How Hard is Nursing School?

Nursing school is really not that hard at all. Once you find yourself advancing and moving up, things will actually end up going a lot more smooth for you. Things will initially get easier if they do not seem that way in the beginning. Nursing school is very much so common sense more than anything. There is a lot of studying involved just as any other career. If you look at it that way, you should not run into any major problems. Nursing school involves patience and determination. You will only make it hard if you look at it in that way.

How Hard is Nursing School Really? Not that Hard.

If you want to go to nursing school, you should consider starting off at the bottom and working yourself up. If you obtain your CNA license first, then you should be able to get a good feel of how everything works. Before you enroll in CNA classes online you should shadow a few nurses to get a feel for the day-to-day intricacies of the job. If the RN you shadow provides a good framework for the job you’ll be pursuing, then you should proceed with enrolling in nursing school. After achieving a starter certification, such as a CNA or EMT license, the path to becoming an RN should be significantly easier for you to take on if you work your way up first. If you see a career in nursing, you should definitely go for it. If you choose to go straight for your 4 year degree (such as a BSN), just plan on moving at a pace that is comfortable for you and you will get through it in no time with little to no problems.

So how hard is nursing school? It doesn’t have to be hard. No matter where you want to go as far as a career is concerned, you will have to put a lot of effort and hard work into it. Nursing school may not come as a breeze because you will have to meet deadlines, and study for important exams. The last part of nursing school will involve a lot of clinicals which will then give you a lot of the hands on experience. The point is, everyone views “hard” in a different way.

Evaluating Nursing Staff Readiness For Handling Ebola

Ebola has been a historically deadly virus in regions of Africa. Recently, there have been cases of the virus in the United States. The current manifestation of the virus is especially dangerous, due to its long incubation period prior to symptoms appearing. The incubation period allows those who are infected to travel far from the site where they contracted the virus, without ever knowing that they were sick in the first place. This is part of the reason why the Ebola virus poses such a challenge for nursing staff readiness in the United States.

Due to the unique challenges posed by Ebola, American nurses need to be trained to identify potential carriers of the disease, as well as safety precautions that are necessary in handling those who have been infected. An elevated temperature is one of the first symptoms expressed in a contagious Ebola patient. However, this symptom is shared with an enumerable amount of other conditions. So one of the first things to do, in identifying if the Ebola virus is a possibility, is to find out whether the patient has traveled to regions where the outbreak has occurred within the last 21 days. The Ebola virus only spreads through direct contact with the fluids of a person who is both infected with the virus and currently contagious.

The CDC has established guidelines for the handling of Ebola patients by American hospitals. These guidelines are diseased to minimize the risk of spreading the virus to other people. However, they are not fool proof, as evidenced by the fact that multiple healthcare workers have contracted the virus in the United States, while dealing with Ebola patients. This further illustrates the level of precaution and preparedness that is needed to adequately address the virus, and to minimize its potential to spread.

The ability of nursing staff readiness to help immediately identify and isolate patients who are infected with the Ebola virus is perhaps the most important role they can perform in fighting the spread of the disease. However, nurses will also be called upon to help treat those who are already known to be infected.

Requirements for Entrance to Nursing School

In recent years there as been a significant increase in people wanting to become a nurse, which  naturally leads to competition for entrance into nursing programs; the schools simply can’t educate as many people as are applying to the programs. This increase in nursing applicants over the past couple of years has led to more and more requirements to qualify for nursing school.

Prerequisites for Entrance to Nursing School

It is now standard for every nursing school in the United States to required that every applicant have a background check, have a physical stating that they can do the training and the work without any limitations, and have all vaccines must be up to date. There are extensive tests that must be completed and passed with certain scores. In addition, in order to get into the nursing school one must have already been accepted to the school’s general admissions; meaning that they have passed a CPT, PERT, ACT, or SAT, and have all transcripts and financial aid papers sent in to be fully enrolled within the main college.

Nursing schools often require a vast number of classes to be taken before entrance to nursing school is considered. While the cut-off grade for passing these courses is a C, it is highly recommend that an applicant as received at least a B in all courses due to the competitive nature and large number of applicants. It is also required by every nursing school that you pass a TEAS, the nursing school entrance exam. There is also the option to pursue CNA classes online without GED completion, but this is an exception for nursing and medical assistants, as well as EMTs. Once the courses are completed and the nursing entrance is exam is passed, an individual can begin the application process. Applications can take time and money. Once applications are submitted the applicant may be called in for interviews with the nursing program staff to determine whether or not the applicant will be a proper fit for the program. Upon completion of the interviews the applicant will be notified whether or not they have been accepted to nursing school.

Calmness, Stoicism and Kindness: Keys to Nursing

“Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion.” Florence Nightingale

Mad Nurse Ratched gave nurses a bad name. “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest“, the movie and the Ken Kesey novel, presented nurses in a harsh light. Louise Fletcher won an Academy Award for Best Actress playing the battle ax nurse. Eventually most everyone needs a nurse, and thankfully nurses fall far from the Nurse Ratched category.

Calmness and Kindness: The soft keys to nursing

Calmness is key to being a nurse. Nurses deal with patients in a state of decline, emergency or illness. Patients, and their families, are often angry, sad, confused and filled with fear. A nurse needs to be the calm at the center of patient, and their family’s, storm.

Kindness is key in dealing with the stressful kinds of storms nurses find themselves immersed in. Kindness costs nothing, and plenty of patients and their families, forget kindness in stressful situations and lash out. Patients families confusion and anger can be wrongly directed at the staff. Calmness and kindness are, again, tho of the keys to nursing. Calmness and kindness will deflect those situations and provide positivity in the worst of situations. Expecting the worst but countering it with calmness and kindness is a key nurse ingredient.

Stoicism: The final of the keys to nursing

A nurse must be stoic and have a strong stomach. Nurse’s eyes see sad things daily. Nurse’s eyes see patients in all forms of decline and with all forms of physical and mental issues. Patients roll in and roll out. Stoicism is necessary in a field in which patients often pass away and are instantly replaced with new patients teetering on the edge of death also. The stress filled patient wheel keeps on turning and so must nurses.

According to Think CNA Online the aging of the Baby Boomer Generation will be a boon for employment in the nursing industry. Nurses, both old and new, must be equipped with a healthy mixture of calmness, kindness, stoicism and the ability to do tasks few are fit to do. Someone once said nurses are angels in comfortable shoes. But those shoes can be filled with stress unless the wearers are prepared.

As a comic and as a nurse, it’s important to look calm on the surface when you’re absolutely crapping yourself inside. So, if someone is waving a machete at you, which has happened to me when I was a nurse, it’s important to make that person feel that you’re in control.
– Jo Brand