Nursing school is defined as a kind of educational institute where training and education to become a full-fledged nurse is provided. Across the globe, the nature of nursing education and nursing certifications differs quite significantly, though one thing that is common among all nursing schools is the difficulty of the workload and the consequent stress that some people in nursing school experience. To survive this stress, graduate nursing school and then become a successful nurse with a blossoming nursing career, take heed of the following tips for nursing programs.
Classroom Environment
Classrooms present a pro-and-con environment that gives rise to situations that help or hurt students. For example, during even the most boring lectures, students should concentrate and take reliable notes because there may be a nugget of information among all the so-called boredom that will be useful to remember on a future exam. On the con side, some professors can be difficult to deal with. While it is tough dealing with such a professor, such an experience builds both character and the life experience of learning how to handle difficult individuals. To, perhaps, preempt such an event from happening, students may wish to introduce themselves to their instructors and stand out from the rest of the class or even enroll in an one of the many online nursing programs.
Getting Ahead
Surviving nursing school depends a lot on getting good grades, and getting good grades is impossible or exceptionally hard if the surrounding environment does not support studying. For instance, if a student lives in a dorm or shares an apartment with someone, distractions that will impede study, like the TV, stereo or a smartphone, should be left behind as the student exits his or her residence to find a quieter and more suitable place for studying. Good studying also entails getting the most out of reading materials, whether they are textbooks or other materials that complement study in the field of nursing. Ambitious students may want to read more than just their textbooks, which can include publications like nursing magazines or journals. Reading current articles in nursing publications will go a long way toward helping budding nurses understand the material in their textbooks.
Comprehension
A sizable part of nursing school involves learning experience from partaking in activities that are found in clinicals. Clinicals are nothing more than nursing units that nursing students visit in order to get direct experience and apply all the classroom knowledge that they have absorbed during nursing school. This involves interacting with real, live patients and doing things for them. Clinicals can last for weeks and take nursing students from hospitals to clinics and nursing care facilities. Surviving clinicals involves incorporating some savvy tactics such as being independent, which involves looking up how to do protocols you do not fully remember how to do yourself; alternatively, you can also ask the nurse supervisors for help. Furthermore, having a good relationship with the nurse supervisors is vital, as they will be the ones helping students during clinicals.
Study Groups
Forming a study group may sound like a cliché, but if a study group was sound advice during high school, then forming a study group is still sound advice during nursing school. A study group for nursing students is beneficial because it allows said students to divide the enormous amount of information they are expected to absorb and learn. A study group also permits those in a study group to go over their respective notes, which can lead to unexpectedly pleasant discoveries. For instance, one in the group may have a knack for jotting down notes in a particularly memorable way that makes the information easy to retain when it is being studied. Or, alternatively, another person in the study group may have paid better attention than the others, thereby allowing the rest to catch up on something that they all missed when a lecture was initially taking place in class.
Time Management
Perhaps one of the most obvious though least successfully practiced tips surrounds the subject of time management. Time management is essential in many aspects of life, both professional and personal, but it is especially applicable to a setting such as nursing school, where the expectations of success are high and the threat of failure from too much pressure and stress is just as high. To successfully beat back problems with time management, students in nursing school are advised to incorporate just a few, simple tactics that may make all the difference when it comes to managing the time they have in a 24-hour period. Time management tactics are more about common sense and being organized instead of involving complicated suggestions.
Goal List
One really easy piece of advice is to keep a list of all the goals that need to be accomplished during the day. These can be anything from studying for a test to remembering to attend the weekly study group session. Another equally simple time management tip relates to breaking up the time in a given day into more manageable blocks. This psychological trick allows a person to endure more efficiently, especially if the job at hand is quite stressful. For example, studying for four hours in a row without any breaks is likely going to be taxing both emotionally as well as physically, so a simple solution is to break up the study time into two blocks of two hours of study time. Going into study time with this time management approach will also likely lead to more retention.
Nursing school, whether you are enrolled in an RN program or an LPN program, is a challenge, just like any other higher-learning environment where pressure and stress will eventually catch up with the students. To preempt this problem before it even occurs, several precautions and common sense tips can be followed to ensure that nursing school does not overwhelm the individual and, conversely, is more manageable. All factors that relate to success in nursing school should be analyzed—such as a quiet study environment to a successful approach to clinicals—and then handled in such a way that greater success is more likely. Nursing school costs a lot of money, so it is imperative for students to do well by getting the most out of their time.