Whats are the most difficult courses for nursing?

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I'll be working as a spt at the hospital this year and was thinking about taking physio, anatomy, and med term for now, while I'm working part-time, before I apply for the LPN program. I herd they are hiring more LPNs right now and then later I can take my RN.

I was wondering what are the most difficult courses for the LPN(preferably) and RN programs? I want to get a basic understanding of the most difficult ones now while I have time. To avoid entering the program and being completely clueless. Is their any text books you would recommend reading? How hard is the math in nursing?

What advice would you give your self, If you could speak to the nursing student you were in the past? That would help you do better in nursing school.

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Sorry if that didn't make sense...

What advice would you give your self, If you could speak to the nursing student you were in the past? If it would have helped you do better in nursing school.

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I did well in nursing school. Now, I'd tell myself to quit nursing school and take the Health Records Technology Diploma. Better hours, no families telling me what to do because they know it all because they watch House, ER, etc.

Now, nursing school is set up to educate you to become a nurse. They expect you to know nothing. Enjoy your free time while you have it. Care plans will eat up a lot of your third semester and you will wonder if you will ever read for pleasure again.

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I'd have to say the theory courses are the hardest, in my opinion. Of course people could say the patho and biology courses, but those are only hard if you don't study. I found theory to be hard because a lot of the times you'd study the material, then when test time came around it would be questions based on scenario's, and you'd have to pick the most appropriate response, for example a family member questions you about a certain procedure or med their loved one is on, and you'd have to pick the most appropriate response. To one person their answer would be most appropriate, but to a prof it would be completely wrong. It's difficult. Some people would answer that question as refer the patient to the MD, others would answer provide the patient with literature on the subject, there can be so many responses and they could all seem correct.

That was the course most people struggled in, during my experience.

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Specializes in ICU, ER.

I can't speak for the PN program but in the BScN program I found nursing research to be among the hardest courses. Most of my classmates say patho, pharm, chemistry, and/or microbiology but I'm a science and math kind of girl. None of it was particularly easy...

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Specializes in Cardiology.

I'm in pharm right now (final exam on Tuesday!!) and it's by far my most challenging class.

6 week crash course is teh suck :(

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Specializes in ICU, ER.
I'm in pharm right now (final exam on Tuesday!!) and it's by far my most challenging class.

6 week crash course is teh suck :(

Good luck!

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I'm just finishing up my first year and I can offer some suggestions.

If you take anything early, do the General Studies (English, COM, etc) first but not Bio. A&P is hard but it really REALLY helps classes like Pharm and Health Assessment make sense. If the information is fresh in your head, you will be able to apply it to all of your classes. So you will learn about breathing in A&P, the next day learn about lung assessments and then do the Pharm/drug side following that. So you really learn that material 3 times. Make sense?

I sent the summer before school learning the bones and muscles on my own (I bought a book from Chapters). It helped huge! You need to know bones for land-marking injections, names of pulses etc etc. It is an easy way to get a jump start as the other systems are more complex.

Good luck! It is a lot of work but the time flies!

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Good info. Thanks!

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Everything, at least for me. I put effort in all those courses.

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IMO, pharm and patho are the two most intense, but everyone and every school is different. I did another degree before this and found Nursing to be pretty easy for the most part, but a totally different style of learning as well. You shouldn't really need to pre-study anything, but maybe go over the essentials of those courses wouldn't hurt (e.g read the chapter summaries, know what you're getting into, etc.).

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