Advisement Advice

For the second and third semesters of nursing school, the junior class will get split in half. One half doing this set of classes and the other doing another. The classes will switch for the third semester. The choices the juniors face is whether to do medical surgical nursing and psychiatric nursing first or to do obstetrics, pediatrics and older adult nursing first.

I personally chose to do the med-surg and psych half first for a couple of reasons. One I am very interested in pursuing a career in the obstetric world, therefore, I wanted to save those clinicals last. I planned my clinical groups to purposefully have the ob clinicals last and at Freeman. When I was doing the med-surg semester, I choose to do those clinicals the first half of the semester and the pscyh clincials the second half. Mainly because med-surg ones are more days and longer days then the psych ones. I wanted to end my semester with the less time consuming of the two clinicals. I really felt like this benefited my schedule. It helped me to have extra time during the week to do projects and to stay caught up my school work.

Another reason, I choose to do my med-surg/psych semester first was because the drugs we learned about in med-surg matched up with the pharmacology class that all the juniors take. Now this does not apply to this groups class. My year takes two pharm classes: one second semester and one third. The year below me will be taking one class that is the combination of the two of mine. I have not gotten a straight answer of which semester this class will be in for them, but my suggestion is to do med-surg that semester.

Either way you do it, you will complete all the classes. Some of my classmate are in med-surg now so that they have the material fresh for when you take advanced med-surg in your fourth semester of nursing school. This has worked well for them, but they struggled through pharm last semester compared to us who were in med-surg then.

Obstetrics and Pediatrics

VS.

Psyciatric and Medical Surgical

                 

Surviving Finals Week

Finals week for nursing school can be a little stressful. For one we do NOT in any way shape or form really follow the main campus finals schedule. The only two classes in the program that do are the ones you can take before being admitted into the program and for that fact they have to follow main campus. The classes I am referring to are Health Promotion and Pathophysiology. With this being said, my first advice for finals week is to know your schedule. Know where you will have to be and when to take all your finals. Since we do not follow main campus, these are normally listed in your syllabus or will be talked about in class.

The next thing to remember for nursing school is to study for one test at a time. Since we do not follow main campus, the professors work together on the finals schedule. This can happen because we are all in those same classes, so everyone knows what everyone else is doing in terms of when the finals are. The make sure they are spaced apart enough to give you normally at least a day to study for each test.

Take advantage of the study guides and hints each professor gives out. Some tell you a lot about the final and others do not. Take advantage of any and all information to better condense your study material into what is most important.

Finally, not only are you going to be taking finals, but for some classes you have to take and pass and ATI test. Normally studying for these is basically studying for your final as well. For ATI tests, take advantage of practice tests and the books that we had to buy. The books condense the material as well as give you practice questions.

Finally, good luck to everyone on their finals and ATI. You will do great!

Finals week material for nursing school is
normally this high in the amount of books.

Midterm Check Up

In our nursing program, we don't really give midterms - I have only taken one so far. Although, every week feels like midterms. We take so many tests and some the materials just build upon one another. In your first semester, there is the typical four or five tests per class. There is also an additional three dosage calculation tests. These tests are over how to calculate how many pills to give, how much to draw up in a syringe, what to rate an IV at, etc. These tests are very important in terms of your future career, but also within the program. In order to be able to give  medications in the hospital setting you have to pass these with a 90% or above. The first time you take it, that is your grade in the grade book, but if you do not make to 90% mark you have two more chances to pass it to be able to pass medications.

With these added dosage calculation tests and some classes being more than four test, you will average about one test per week. Even now that I am in my third semester, I still average about one test a week, sometimes more. This means that no one week is harder or easier than another and the stress can just pill on with no relief. So my suggestion for this week, as it is fall break, is to take advantage of this easy week. I use fall break to destress and recollect myself for the rest of the semester, but to also get things done. I try and split my time between relaxing and being productive enough to set myself up for an easier rest of the semester.

As a way to destress, I take pictures as a hobby. This is a sample of
one of my pictures.This was taken at the Overland Park Arboretum.