Posts Tagged ‘BSN’

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Don’t Cling to Tradition: A Nursing Student’s Call for Realism, Respect

July 26, 2011

By Medora McGinnis. Medora is a student at Bon Secours Memorial College of Nursing in Richmond, Virginia, and the 2011-2012 Imprint Editor of the National Student Nurses’ Association (NSNA). This is her first post for this blog. 

There was a time when the majority of all nursing programs were diploma programs, emphasizing practice over theory. They were largely based out of hospitals and proved very well suited for this training. Popular among students, they provided the majority of the nursing workforce well into the 1950s. But these programs began to lose popularity as they were supplanted by other forms of training. At the same time, patient care was shifting and hospital care costs were exploding. By the late 1970s, 40 diploma programs were closing their doors every year.

The year is now 2011, and there are less than 40 diploma programs nationwide. I am a senior nursing student in one of these programs, and have been a part of their transition from the diploma to the four-year BSN. My graduating class will be the last of the diploma graduates, and many of us plan to continue our education and quickly complete an RN-to-BSN program. Why? Certainly to maintain our momentum, and to be competitive in today’s workforce. But the undertone in the nursing community, especially among young and new nurses, is that the BSN is required in order to earn respect. Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in continuing education, nursing students, professional identity | Tagged , , , | 19 Comments »

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Notes of a Student Nurse: A Dose of Reality

May 4, 2011

By Jennifer-Clare Williams, who is a student at Cox College of Nursing and Health Sciences in Springfield, Missouri. This is her first post for this blog.

Doyle Alphabet by fdecomite, via Flickr

It’s been said before that we are our own worst enemies, our own worst critics. I can’t imagine a time when these phrases are truer than during nursing school. Little more than a year ago, when I was starting my prerequisites for admission to the BSN nursing program, I was giddy with excitement. Images of what life would be like played in my head like episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, or, on a day I was feeling a bit more goofy, reruns of Scrubs.

I took any opportunity I had to share with friends, family—even new apartment neighbors—that I was well on my way to nursing school with the confident smile of a person destined to save the world, one patient at a time. I scoured discussion boards and nursing student forums late into the night, anticipating the day that I, too, would have something profound to contribute.

I laughed off those who warned me that the path was difficult and ridden with challenges. There was no bridge I couldn’t cross, no task I couldn’t do, and no test I couldn’t pass with flying colors. The world was mine. Now, I’m living those moments as a first semester nursing student—but a funny thing happened on the way to the present, a thing I will lovingly refer to as reality.

And reality has an uncanny way of making sure you’re well aware of his presence. The truth is, most days I feel more like the character Steve Urkel in Family Matters than like Meredith Grey in Grey’s Anatomy—awkward, unsure, and out of my element. My excitement masquerades more as fear. And those scrubs? Hardly the superhero cape I’d imagined. Yes, the truth is, for the first time in my life, I don’t have the definitive answers to anything, my “natural aptitude” for test taking continually disappoints me, and that confident, poised, straight-A student has somehow disappeared, leaving a nervous, uncomfortable rookie in her place.

I replay my mistakes (“No wonder your patient was uncomfortable—you put the bedpan under her backwards!”), I cry more than I ever have in my life, and I continuously wonder how on earth I will ever learn everything I need to know.

But there is good news. Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in nursing students, professional identity, writing and nursing | Tagged , , , , , | 18 Comments »

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Vampire Nurses, PhDs, Your Best Moment as a Nurse: Today’s Notes from the Nursosphere

March 30, 2011

Here are some recent posts of interest we noticed on the nursing blogs. Many of these blogs can actually be found on our blogroll, so we hope you’re exploring what’s there from time to time, even if we know the list isn’t exhaustive and is probably missing some other excellent (and at least somewhat frequently updated) blogs.

