Ah, To Be A Nursing Student Again...

Today at lunch I stood behind a group of UT nursing students eating lunch after their clinicals and I thought, man, those were the days. My best friend and I often reminisce about when we were lowly nursing students and life was so simple. Here's a list of Pro and Cons to being a nursing student.

PROS

1. You can't really mess us anything that bad with patients because the hospitals and nursing schools don't really let you do that much. I mean, it is no fun when you have to get stuck a million times for an IV by a nursing student, but besides some bruising and perhaps an enhanced fear of needles, it is not really life threatening.

2. You get to practice assessments on your fellow classmates. It can be kind of fun when you try to check for hearing loss using a tuning fork placed on top of your friend's head (it's really a way to assess this).

3. Late night study groups! My friends and I used to camp out at Starbucks and gross out the patrons with our discussions of all types of infectious diseases and our books opened to pictures of what every STD ever looks like on genitalia.

4. Nobody understands what you're going through like your pals from nursing school. When other majors are doing projects and writing major papers (which we do too) you are giving enemas and cleaning MRSA wounds. Your friends in nursing school understand you and are some of the closest friends of your life while you are in school.

5. If you are meant to be a nurse, nursing school is where you truly feel understood. If you are like me and you have always had a first aid kit in your trunk and you have always grossed people out at the dinner table with your tales of surgery shows and bodily fluids, then nursing school is the place where all your humor and attitude are finally understood. Nurses have a sick since of humor and usually have a pretty no-nonsense attitude. We are usually very honest and direct but we also care a lot about people (even when they get on our nerves).

CONS

1. You don't get paid for doing any work in the hospitals, no matter what you do. I was smart enough to get a job as an extern while in school so they would pay me to do all the vile things they made me do in nursing school for free. When you have to disimpact a person, you want to know you are getting paid for it.

2. You have a lot of studying to do, along with clinicals at 6 in the morning. Nursing school is no joke, it requires a lot of hours of studying and memorizing. Even if it what you want to do, it takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get through nursing school.

3. You can feel very isolated from other college students. I know that my husband (boyfriend at the time) had no idea why I would get so stressed out about school. It is just hard to relate to what you are doing because there is so much more hands on learning than other majors.

4. You get the crap work in your clinicals, sometimes literally. Nurses will give students the worse possible patients, usually because they are a good learning experience but sometimes just to keep the students busy. If there is a cranky old lady with c-diff diarrhea (one of the most horrific smells on earth) you better believe you are changing her diaper. I once had to give sponge baths to a female prisoner who was extremely happy to be out of prison for a while and very picky about me cleaning her just so.

5. You can get very easily overwhelmed in nursing school. I know I cried a lot during nursing school because you have to know so much and you are learning so much and sometimes your instructors will just stand there and drill you on facts and it makes you feel a LITTLE BIT CRAZY!!! Ah, the memories...