What should I expect?

Hey Jen!!!

I can tell you having survived J1 now officially (*woop woop*)

So concepts of professional nursing was a fluff class when I took it, yes Patho is self-evident but a challenge in the beginning.

I'm not quite sure about class details, however... get ready for a lot of information in Assessments and Foundations. Foundations is what most schools call Fundamentals. There is some overlap in the beginning in these two classes and your end of semester HESI/ATI depending on what they use will also have some overlap.

For assessments having a solid base in A&P and Patho really helped me connect the material and made it easier to learn. Don't try to memorize, do what you're taught in Patho which is understand the mechanisms and functions, then the pieces start to call into place on their own. And have confidence in yourself and the learning process, there will be times you doubt yourself, remember.... you can do it, you are capable, you made it this far!

Fundamentals, is a lot of material, get an ATI book or the Davis success series fundamentals book for practice questions and summaries of the info... it makes things sooooo much easier to digest come final exam time. for each exam focus on what you are taught in your program, but since the finals are from HESI or ATI, the professors really have no control over the material and sometimes it includes advanced material, so use the study aids and focus on stuff you weren't taught in class and things you struggled with. At least that's what I saw and felt going thru this first round of finals this week.

Thank you so much for your post, I really appreciate it!

Concepts of Professional Nursing is stuff like communication, learning about legalities (HIPAA), electronic medical record systems, professionalism, patient advocacy etc. You'll probably have to write papers in that class.

Health Assessments is, like you said, self evident. It's just learning how to perform various assessments i.e. head-to-toe, respiratory, cardiac, GI, GU, etc. Learning a lot of baselines and how to interpret irregularities.

Foundations of Nursing Practice is practically fundamentals of nursing. Would cover the basics of nursing throughout the lifespan. I would assume this would consist of common ailments and their correlating treatments. In my fundamentals course, we predominately learned about the geriatric population. It was very general and knowledge based. In my program, each semester is pretty much just one course. So fundamentals was made of lab, clinical, lecture and seminar and we covered assessments and patho in it.

Does your school use ATI or Elsevier?

Concepts of Professional Nursing is stuff like communication, learning about legalities (HIPAA), electronic medical record systems, professionalism, patient advocacy etc. You'll probably have to write papers in that class.

Health Assessments is, like you said, self evident. It's just learning how to perform various assessments i.e. head-to-toe, respiratory, cardiac, GI, GU, etc. Learning a lot of baselines and how to interpret irregularities.

Foundations of Nursing Practice is practically fundamentals of nursing. Would cover the basics of nursing throughout the lifespan. I would assume this would consist of common ailments and their correlating treatments. In my fundamentals course, we predominately learned about the geriatric population. It was very general and knowledge based. In my program, each semester is pretty much just one course. So fundamentals was made of lab, clinical, lecture and seminar and we covered assessments and patho in it.

Does your school use ATI or Elsevier?

Thanks for the info! We're required to purchase ATI. We also use something called Shadow Health, though I don't know what that is yet.

Thanks for the info! We're required to purchase ATI. We also use something called Shadow Health, though I don't know what that is yet.

HI Jen Girl -

If you are using the same Shadow Health as I did, it is an online program that is a bit like a "virtual reality" hospital. No - you don't wear goggles and headsets, LOL! But, you do have a patient, and you enter their room and have to follow procedure (safety, privacy, hygiene) then perform assessments. There is a voice-command in the program so if you have the capability on your computer, that's pretty fun - you speak to the patient and she answers you. Otherwise, you type your questions.

Hopefully your lecturer will allow you to have multiple attempts at each assessment, because when you start out it is mind-boggling just how much information then expect you to cover in your assessment.

I passed fundamentals and it was so hard! I had needed a 85% test average to pass and I made it through with a 86%! I really struggled with this class at the beginning of the semester but after I learned how to study for it I started getting nothing but 90's (B's) on my exams. I basically just read all the PowerPoint, checked my knowledge and any missing details in the ATI book, and nothing but practice questions!

For patho, really know it because I heard Med Surge will not go smoothly for someone who doesnt know their patho. I studied for this class by making a list of all the key concepts such as diseases/disorders and just listed all of their characteristics such as TX, S/SX, etiology, definition, and any defining factors of the disease.

For health assement, it was a cake walk. Just know your med terminology and anatomy for this class and it is self explanatory.

For your intro to practice class, nothing but APA papers and knowing therapeutic communication. Basically, you might have to actually read the book for this class.

Good luck on your 1st semester!

I just finished my first semester, for fundamentals I used the Fundamenatals of Success book by Davis as a supplement almost daily to practice nursing questions. It wasn't a hard class, just time consuming. I know you know this, but stay on top of your reading and assignments. Things start to pile up as the semester goes on.

For Health assessments my study group would first write out whatever assessment we were working on, then we'd verbalize the steps to each other til we had them down. Next we'd actually perform the assessments on each other, timing them until we were under the time limit. It took a lot of time but we all did really well.

Clinicals were just doing at a nursing home what we learned in theory and lab. We did daily physical assessments, took vitals, blood sugars, did bed baths, changed bedding, etc. Towards the end of the semester we were assisting with wound care and g-tube feedings. I loved it, it was so exciting to finally get started after all the hard work trying to get into a program!

We didn't do the other 2 classes you listed, our semesters are laid out a bit differently, we did math for meds which was no big deal.Good luck in you're first semester!!!!

I would echo other users that have said the fundamentals-type courses aren't necessarily difficult, but are important to stay on top of. One of the big things I took away from it was learning the conceptual difference between a medical diagnosis and nursing diagnosis. They really wanted us not to just be able to say a patient has fluid on their lungs, but to elaborate on what kind of assessment findings would indicate such. How might that interfere with activities of daily living, or be a risk to life and limb? How could you tell if it might be getting better or worse? What other changes would be normal/abnormal with that condition? What can you do independently as nurse about it? Just some food for thought.

Fundamentals of Nursing covers the basic nursing skills and knowledge and there aren't too much disease-specific knowledge or interventions (you will get that in med-surg). Here are some of the stuff my Fundamentals course covered:

1) CNA skills (positioning, turning, body mechanics, ADLs etc.). Infection control

2) Wound care and assessments

3) Med administrations via various routes except IV (oral, IM, subcutaneous)

4) Elder care

5) Oxygenation (different types of oxygen delivery and amount)

6) NGT and catheter insertion and care

7) Fluid and electrolytes (IV therapy, picc line care)

8) Post-op care

9) Loss, grief, communication, emergency preparedness

Pretty important stuff. Good luck!

Thank you all so much! Classes start Monday and it feels great to have a better grasp on what I'm about to learn.