It’s good to know that Will, the nurse/comic artist who shares his drawings at Drawing on Experience, has started posting again more regularly. One of his most recent efforts depicts a night shift nurse as a kind of vampire. It’s funny and, in a way, insightful. We give just a thumbnail version of it below on the right, in the interests of preserving the artist’s copyright; to see it enlarged, click the image and visit the version posted on his site, where you can also find a bunch more drawings, many about his life as a relatively new nurse. 

The INQRI Blog (that INQRI stands for Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative, a real mouthful) has a new post about an increase in enrollment in nursing doctorate programs. Here’s an excerpt:

According to new data released recently by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), enrollment in doctoral nursing programs increased significantly in 2010. The AACN believes that this shows a strong interest in both research-focused and practice-focused doctorates.

The post also connects this enrollment trend with some recommendations from the IOM Future of Nursing Report, which we’ve written about more than once on this blog in recent months. But no more policy today! Whatever your degree, if you’re a nurse, you probably wonder from time to time why you do such a challenging job. An evocative post at Those Emergency Blues recounts an after-dinner conversation between two friends about just this. One of them asks the other, “What’s your best moment in nursing?” The author struggles to find an answer. Here’s part of what she says:

I stopped and thought. I could see my reflection in the dining room mirror, dimly, and even I could see bone-tired in my face. But I thought about codes and trauma. I thought about why I was once made Employee of the Month. I thought of smaller moments of giving care— warm blankets, a back rub, a cup of ice chips, repositioning. I thought about missed findings. I thought about the time a patient an ambulance gurney went VSA while I was triaging her, and walked out of hospital ten days later. I thought about innumerable STEMIs caught and thrombolysed (and later sent for rescue cathetherization) within minutes of arrival. I thought about the times when I pushed for some extra intervention which made a real difference in the patient’s life.

It’s engaging, but it’s probably not the most important part of her answer, which you’ll have to read the entire post to learn. Anyway, maybe we’ll steal the question and ask it here, since we’d really like to know what our readers think (as the chill air hangs on at the end of March and energy levels waver). So what’s your best moment as a nurse?—JM, senior editor/blog editor

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Posted in art and nursing, continuing education, nursing students, professional identity, writing and nursing | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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Laundry

March 10, 2011

By Marcy Phipps, RN, whose essay “The Soul on the Head of a Pin” appeared in the May 2010 issue of AJN. She’s written several previous posts for this blog (here’s the most recent).

An eager third-year BSN student was assigned to me yesterday. After introducing herself, she told me quite enthusiastically that she’d already decided she wanted to work in a trauma ICU after she graduated.

I love that. I remember feeling just as wide-eyed and excited as she looked. And I like having students with me, especially ones who are so teachable that they soak up everything around them like a giant sponge.

My student’s willingness to do “everything” served her well, as far as learning experiences go, and she approached tasks without trepidation. She was elated with success (insertion of a nasogastric tube) and mortified with failure (insertion of a rectal tube; she actually vomited). There were moments of fascination (touring the ICU and helping settle in a trauma admission) and boredom (attending a pain management process improvement meeting).

There was also frustration; at the end of the day, she ruined her new scrub top with a spill of dark orange rifaximin.

by adria richards/via Flickr

I’m not sure what her favorite part of the day was (although I’ll bet it was her nasogastric tube success), but my favorite part of her day was overhearing a member of the SWAT team, who was armed and stationed at the bedside of a nearby patient, tell her, in all seriousness, that Dreft laundry detergent would be her “best bet” at getting the medication stains out of her scrubs.

Now, I suppose that SWAT team members, like nurses, have a lot of first-hand experience in getting unusual stains out of work attire, but I must admit I’ve never given the matter much thought. I don’t think of tough guys doing laundry. I never imagine tough guys in the detergent aisle, shopping for Dreft.

I didn’t get to ask my student if she still wanted to work in the ICU, as she was running late for her post-conference, but I’ll bet she still does.

It’s not always pretty, but I can’t imagine someone not wanting to work in a place where rectal tubes and SWAT team laundry advice are punctuations in an otherwise ordinary day.

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Posted in nursing students, professional identity, writing and nursing | Tagged , , , , , , , | 7 Comments »

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