Nurse & Nursing School Megathread: The NCLEX is the spookiest test you'll ever take

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Nurse & Nursing School Megathread: The NCLEX is the spookiest test you'll ever take

already is: Jul 13, 2004

Kimball_Ninja posted:

This is a very fascinating thread, so thanks to all that are posting. While it's great that many of you are nurses, its also an attractive occupation because of its high demand. But how much of that demand is driven by the process of becoming a nurse? Those pre-reqs sound downright nasty, and while the process should be selective, it seems strange that the industry faces a huge shortage but makes the process to get your degree onerous at best.

I mean, 7 years to get an undergrad degree in nursing? What could be done differently? Making the nursing profession more attractive would go a long way to helping deal with shortages.

DISCLAIMER: IM NOT A NURSE.

But I am a dirty medical student that has kept my mouth shut (including the OP's assertion of doctors' "appalling high" salaries

)
Nurses are paid well. Nurses will always have a job. The Nursing unions have lobbied successfully for various increases in autonomy (and thus more pay along with the responsibility). Nursing allows a fast entry path in the form of a 4 year degree into the field, plus the ability to get paid while you work towards what is, in my state, a fully autonomous position in the Nurse practitioner.

If the work isn't appealing to you, the nursing industry has done everything it can to make it more so. 2 year wait times stated earlier are an obvious indication of the interest in joining the industry.

The same nursing unions do the same thing doctors unions do - lobby for a limit on the number of schools, extremely high requirements for accreditation, etc. to safe guard existing jobs, foreign graduates, and quality.Some of the shortage is for quality, some is protectionism. The Nurse practitioner was made to be a mid level provider to allow a more efficient system. In reality, nursing unions have pused the role into patch working the broken primary care role in many cases, which only exasperates the problem, but is very good for the nursing industry and nurses themselves.

EDIT - I'm saying "unions" to describe the various levels of associations public/private that lobby on behalf of docs and nurses. Not necessarily unions.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2008 23:57

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 1, 2024 14:29

already is: Jul 13, 2004

Ohthehugemanatee posted:

We learned it all from you guys.

The NP thing is actually pretty frustrating from our side. Many states put inane restrictions on what we can do, and many hospitals shuffle us into uninteresting jobs. Acute Care Nurse Practitioner sounds really fun until you realize you're going to be in the ED getting every case of "my kid has had this cough for two days now..." The much vaunted autonomy of the NP is often the autonomy to do the jobs the MDs don't really want to do.

We also made the crucial mistake of loosening the experience requirements and over saturating the market with inexperienced prescribers no one really wants to hire.

There are happy and incredibly successful NPs who have challenging and interesting jobs but most I've talked to went in thinking they'd found a shortcut to being a doctor and found out that really wasn't the case.

Oh, and while you guys do have appallingly high salaries, I never said you didn't earn them. I'm pretty sure our critical care fellow's active/on call schedule guarantees that he hasn't slept more than three hours straight in the last month. Whatever he gets paid, it can't be enough.

By NO MEANS, was anything I said meant to be a slight at nurses. poo poo, right now I can tell you pathway after pathway for drug usage, diagnose things by symptoms despite never seeing the disease in person, and tell you the physics behind all kinds of imaging.
And I've got some very long time before I get near as much exposure to patients as you do

I was simply describing a lot of the benefits of nursing and that the idea of "making the industry more attractive" to fill the shortage is going to be pretty hard to do. It's already pretty damned attractive if you are interested in the work.

As for the politics of wedging in NP's into a slot originally expected for PA's, followed by that of MD's...no one said it wasn't an awkward one for the NP's involved. Just that the ability to reach a higher education level after your RN results in one more attractive option in the industry.

Also, NP's in my state can open their own practice (there is more to it than just that) and are doing so. It's not that no docs want to do primary care (I really do!), its that you'll find a lot more NP's willing to do that job due to training path and the reimbursement than you will MD's up to their eyes in debt for close to the same pay. It's not fixing anything here, just driving more US grads into specialties that we won't need in 10 years and leaving a gap filled by PA's, NP's, and FMG's.

ER practioners/PA's on the other hand....Well, I couldn't agree more. But that is what the mid-level provider is supposed to do, right? Remove some load from the over-educated doctor so that patients and the system isn't wasting money for the same thing? I guess you could say the same thing is sort of happening with the NPs now, but SOMEONE has to do it.

Thanks for this thread regardless. Very informative. I'll go back to lurking in the shadows now

# ¿ Dec 9, 2008 02:57

already is: Jul 13, 2004

Bum the Sad posted:

No not at all. Med School is post graduate. Nursing school is undergrad.

The best it would do is make some of the courses easier since you already should have pathophysiology down pretty well and have probably seen and treated half the poo poo they talk about in school.

You'd also be a lot more confident shoving tubes and needles into people once you got into your clinicals.

Other than that it wouldn't help in getting in or shortening the load.

Not to get too far astray, but just chiming in that many nursing pre-reqs (at schools I have attended and my current science center) do not qualify for pre-reqs for medical school, and someone attempting the process may very well have to go back to undergrad to finish those before attending medical school as well. Of course, based on state, etc. YMMV.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2008 14:28

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Nurse & Nursing School Megathread: The NCLEX is the spookiest test you'll ever take