being taught by a professor with a DNP, it seems that that's telling me something
This is one of the silliest things I have heard. I actually laughed when you said that you took an outside course for med terminology. THAT was a waste of your time. You said yourself that it was memorization.
All you really need for med term is a reference book (I like books) or an app or just look it up online.
While you are in nursing school you will get so much medical terminology thrown at you, you will learn it without really trying.
"med term doesn't require me to know the little details" OF COURSE IT DOESN'T!!!!! And it doesn't matter who the course it taught by, the CONTENT of the material doesn't require a DNP which isn't always a clinical degree). or an MD or even a MS.
You seem to be looking to confirm your biases and for the most part, that isn't what you got.
Why did you come here asking these questions if you weren't open to the answers?
subee, MSN, CRNA
1 Article; 6,113 Posts
Not for me! I learned the smell of pseudomonas. My lab locker reeked of it:)