What to Expect in Nursing School?? First Breathe,

…All these classes are heavy, incredibly stressful, but POSSIBLE!

Theory: you’ll learn about the history of nursing and Florence Nightingale, the founder of nursing. Yes, pay attention or pretend. If you plan on getting your master’s, you’ll still need to know your nursing theories and it’s also discussed in your nursing research class and beyond. Keep your notes and APA book handy. Read An Overview of Theory

The 3 P’s 🙁

• Health (Physical) Assessment: This class includes procedures, documentation, and, practicing skills. Always attend the lab and ask if extra lab time is available for common procedures or to gear towards your specialty; kids, IV, Foley, NG tubes…etc. Practice equals PASSING. This class usually includes a final check-off of skills.
• Pathophysiology: This class is about everything related to diseases, in a nutshell, you must remember the expected signs and symptoms plus when to call the doctor. Don’t forget to relate everything to anatomy and physiology.
• Pharmacology: What’s good about pharmacology or most nursing classes, a lot of information overlap. Medications should also be discussed in pathophysiology and vice versa but in more detail in pharmacology.

The Rest are Core Specialties

• Psychiatric: I enjoyed my psych class (hence the website and rambles) and I will use this class to make a quick point –In your nursing school, try to find out what you want to specialize in as soon as possible. Mainly because it’s one less thing to worry about! and most importantly you can start networking and advancing your career a lot earlier.
• Pediatrics: Children are not small adults. This class REQUIRES you to pay attention because those little details make a HUGE difference in children and could possibly be fatal. So you must continuously improve your assessment skills. If your brain is fried or overwhelmed at this point or in any subject, what helped me was breaking up the lectures or studying into small parts. Here are some helpful tips for revising ♥️
• Obstetrics: I LOVE babies! but OB was not my favorite subject. It can be challenging to understand that you are taking care of 2 people and not just one! thus like pediatrics, little things make a HUGE difference and many things are contraindicated unless you like trouble aka lawsuits. Overall, OB was a class with tons of dense information but to make it easier (like with kids) stick to what’s conventional and safe. Safety and alarming signs are very important in these special populations…

The Final Class

• Research: This class utilizes all those rough English skills and APA nightmares in one great bundle. Warning: it’s not about researching the cure for cancer or AIDS-like I thought. I honestly don’t know what we discussed in this class. Many students have struggled to understand the content or failed it. It’s probably because nursing research used to be very “black/white” and did not consider the environment, genetics, and other influences that may affect our health other than diseases. HOWEVER, times are changing! There are exciting and new emerging fields like genomics and holistic or alternative therapy that made research become more flexible and relatable, which overall should make it more tolerable.

Clinical Nursing Courses: In addition to your classes, you also have clinical sites that you must attend where you will take care of patients, do procedures, write care plans, and participate in discussions. These clinical courses are supposed to be supplemental, so it’s taken during your sit in classes of medical surgical (med/surg), OB, pediatric, psychiatric…etc. In some 4-year programs, the last clinical is your desired choice or a specialty called preceptorship that’s supposed to prepare you for transitioning to your first job as an RN.

Are you still hanging in there, almost done 🙂

Extra Considerations

• Some schools may require you to do calculation tests/check-offs before each clinical portion.
• You should expect all your classes to have a midterm and final or paper/project. Know your deadlines.
• I left out community class/clinical. To my understanding, 2-year colleges do not have that portion but four-year programs definitely have a community component. This may be the reason why only 4-year nurses can apply to certain jobs like school nursing, and corrections… but of course, there are exceptions…
• You are expected to attend ALL classes ON time. I had a teacher that will close the door and would lock it after 10 minutes in the class, even during test days, and gave that late person a 0%.
• My 4-year college ALSO required us to WORK as a student RN, which was another clinical component and needed a certain amount of hours to graduate.
• I also did not have to do the HESI, TEA’s/ATI’s? …etc those things just weren’t around at the time.
• We had to drug test several times and if there were any suspicions. Oh and just about everything costs. I’ll probably never know what financial aid covers but it’s NEVER hidden fees and books, which can cost hundreds of dollars. Always try to cut costs as often as possible…

Overall, I hope that gave you some glimpse into the future. I’m ROOTING for you and I know you’ll do GREAT since you read this far 🙂 thanks for reading!