There are loads of discussions on this BB about the fluff in curriculums for Nursing school.
Yet, I repeatedly see posts displaying total ignorance of most basic economic issues and how it affects them. I have friends who are recruiters who get resumes that are a disgrace from people that have a BSN. I have coworkers that have no clue of how financial issues work.
I see repeated posts from new grads and experienced nurses about ignorance of local pay rates - do you not research your job field BEFORE you spent 2-4 years getting a degree or deciding to move across country?
You don't think that your credit rating, or your DUI or your conviction from check is going to follow you? Or that it should affect you.
You think that you can bring your kids to work or to an interview, that since you have kids, that means you get the "preferred" schedule...right out of nursing school
You think that employers can be "guilted" into hiring you, that all it takes is a good storyabout how hard it is to get a job, will trump finances and have the employer pony up the 40-80 grand a year plus training and benies.
Or that a hospital that had the kind consideration to PERMIT you to learn on their campus, despite the strain on their resources (ie. nurses that did not get pay for taking the stress of precepting, and dealt with the liability), should be forced to hire you and perhaps fire/cut hours for those very nurses that sacrificed to help you learn.
Or that the large number of unemployed/uninsured/underinsured are not going to affect our bottom line.
I would like to see Nursing schools incorporate some form of business/basic economics class in Nursing school. Included should be current economic conditions, world economy issues, researching (accurately) salaries, COL of where on intends to practice, filing taxes, getting licensed, WRITING A RESUME AND INTERVIEWING, proper behavior in the workplace. And a week or so of workplace poliics and how to deal with them.
Specializes in Peds/outpatient FP,derm,allergy/private duty.
QUOTE=carolinapooh;. . .My mom taught elementary kids during the fiasco that was "whole language" (which she flat-out refused to completely give in to) and we both wonder now if that's where a lot of the problems come from.
Oh, yes. AKA "invented spelling" c 1987. All caps. My son brought home things like "IT WU FUN WIN MY DAD TOC ME FISSEN" with a "good job!!" stamp and happyface. Perplexed parents went to assemblies touting the virtues of this new cutting edge language approach, which as I recall was something esoteric about being more creative first (the rules hopelessly repress the font of genius that is the six-year-old, and not to worry-- after his concepts are down on paper in invented fashion he will easily be able to then learn proper spelling and grammar! (however by that point no one, including the child, remembered what the helI he was trying to say)
On the life skills class, our high schoolers required to take it, and they covered the the career skills/financial skills pretty well. My daughter's 5th grade class formed an "investment club" with real stock market info and pretend purchases. Kind of weird to hear your 10 yr old daughter say, "My group is working on mid-caps this week":lol2:
Exactly what I meant about the statement in bold. :)
I know that lending institutions factor in student loan payments when deciding whether or not to lend for a mortgage. What I meant is that individuals will need to factor those payments into their budgets. My point in saying that, is that it means that they may have to buy a smaller home or less expensive car, but they will still have a career and potential income that they otherwise wouldn't have had.
BTW...my student loan payments total almost $800/month.
Specializes in Cardio-Pulmonary; Med-Surg; Private Duty.
I learned more about English grammar in four years of high school French than I learned in 13 years of K-12 education.... and I was a straight-A student taking "college prep" English classes!
My 10yo son rolls his eyes sometimes when I correct his grammar, but he understands that I'm doing it for his own good. Just yesterday I was explaining the difference between first-person, second-person, and third-person (both singular and plural in each case) and how verbs are conjugated differently for each. (Until I took French in my freshman year, I thought that "conjugating" was just something that prisoners got to do in a special jail cell when their spouse came to visit!)
I wonder how much more actual FRENCH I could have learned in high school if my teacher didn't have to spend so much time teaching us about ENGLISH grammar!
Just look at the multiple thousands of people who evidently didn't read the terms of the mortgages that they signed and apparently have not even the most rudimentary understanding of compounding interest net worth, or cash flow.[/quote']
Of course, in partial defense of those people, they were dealing with skilled and highly paid professionals whose job and goal it was to trick them into signing mortgages that would not work for them. The language and the process are often made intentionally hard to understand for that precise purpose. And most of the financial commentators and the major regulators were all saying it was just fine, nothing to worry about.
I learned more about English grammar in four years of high school French than I learned in 13 years of K-12 education.... and I was a straight-A student taking "college prep" English classes!
My 10yo son rolls his eyes sometimes when I correct his grammar, but he understands that I'm doing it for his own good. Just yesterday I was explaining the difference between first-person, second-person, and third-person (both singular and plural in each case) and how verbs are conjugated differently for each. (Until I took French in my freshman year, I thought that "conjugating" was just something that prisoners got to do in a special jail cell when their spouse came to visit!)
I wonder how much more actual FRENCH I could have learned in high school if my teacher didn't have to spend so much time teaching us about ENGLISH grammar!
Hah! - c'est vrai - vous avez raison! Nothing helps you to better understand your own language like learning a second one. I started studying French in my 50s and there were things I learned about English that I had never truly grasped before, even though I write pretty capably.
