Things Only Nursing Students Understand
Like medicine, teaching, and serving in the military, nursing is a calling. Your desire to take care of people and touch their lives is woven into your DNA. Naturally, you are curious about how people who share your vision view the profession once they take the first step and begin nursing school. To give you some idea of what to expect if you decide to take your calling to the next level, here are a few things that only nursing students understand.
Just Clinical Things
The answer to the question, ‘Have you done this procedure before?’, is always yes, even if you have never done it before. Note to lay people, try not to think of this the next time a nurse approaches you with the intent of inserting a catheter, stitching a wound, or drawing arterial blood.
When it comes to infection control, you know the names of all 206 bones in the body, every one of the hormones involved in diabetes, and the names and side effects of the most commonly prescribed drugs, but, apparently, you don’t know how to wash your hands the correct way.
Electrolytes are your best friends. These are minerals in your body such as sodium, potassium, calcium, chlorine, phosphate and magnesium. You can tell a lot about a patient's condition when these are too low or too high. Remember when you were a civilian and heard doctors on television ask for Us and Es and electrolytes? That is why.
Just Social Things
Friends, their friends, and their friends’ friends think of you as their own personal on-call diagnostician. Be prepared to receive text messages bearing photographs of strangers’ bodies bedecked with all manner of lumps and rashes. Make sure no one goes through your camera roll without permission.
Your family and non-nursing friends don’t have the cast iron stomach that you have developed. They may not be interested in what it means when diarrhea is bright green and leafy, why sweat makes you itch, or how maggots are good at cleansing infected wounds. They are especially not interested in learning about these things at the dinner table. It might be hard to imagine why.
Just Academic Things
By far the most common comment among nursing students, more common than bodily fluids, long hours, and non-existent social lives, is that the people who write the questions on nursing exams are part of a special kind of evil. Nurses today are expected to be able to think critically. On the ward, in the operating room, or in the community, there are no single right answers; there are only best right answers.
This ethos is reflected in the types of exam questions that appear on written nursing tests. This is multiple choice on steroids. One genre is the, ‘Select all that apply,’ question, in which seven of the 12 responses are correct. You would think these would be great; get six right for partial credit, right. Wrong! Miss one, and the entire question is marked incorrect.
Another thorny question format is, ‘Which one of these responses is correct?’ The problem is, three out of four are correct; your job is to choose the most correct answer. Almost every question on the nursing license exam is in one of these two formats.
Making Nursing Your Reality
Maybe many people won’t understand your enthusiasm for diagnosing rare diseases, but if it’s your calling, you’ve found the right place in medicine. If you’re interested in earning an Associate of Applied Science in Nursing, consider ECPI University for the education you will need. For more information, connect with a friendly admissions advisor today.
It could be the Best Decision You Ever Make!
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Gainful Employment Information – Nursing (RN) - Associate’s
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