Directory of Nursing Degree Programs. You've gone to school. You've worked for a while.. Many of us were inspired by positive encounters with nurses either when we or our family members were patients. Join Classmates.com for Free! Reconnect with high school friends, browse the biggest database of online yearbooks and/or plan high school reunions.![]() Get the health care career education you need at Pima Medical Institute. Attend school at one of our 16 campuses in the western U.S. Virginia Counselors Association is the proud state branch of the American Counseling Association. These are career training programs that you need for a new career, higher pay, or a promotion. Find the career training program that is right for you! Colleges of art and design, colleges of science, colleges of business administration, management, colleges of engineering in USA NY CA, UK. Study abroad in Europe, Asia colleges. International degree programs & career training. Offers prospective pilots and technicians a directory of FAA approved flight schools, aviation maintenance technician schools, and helicopter training schools. Compendium of all course descriptions for courses available at Reynolds Community College. Others may have had experiences that encouraged them to become nurses and lead by example. Anne Taliaferro, a public health nurse, was working in research and considering a career in health care. Now I take ideas from academia to the community. ![]() The best one came up in conversation with a family friend as I was applying to schools. She explained that the difference for her between nursing and medicine is that when you enter the patient's room, if you're a doctor, you reach for a chart; if you're a nurse, you reach for a patient's hand. If you are in it for the money, you won't last long. Contrary to popular belief, nursing is not . Despite the increasing prevalence of accelerated BSN and . All nursing programs have a long list of prerequisites. Chances are you will spend at least a year taking these courses before you ever step foot onto a nursing school campus. You may also find yourself having to explain your choices to skeptical audiences. Be prepared for questions and doubt in unexpected places, including from fellow nurses. You'll never really know until you are in the trenches. There are some simple steps you can take, however, in preparation for your journey: Get trained as a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA), Medical Assistant (MA) or Paramedic (EMT). Not only will you learn skills that will give you an advantage in nursing school, but you will be able to appreciate the roles these providers play.. Learning systems and being comfortable in a health care setting is half the battle. Look for unit secretary and technician positions which will let you interact directly with patients and families (if you can, keep the job through nursing schoolso that you can apply internally for RN positions). Volunteer at a hospital. It really is valuable exposure. Plus, it is a great opportunity to meet nurses and pick their brains. Read nursing blogs. Learn about the good, the bad and the ugly now. Nursing is rewarding, but it is far from romantic. What percentage of their graduates have jobs within three (and six) months, particularly in this economy? Do they offer nursing career support? What is the process for airing grievances as a student? Also, find out if there are current students willing to speak honestly about their experiences. Make sure you really understand the degree requirements. Second- career nurses are good for the profession. Make sure you are honest with yourself about the reasons for making the choice to go into nursing. Q: What is your current position? I am a floor nurse in an oncology unit. Q: What motivated your decision to change careers into nursing? It was a combination of two things really. I had a slow realization that I didn't want to be a professor the rest of my life. I wanted to be with people and take care of them in a concrete way. I never really thought about nursing. I had a midwife during my pregnancy, but it had never crossed my mind that I could become a nurse. Then a good friend, who is also a nurse, told me, . We were living in central New Jersey at the time. I found an accelerated nursing program. I had to take a lot of science prerequisites, and I ended up loving them. I really was not up for getting another college degree, so I had to find a nursing program that wouldn't take another four years, and then figure out what classes I had to take and when I had to take them. As soon as I knew I could get a BSN degree, it all just fell into place pretty quickly. Q: How did your previous career impact your nursing practice? Good communication skills are talked about a lot, but they really make a huge difference. Having a lot of practice communicating, having taught writing, I've really thought a lot about how to interact with people and get across information- that's invaluable. Having been a professor and being older, I think I came in more comfortable with doctors than a lot of nurses are, and that's very helpful too. It's easier for me to see them as colleagues who are doing different pieces of a very important job. Q: Did you feel like your nursing school prepared you well for nursing on the floor? I would say in some ways, yes and in some ways, no. I graduated from the accelerated nursing program at the University of Pittsburgh, which was a year- long program. The one thing I wish we had more of, though, was more clinical experience or more in- depth clinical experience. I think because it's only a year, it felt like once I got on the floor, I could have used more clinical experience. A lot of nurses come out of school feeling that way, though. You're in fairly large clinical groups- five nurses and one instructor. To me, it felt like a combination of things: I had done an accelerated program and so I wasn't as clinically prepared as I could have been; I was older; I had a Ph. D in English. I've heard from other nurses at other hospitals that there can be hostility between nurses and sometimes a feeling that some nurses don't want someone who . I work with BSN nurses, diploma nurses and nurses who went to community college, and they're all good nurses. My true and strong feeling is that all nurses should have a BSN because it would raise the professional profile of the job. When people say M. D., they know what that means, but with nurses you don't know. For everyone who wants to be a nurse to get a BSN though, there needs to be money available to financially help those nurses who can only afford diploma programs. Q: How would you describe your first few days in your nursing position? A whirlwind of activity! I was lucky because I started out with this wonderful and gentle preceptor, and she was so calm and patient. The first day I just shadowed her and I thought, . It really was a blur of patients, doctors, other nurses, and aides, and I thought, ? I don't know anyone's name. I'll pass on a very good piece of advice I got from another nurse about when I would feel comfortable, . There are still moments when I feel like I don't know something, but there was a point when I just got it. I can't put into words what that is or how it happens, but it does happen. And I tell other new nurses the same thing. Hospitals are incredibly chaotic, and a lot of what you have to learn as a nurse is how to navigate that chaos. How do I find the phone number, etc? Some things sound really serious but aren't, and other things are really serious, but don't come across that way. Also, since I'm in oncology, there's the emotional work of the job. But overall, I feel like nurses have so much to do and are always being given more. Nursing also doesn't get the institutional respect that it really needs. We're working so hard, and we care so much about the patients, and often I feel like in health care in general, we aren't getting the help we need. Q: What advice do you have for a new nurse about managing the emotional element of nursing? Make sure you're somewhere where you can talk to your colleagues. You've got to process it. If you're the kind of person who needs to get feelings out, and you're working on a floor where people tell you to suck it up, that's not going to work. I love patients; I love helping the patients. This often takes the form of bullying, shouting, and people losing their tempers. Every person, whether it's a housekeeper, the chief nursing officer or the head of cardiology, needs to be held to professional standards of behavior. We have people's lives in our hands; we need to have good communication and work together. Q: How would you describe your patients? Brave. They're all dealing with this very scary diagnosis, and they handle it. They're not perfect; they're all human, but they handle it, and their families handle it. It's quite remarkable to see what families are willing to do for each other. This job has made me feel really good about being married because I see couples - whether it's the wife or the husband who's sick - who are really there for each other. You start this great job, and it's so rewarding - the job makes everything you go through in school worth it.
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