whats nursing fundamentals class like? cna type class?

[northmississippi]

The first class in the rn program is nursing fundamentals... is that a class where you do lots of math/electrolytes/anatomy/wound care

or is it more like the cna class where we talk about making beds, getting stuff for patient, cleaning bodies, etc.....

[~Mi Vida Loca~RN, ASN, RN]

Administer more pillow therapy as the first round was ineffective.

Distract them with pictures of people breathing peacefully :)

[ImThatGuy, BSN, RN]

Demonstrate appropriate breathing techniques.

[atmananda]

I'm graduating this week and I remember that first semester well..unlike these posts, I did not think it was super easy..it may have been that I had a professor who assumed we all understood the basics of the nursing process on day one. People have different ways of thinking and if you're not used to using this systematic approach to problem solving then you may have to retrain your brain to think this way. It also depends on what you come into the class with...students who were CNAs etc were familiar with a lot of the usual terminology and thought process..students who came in with no experience at all had to catch up. In fundamentals, the divide is greater among students because no one is trained to be a registered nurse yet. After a few semesters, things become equal and you start to see who has the ability to do the work. Many people who came in knowing a lot in the beginning dropped out or had to repeat a semester. In a couple cases, I thought it was because they never had to work hard in the first semester so they got lazy and when med surg came around, they had bad habits. I also know students who came in with a ton of knowledge and continued to learn. The students who fought to understand things early on because the material wasn't instantly digestible for them generally did very well because they had good study habits..there was no "I'm sure it won't be hard" attitude for any of the exams...and no surprises either! So, ADPIE yes..and all the basic issues like wound care, problems of immobility, medication administration, delegation and assignment..they teach u how to take a problem related to things like the aforementioned issues and to solve it using the systematic ADPIE approach..understanding priority is very important as well as understanding the RN scope of practice. You can't answer a question if you don't know what is wrong, and you don't know what's wrong if you don't understand what normal is..and you can't know your next best action if you don't know who has what responsibility. In hindsight, no, the class is not hard, but it can be depending on your experience and way of thinking.

[~Mi Vida Loca~RN, ASN, RN]

I'm graduating this week and I remember that first semester well..unlike these posts, I did not think it was super easy..it may have been that I had a professor who assumed we all understood the basics of the nursing process on day one. People have different ways of thinking and if you're not used to using this systematic approach to problem solving then you may have to retrain your brain to think this way. It also depends on what you come into the class with...students who were CNAs etc were familiar with a lot of the usual terminology and thought process..students who came in with no experience at all had to catch up. In fundamentals, the divide is greater among students because no one is trained to be a registered nurse yet. After a few semesters, things become equal and you start to see who has the ability to do the work. Many people who came in knowing a lot in the beginning dropped out or had to repeat a semester. In a couple cases, I thought it was because they never had to work hard in the first semester so they got lazy and when med surg came around, they had bad habits. I also know students who came in with a ton of knowledge and continued to learn. The students who fought to understand things early on because the material wasn't instantly digestible for them generally did very well because they had good study habits..there was no "I'm sure it won't be hard" attitude for any of the exams...and no surprises either! So, ADPIE yes..and all the basic issues like wound care, problems of immobility, medication administration, delegation and assignment..they teach u how to take a problem related to things like the aforementioned issues and to solve it using the systematic ADPIE approach..understanding priority is very important as well as understanding the RN scope of practice. You can't answer a question if you don't know what is wrong, and you don't know what's wrong if you don't understand what normal is..and you can't know your next best action if you don't know who has what responsibility. In hindsight, no, the class is not hard, but it can be depending on your experience and way of thinking.

Ironically a lot of CNA's in our class had trouble with this class because they were used to how things were for them and not Nurses. They had trouble separating the 2. But you're right, it just varies person to person. I had no previous medical experience outside of being a patient a lot. I wasn't one of the ones that did great on my pre-reqs. Well the science ones. I did good ont he other ones. The stuff in fundamentals came easy to me. But some other things didn't. When I got into nursing school and had the tests in fundamentals I thought "FINALLY!" test I can relate to. Because it was like common sense to me. Memorizing and stuff was not my strong suit. Ironically Science was one of my worse subjects growing up. I was good at Math and I loved a lot of history and the reading classes. Psychology I was always great in for pre-reqs and Sociology. So it was a surprise to everyone when I got a degree with a lot of Science! LOL

I also had a really good feel already for ADIPIE and Care maps and so on from this site. So Care maps for me was always a breeze, I would have them knocked out in 20 mins.

[metabolicfrolic]

By and large, I thought it was a boring course and couldn't wait for it to end. If you get stuck with the Potter & Perry book then enjoy. It's a jumbled, repetitious, slow to read, poorly constructed book filled with spelling, grammatical, and puctuation errors.

Second! Potter and Perry was pretty craptastic. At my school they find a way to make this course (unbelievably) hard. We had two classes, Fundamentals and Pharm, and the majority of people who failed had issues with Fundamentals and not Pharm.

We took Fundamentals for 16 weeks, but it seemed like FOREVER. (Somehow my classmates kept remarking that the semester was "flying by"... right...) I kept waiting for it to get better, but it's consistently a pain in the rear. There were moments were it wasn't horrible, but they were few and far between. I passed the time by memorizing the book and marking off days in the calendar until the summer semester finally arrived.