It’s been almost a week since my last post, and I have to admit that the major reason for the delay has been a lack of enthusiasm for the prospect of going into nursing.  See my last post, “The Worst Career in the World.”   The comments that I read on AboutMyJob.com are not the only ones to trash nursing as a stressful, demeaning career that wrecks good people after just a couple of years.  In fact, go ahead and Google “nursing sucks.”  You’ll have days of depressing rants to sift through.

However, there are two sides to every story, and I’ve recently been researching good nursing experiences.  The posts by nurses who love their jobs are out there, though they’re usually followed by some much more negative posts.  Here’s an example of a response to a good post: “You’ve been a nurse for a year and a half - that tells me everything right there.  You will feel differently in a few years.”

Here’s what I’m wondering now.  Are there less-stressful nursing jobs?  Are these ranting nurses all working in big hospitals?  What about working in a smaller clinic, a community health center, a specialty clinic like a cancer center?  Which is the most stressful?  I realize that I’m not going to get answers to these rhetorical questions right now.  Perhaps a variety of volunteering experiences would be best.  Three months in a hospital, three in a community health center, etc. 

Anyway, there are also nursing jobs that are non-clinical.  Some of them seem to be pretty cool.  I’m encouraged by the fact that, if nursing as as “life-sucking” a career as it sounds to be, there are lots of options for movement and variety without having to return to school for an entirely new set of skills. 

I’m less discouraged and should be posting more regularly.

I feel like there’s this ever-present and ever-worrisome task of figuring out how to pay for nursing school.  In the middle of one of my searches, I googled “Air Force reserves medic” (more on that later) and came across this post on AboutMyJob.com.

Check it out.  It’s unbelievably negative and ripe for commentary.  The readers’ comments that follow the post are equally rich.

I will be posting more on this as soon as I can.  Take a minute, click above, and read about the worst career in the world.  Love this guy’s opinion or hate it, I guarantee you’ll be fascinated for the next five minutes.

“…the classes are filling fast, the Dean will likely cut more expenses, the government is giving less money to community colleges and the competition to get into nursing school as well as to get jobs afterwards is getting fierce….  Our enrollment is at 1 and a half times normal for Fall and that’s 3 months away…. There are waiting lines of people….”

“Typically, my classes fill up quickly with a waiting list.  We do not hold spots for anyone.”

The above quotes are from teachers of prerequisite courses that I need to take before I apply for nursing school.  I emailed these instructors because, as a state employee, I can get into community college classes tuition-free if there is room.  As you can see, they both essentially said, “No.  My class if overflowing with wannabe nurses already!”

 I think both of these quotes show that, despite the rosy outlook for nursing jobs, people who want to pursue nursing as a career are in for an uphill battle from the very beginning. I’ll finish my prerequisites, and I’ll pay full tuition for them if I have to, but these quotes just serve to remind me of the competition that I’m facing.  I’ll just keep telling myself, “Get good grades.  Get good grades….”  I also won’t quit my day job until I’m officialy into a nursing program!

My first prerequisite on my way to nursing school is CHEM&121 - Introduction to Chemistry.  Today, I went to the registration office to pay the tuition and fees.  Tuition for 5 credits is $379.  Fees for this course are $77.12.

I’ll add this to the cost of books for the class.

Total cost thus far: $676.12

The first week of my first prerequisite class - Chemistry 121 - is over, and I wanted to quickly jot down my impressions for anyone who is thinking about taking this as a nursing school prereq.

First, this is an accelerated summer course, so we’ll have to cover the required material in about 7 weeks rather than the 10 or 11 weeks of a regular quarter.  However, even at this pace, I think that anyone who has taken Chemistry in high school would be very comfortable with the material.  Thankfully, the course starts with the basics (What is Matter?), so it’s a review that allows all that old knowledge to come flooding back.  It makes me feel smart!

The course contains some Math.  At this point, it’s mostly conversions (How many milligrams is 54 grams? How many cubic centimeters are there in 5 liters?) and plug-and-chug-type formulas (Density = Mass / Volume).  Also, the book presents very understandable ways to complete the problems, so the Math component should not scare off any potential enrollees.

Some of the online technology is very cool, and it certainly wasn’t around the last time I took Chemistry way back in 1992 or so.  The technology offers ways for students to build 3-dimensional molecules, and I think this is going to help my understanding of the material immensly.

It seems very important to understand the major concepts of Chapter 1, like the difference between elements and compounds,  between heterogeneous and homogeneous substances, between physical and chemical properties.  I think I’ve got it, and I’m actually looking forward to Week 2!

