What Advice Would You Give a New Nursing Student? Our Readers Respond…

KarenRoushBy Karen Roush, MSN, RN, FNP-C, AJN clinical managing editor

My daughter Kim is starting nursing school next month, so last week I asked AJN’s Facebook followers for the best piece of advice I could give her. The response was overwhelming: over 600 people offered wisdom, encouragement, and tips for success. I went through and read them all and the following is an attempt to synthesize the advice.

Of course, with so many responses, there were many valuable pieces of advice I had to leave out, from the practical to the profound, such as:

sit in the front of class, stick to your principles, invest in good shoes, choose clinicals that push you out of your comfort zone, be early for everything, celebrate the small victories, get a really good stethoscope up front, believe in yourself, pick the hardest patient you can at clinical, audiorecord the lectures, be truthful and committed to your work, eat healthy, get to know your instructors, coffee and chocolate!

And finally: look into the eyes of your patients and be sure they know you care. Every patient, every time.

(Oh, and not to leave out the lighthearted—Don’t hold your nose in clinicals. The teachers frown on that.)

Below are five areas of advice that stood out:

1) “Take a […]

2016-11-21T13:05:03-05:00April 9th, 2014|career, healthcare social media, nursing perspective, students|7 Comments
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Differentiating Nurse Burnout From Boredom

Julianna Paradisi, RN, OCN, writes a monthly post for this blog and works as an infusion nurse in outpatient oncology.

BarriersToAccussParadisi

Nurses frequently discuss burnout. Sometimes it’s called compassion fatigue. Regardless of which term, nurses are at risk because our work requires complex technical skills, an expanding knowledge base, physical endurance, and critical thinking, since a patient’s symptoms often do not present in a manner described in the textbooks studied in nursing school.

Above and beyond this, nurses are expected to display warmth and caring towards their patients, even ones who are rude and argumentative. This alone requires character and self-discipline. Add inadequate staffing ratios to the mix, and it’s easy to understand that at some point, a nurse may become susceptible to burnout or compassion fatigue.

Nursing school graduation and passing NCLEX don’t make you a nurse. These milestones earn you a place at the starting gate. It’s up to the individual nurse to navigate her or his career towards growth and longevity. I clearly remember, several years into my practice, recognizing that I’d reached a point of expertise in which I might not know exactly what to do in any emergency, but whatever intervention I chose would be safe and maintain a patient until the doctor or code team arrived. This was around the same time I stopped feeling nauseous every time […]

2016-11-21T13:06:45-05:00August 22nd, 2013|career, nursing perspective|6 Comments
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Finding Future Leaders – and a NICHE in Nursing

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

It has been a hectic few weeks, as I’ve been traveling to the early spring nursing meetings (with still more to come).

With John Gransbach at NSNA meeting With John Gransbach at NSNA meeting

First I went to Charlotte, North Carolina, to attend the National Student Nurses Association (NSNA) annual meeting (April 3–7). AJN has had a long association with the NSNA, supporting it in various ways since its 1952 founding, from hosting board meetings at AJN offices to producing the convention newsletter to convention scholarships for key contributors. In recent years, we’ve sponsored travel expenses to the annual meeting for the winner of Project InTouch, the member incentive plan. This year, the winner was John Gransbach, who graduated from the Goldfarb School of Nursing at Barnes-Jewish College in St Louis. He recruited 228 new NSNA members—an achievement certainly worth recognizing.

Future leaders. As I told the audience when I presented the plaque to Mr. Gransbach, this award isn’t just about growing membership in the NSNA—it’s about contributing to the future of the profession. Students who join the NSNA are already demonstrating a commitment to nursing by going beyond what’s required of them. They’ve joined an organization that provides considerable resources to help them begin their careers. Not only does it provide practical help with passing the NCLEX exam, writing a resume, and finding a job, but it informs them about what it means to be […]

2018-03-28T10:34:13-04:00April 15th, 2013|nursing perspective, students|0 Comments
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Don’t Cling to Tradition: A Nursing Student’s Call for Realism, Respect

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 […]

2016-11-21T13:12:22-05:00July 26th, 2011|career, students|17 Comments
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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