Statistics Class

[Kandee521]

Hi! I am currently a freshman in a early admit nursing program and I hope to go to CRNA school once I earn my BSN and have some work experience. Anyways I wanted to know what the name of the stats class anyone has taken that was acceptable for the statistics prerequisite. I can take a class called "Fundamentals of statistical reasoning" Would that be okay for admission to a CRNA program?

[Medic09, BSN, RN, EMT-P]

I don't know about that specific class, but I can give you a heads up. MANY of the 'intro to statistics' classes for nursing students aren't really statistics classes. They should be called 'how to read a research paper'. Let me illustrate with my own experience with four different classes over the years.

As an undergrad Psych major in Israel in the 70s I took 'basic statistics'. The class required doing a fair amount of math, and taught how TO DO the basic functions of statistics. In short, it was a math course like taking calculus or trig or algebra.

In the 90s while doing a Health Sciences degree at Touro (undergrad) I had to take a 'quantitative reasoning' course. The course taught how to understand research design, without doing actual math beyond some examples. The final paper, though, required designing a complete quantitative research project without implementing it. Grading was based on project design and proposal.

While doing my BSN, I had to take the university College of Nursing course in quantitative and qualitative research. I expected something like the course I just described. In fact, it was way less demanding or instructive. The course was basically 'how to read research papers'. It taught the basic terms and functions of research; but required no demonstration of being able to design (let alone implement) our own projects. All it covered was how to basically read and interpret published papers. No math.

I also briefly took a graduate research class at the some CON. That class covered a bit more about understanding and designing projects, but still did not require doing much real statistical analysis math.

Since CRNA is more of a medical model, it might require a real statistics class, rather than a nursing school research class. You definitely want to know if that is the case. I found that locally many courses that are offered for nursing prereqs are dumbed down from the 'same' course offered for pre-med. I would say that in any instance, the pre-med version of a course should be preferable. You will learn more (and work harder), and will be able to apply the course credits to more things later on.

[Kandee521]

Thank you this helps a lot!

[missnurse01, MSN, RN]

If it is listed in the math section as stats then it might b okay. Call a crna program and ask them.