The gracious CHEM&121 instructor and the gracious distance learning office at NSCC managed to get me registered for the class on the second day of the Summer quarter.  Here are some of my first impressions: 

1) The class is well-organized.  a) There is a weekly discussion component.  b) There are weekly readings from the textbook, of course - one to two chapters a week, as far as I can tell.  c) There is homework to do on a separate website.  This is the most confusing part of the online Chemistry class so far.  There is an e-book on this website that costs more money to access (!), and it’s unclear whether or not reading it is necessary to complete the homework.  I should know the answer to that by the end of this week. d) There are a couple of required 3- or 4- hour lab sessions to attend.

2) The material is very basic so far, beginning with definitions of matter, elements, compounds, molecules, atoms, etc.  I remember my AP Chemistry class in high school being much harder. Then again, this is the first chapter of the book!

3) The students who are taking this class are impressive.  Many of them are professionals looking for a career change.  Many of them are going into the health professions.  There are at least 3 other male students planning on going into nursing.  They have diverse interests, are well-read, have fascinating life experiences, and seem to be very motivated. 

This week’s discussion consists of introducing ourselves, and those introductions have already convinced me that community college students are certainly not “people who couldn’t get into real universities.”  They’ve also convinced me that getting into nursing school is going to be extremely competitive, and I’m gonna need to maintain a very high GPA in order to be accepted.

I was searching through other nursing school blogs today, and I ran across this page on a blog called The Makings of a Nurse.   It’s about respecting “the privacy of the clients (she - Nurse Teeny) encounters.”  Nurse Teeny does not indicate where she lives or works and, of course, she does not name any of the patients she deals with as a student nurse.

Since I’m just barely beginning the journey to / through nursing school, I hadn’t thought of privacy issues at all.  I’ve already mentioned where I live, where I’m presently taking prerequisite classes, and where I’m thinking of applying to nursing school.

I also have not seen any patients (far from it).  I don’t think that mentioning the names of schools is a privacy issue.  However, I will not mention the name of an instructor or another student on this blog.

If I do end up going to nursing school and I do see patients, I fully intend to follow the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy Rule.

Thanks to Nurse Teeny for bringing this issue to my attention!

Lots of posting today…

When I first wrote about when to apply for nursing school, I only detailed the application dates for North Seattle Community College. After all of my present research concerning the University of Washington School of Nursing, I thought I’d update this blog with their application procedures.

It looks like students can only start in the fall quarter, and for me, that would mean Fall 2010.  I need the next year to finish the 8 required prerequisite courses. So, to start in Fall 2010, I need submit two applications, one to the University of Washington, and one to the University of Washington School of Nursing.  (I’ll be a post-bac student because I already have a Bachelor’s degree.)

The UW application is due Feb. 15, 2009, and the UW SON application is due Jan. 15, 2009.  I guess I’ll be completing both of them in December of 2009 or early January of 2010.  The applications will be in about 9 months before school starts in the fall!  This is quite a difference from the community college nursing program application, which needs to be completed only 3 or 4 months ahead of time.

Today is June 29, 2009, and it’s the first day of Summer quarter, 2009 at North Seattle Community College.  It’s also the first day of my first prerequisite course for nursing school - Chemistry 121.  I was hoping to write a post detailing a course outline and expectations - what subjects will be covered, the intenisty of reading, the number and types of assignments, tests, papers, etc. 

However, it seems that I’m not registered for the course!  The course is online with the exception of 4 lab sessions (two of which I will miss, but the instructor is already aware of this and has approved), and I’m out of town at the moment.  I’ve emailed the instructor, and hopefully I’ll be placed on her roster in the next day or two. 

When I do get access to the course, I’ll post details to give everyone some idea of its difficulty and intensity.

In my last post about volunteering, I concluded that I’d volunteer at Swedish Medical Center because they have jobs for nursing students called “student opportunities,” and I thought that volunteering there would give me an in.  The only problem is that their volunteer opportunities don’t sound very exciting.  Working in the Cancer Institute Resource Center and the Education Center sound best.  Otherwise, you’re stuck doing clerical work, transporting patients, or working in the gift shop. 

The UW Medical Center, on the other hand, indicates that volunteers can work in nursing units, surgical services, the emergency department, the operating department, or intensive care.  I’m going to call UWMC next week to discuss my options at an Informational Meeting. 

More on volunteering then!