Specializes in Cardio-Pulmonary; Med-Surg; Private Duty.
Hah! - c'est vrai - vous avez raison! Nothing helps you to better understand your own language like learning a second one. I started studying French in my 50s and there were things I learned about English that I had never truly grasped before, even though I write pretty capably.
Pretty sad/scary, when you think about just how LITTLE education we're giving kids these days... because if you think that English instruction was lacking when WE were kids, it's gotten MUCH WORSE since then!
Specializes in Med Surge, ED, Home Health, Neuro ICU.
As it was mentioned above, you just can't fix stupid!!! Let the idiots hand in their ridiculous resumes, let them bring their kids to interviews, let them bring their mothers, let them speak incorrectly. If the person doing the hiring has HALF a brain, they will move on to the next applicant. God willing, at least ONE applicant will be a functioning adult. I would rather be in an understaffed medical setting with EDUCATED people, then stuck in a place with a ton of clueless children. Polish was my first language, and english was no picnic as a child. But, I still managed to live on my own, graduate high school, finish 3 years of college thus far, and support myself from 18 to now. These people who have no common sense or logic are hopeless due to a lack of motivation and carelessness for what their future will hold. The only part that bothers me is the whereabouts of my tax dollars due to ignorance of others.
I am an experienced RN and I can tell you alot of new nurses expect premium shifts and expect to start full time days right out of school...when I started it was nights and whatever was left over and you were glad of the shifts. I have had the experience that some of the new nurses on my floor call in for time off regularily. They are graduating nursing school very entitled....I have actually been asked why I get paid more than they do...go figure....My facility recently underwent a downsizing and I applied for one position as my first choice and the other nurse(3 years exp) applied for another position but did nt get it...she called me and also went to the vice p to ask her why she did not get my position which was her SECOND choice and she needed an explaination as to why I was hired for my first choice. I tell you .....
You're talking about teaching common sense and life skills. That comes from good mentors, life experience and a receptive mind. If they were easily teachable every profession would benefit! I think that's what makes some people successful no matter what they try and others... well, not! Don't forget a lot of people are drawn to nursing because of the "helping" nature of it. Their strong skills may be excellent at that, not financial or management type stuff.
You're talking about teaching common sense and life skills. That comes from good mentors, life experience and a receptive mind. If they were easily teachable every profession would benefit! I think that's what makes some people successful no matter what they try and others... well, not! Don't forget a lot of people are drawn to nursing because of the "helping" nature of it. Their strong skills may be excellent at that, not financial or management type stuff.
And pts need to experience those strong skills.....but they won't if the nurse can't get hired. Either that or those "strong skills" will be ignored, because of lousy grammar and inappropriate attire/behavior.
Truly I have run into some fabulous people out there, that are almost crippled and whose advancement is hampered because no one has taught them common courtesies and basic business etiquette.
We can say, "More job security for me", but really we need both the strong skills/helping behavior, AND to present ourselves well as a profession.
This is simplistic, but I guess I think of this sort of thing as being a little along the same lines as my first experience at a formal restaurant where there were 10 different forks and fork-like implements set for me to use. Yes, I could have muddled my way along, but I probably would have made some embarrassing mistakes. Instead, I went with a knowledgeable friend of mine who showed me the way by example.
So if that means mentoring, when it comes to good financial behavior, fine - but that only goes so far. For a lot of people, regardless of background, mentors who can display good financial sense are in very short supply (there are plenty of people who made lots of money who got dangerous mortgages because of a lack of savvy or attention to detail, for instance). Yes, you can look up information online, but it's notoriously contradictory and tends to reflect the trends of the moment (i.e., "Get some credit cards and use them a couple of times - it'll help you establish credit!" or "The market's only going up - it would be stupid for you not to use the equity in your house for major expenses like vacations and education!" Those were popular statements only a few years ago). So while I understand the reluctance to add a required course on such topics to the curriculum (I'm in a program with roughly 100,000 seemingly unnecessary prereqs myself!), I do think it would be a good and appropriate idea for all college programs, including nursing, as things stand today.
The best option of all would probably be such a course for middle or high schoolers, but fat chance. That might interfere with all those utterly necessary standardized tests.
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nursel56
7,122 Posts
Oh, yes. AKA "invented spelling" c 1987. All caps. My son brought home things like "IT WU FUN WIN MY DAD TOC ME FISSEN" with a "good job!!" stamp and happyface.
Perplexed parents went to assemblies touting the virtues of this new cutting edge language approach, which as I recall was something esoteric about being more creative first (the rules hopelessly repress the font of genius that is the six-year-old, and not to worry-- after his concepts are down on paper in invented fashion he will easily be able to then learn proper spelling and grammar! (however by that point no one, including the child, remembered what the helI he was trying to say)
On the life skills class, our high schoolers required to take it, and they covered the the career skills/financial skills pretty well. My daughter's 5th grade class formed an "investment club" with real stock market info and pretend purchases. Kind of weird to hear your 10 yr old daughter say, "My group is working on mid-caps this week":lol2: