Associate in Nursing - Southeast Health College of Nursing (Winner)
Editors Note: This student story essay was selected as 1st place winner from BrainTrack's Nursing Scholarship for Spring, 2011. At the time of submittal this winner, Heather Alana Kyle, was studying for a AAS Nursing RN at Southeast Health College of Nursing and Health Sciences.
Wishes Had Known | Advice on Career | Study TipsWhat do you wish you had known about selecting and entering your business school that would be helpful to others going into nursing?
Check into the reputation of the nursing school. What are the NCLEX pass rates the last few years? Talk to veteran nurses in your area who have worked with nursing students from the programs in your area. Which program produces better nurses? Often one school with have a better reputation and students from that school will get preference in hiring. Research online or contact the nurse recruiter at places you interested in working. Ask if you can volunteer or shadow. This will allow you to talk to more people in the field and get the inside scoop.
Find out the important deadlines well in advance. Don’t let a year slip by because, oops, you missed the deadline the had to wait to apply till next year. Competition is tough these days.
Make friends with the office manager in the nursing department. Find out what the selection is based on. How are students selected to get in? If it is based on pure grades, your GPA is less than ideal, and there are four applicants for every seat, it is not likely you are going to get in to that program.
Don’t waste your time applying over and over again. Find another program or start lower on the totem pole. Start in an LPN or Associates RN program and bridge up. It is often easier to get into the lower degree programs and easier to get into the bridge programs later. You will end up with the same degree in the end and often it might take the same amount of time. If the selection criteria has a degree of discretion built in, write letters, call, visit, make it known why they should select you and show them you are very motivated and serious about this career.
If you are admitted to a program but not for a year or two down the road, go and talk to the director about possibly getting in earlier if someone leaves the program. IF there is discretion in the selection process they will tend to pick those students from the waiting list who seem the most promising and the most motivated.
Compare the price breakdown of different schools. Some programs are as much as double the cost of others per credit hour. Look into federal programs such as the Workforce Investment Act which pays up to $7,500 per year to eligible students for two years of training in high demand fields such as health care. This is money that doesn’t have to be paid back and is in addition to any pell grant money you may qualify for. It is for displaced workers, displaced homemakers (like if your husband got laid off), and also low income families. Talk to your local unemployment office about who administers this program in your area.
Other than school, what would you advise people entering the nursing field to consider or prepare for?
Seriously consider working as a nurse’s aide prior to starting nursing school. Although there is a critical shortage of nurses, no one wants to hire the graduate nurse who has no experience. A new RN will demand easily double the pay of an experienced aide, but with no experience, will actually be competent to do less. An institution wants to know what you know how to DO competently in terms of direct patient care, not just that you know how to make an A on a test.
Even getting an internship or externship is harder if you have no prior experience. Often in the externship selection criteria, nurse aides get a big point bonus over those students who are not aides making it very hard to compete and be selected for the extern positions. The hospitals will tend to hire graduate nurses from their extern pool, so again, it will be much easier to get hired if you have the aide position prior to starting. If you are already working as an aide while you are in school, you will be a shoe in to move into an RN position when you graduate. It is much harder for a graduate nurse with no experience to get a job than I would have ever thought. The degree means little without the experience to go with it.
A nurse recruiter just came and spoke at our college and she said that for the first time new nurses are competing with older nurses for jobs. Veteran nurses are not retiring because their retirement investments are down and they can’t afford to retire and retired nurses are coming out of retirement because their husbands are laid off and their retirement accounts are down. Do whatever you can to get experience, even if it means just volunteering or shadowing to get your foot in the door.
What study tips would you recommend to other nursing students?
Of course the obvious, be on time for all classes, attend all classes. Be well rested for all classes. You can’t take good notes and comprehend the material if you are groggy. Take school seriously. School is your career. Don’t study to pass the test. In nursing, everything builds on everything else. You need to fully understand the material in order to succeed later. Don’t just learn the what, but figure out the why, the rationale behind what you are doing. This is what will make it stick in your mind. If you understand why you are doing something then you will actually remember it and be a competent provider. If you don’t understand the why of something, take the extra time to research and figure it out.
Read all assigned reading material in the book. This will really help. Take any ATI practice tutorials that you can get your hands on. Read the rationale for each incorrect answer, not just the correct answer. There is more education going on in learning why other answers are incorrect that just picking out the correct answer.
Make flash cards for technical info that is easy to forget like lab values or other numbers.
If you learn well by listening and can’t always write fast enough to catch everything your prof says, it may be a good idea to invest in a Livescribe smart pen. This is a pen that records everything that is said. You take notes in a special notebook. When you want to go back and review what was said at a particular point in the lecture without having to listen to the whole thing over, you place the pen on that section of the notes, and it will play back what was said only about that topic.
It is important to be very organized. Figure out a system that works for you. I have one big binder I take everywhere. The first pocket has assignments in the order they are due. I have page protectors in the front section with a calendar for each month. I then write in all exams and assignments at the beginning of the term. Each class has a color coded folder in the binder and a matching notebook to take notes in class.
Keep office supplies in your bag with you so you can stay organized wherever you are. I keep a stapler, calculator, paper clips, post it notes to, etc.
If you are busy with kids, work, etc. schedule on the calendar when you will study well in advance. Don’t leave it up to chance when you will squeeze it in. Don’t try to wait until the night before the test when you are exhausted from the day and expect to retain info. Schedule study periods in several hour blocks where you will have uninterrupted time alone. Hire a babysitter, take off work the day before exams and periodically through the semester.
Class time is important to gather the important information to will need to learn, but it is in your quiet study time that you will be able to really digest and summarize the material, organize it in your brain, and sort out any areas you didn’t fully understand in order to fully process the information and do well on the exam. Protect this time from interruptions. Don’t be near a radio, TV, cell phone or other distractions. You need peace and quiet in order to focus. If you do better with soft music playing, fine, but if you are jamming and singing along, your brain is not focusing on the material and the music becomes a hindrance.
Buy or make a good daily planner that you keep with you. If you can’t find one to buy that really works for you, go online. There are lots of free daily planner pages in all kinds of formats. You can use those as an example and then tailor it to fit your own needs. You can print out enough for the semester and then take them to a print shop and have them bound with a cover for a couple of bucks. Viola, you have a customized planner perfect for you. It is so important to be organized in nursing school, not just your classes, but every aspect of your life. Consider including a section “what’s for dinner?” and a grocery list. If you are able to keep things better organized in general you will function better, and be a better student.
Buy a lunch box or bag and bring your lunch and/or breakfast if needed. You can’t function well with low blood sugar. Pack a lunch the night before class or buy stuff easy to take on the go. Don’t wait till you are starving and then expect go out and get junk food all the time. Not only is this expensive, but it is just not always practical, not to mention unhealthy. Keep healthy snacks on hand that you can take with you when you know you will be out all day in class, clinical, studying, etc.
If you are a nontraditional student with a busy home life, organization will be absolutely imperative for you. Take time before school starts or over breaks to clean house. De-clutter everything. Forget hording for that yard sale next summer. Just get rid of it. The few hundred bucks you might make off a yard sale isn’t worth the time you will have to put in and the added stress from a cluttered home for months. Hire a friend or teenager to come help you if you feel overwhelmed. If your personal space is in order it will free up you mind to be able to focus more on your studies.