Nursing students/graudates, whats the hardest?

I think it is just handling the volume of what you need to do. There is a ton of reading. The sciences are challenging (for me, chemistry was the tough one). You will have at least two full days a week of clinical rotation. You will need to memorize muscles, bones, nerves. Neurotransmitters? I'm not sure.

I am a senior nursing student and I can say that nursing school has been tough. You hear a lot of things from many people and that's because everyone studies differently, everyone has unique things that are more difficult for them to achieve than for other people. For me for example, the hardest part is thinking like a nurse. At this point, all of my exam questions involve using the information I read from the text and being able to prioritize it as to what you would do as a nurse. For example, you can have a question like: "You are an ER nurse and you have 5 patients you need to be seen, whom would you see first?" 1. Pt with such and such blood pressure, with history of such and such, who presents with cough, bloody sputum, diarrhea, etc, etc. 2. A pt after a car accident with a fractured rib, stabilized in spinal precautions, resting comfortably after a dose of morphine. 3. etc 4. etc 5. etc There will be such details in these questions that you have to decide which patient is at a higher danger of getting worse faster. And you are using the knowledge from the book. An average person would say that a post MVA (car accident) pt is more ill than someone with high blood pressure and bloody vomitus, but a bloody vomitus unless investigated quickly could lead to a hemorrhage, which can lead to death in minutes. This was a pretty primitive example, but for me, these have been the hardest types of questions. My professors think that I think from a medical perspective when i answer questions not from a nursing perspective. One professor said that I should perhaps consider medicine instead of nursing because of the way I think. Memorizing things and understanding disease process has been easier for me than understanding the proper way to approach a patient or classify and determine what they need at whatever point in time. Another struggle I've been having is that I think a lot of things they teach you in nursing school outside of your theory classes is superfluous and is just extra paperwork that you really don't need to do, but it makes you feel busy and takes up time you should rather use for clinical work or reading. So I guess that's my perspective on things. :)

CARE PLANS!!!! YOu will learn to hate careplans! Be prepared to spend hours doing care plans!!! Pharmacology is hard and so is A&P. You will also want to start studying for boards all along. Good luck, it's so worth it in the end!

Paying off the student loans!