7 Hindrances Nursing Journey

1. Grueling lectures.

Mind-draining lectures are just one thing that sets nursing apart from the other college
programs. Lectures in nursing involve complicated concepts and theories that require
strong background knowledge in pre-nursing subjects such as Anatomy & Physiology,
Chemistry, and Biology.

It’s not enough that you go to class regularly and listen attentively to the long lectures,
you also have to retain what you’ve learned from previous lessons to continue surviving.
On top of that, nursing textbooks (especially the ones for medical & surgical nursing
and psychiatric nursing) are not as simple as what other college students use, for they
typically come in two volumes which are equally thick like a brick and are not very easy
to grasp in one reading.

2. Unpredictable clinicals.

The shifts during nursing clinicals also vary from time to time, and the patient
assignment can change without a definite length of time. If that’s not unpredictable, I
don’t know what is. That’s why student nurses are ought to be quick learners and
adaptive to change.

3. Taxing homework and projects.

Considering the hard work it takes for the lectures and the clinicals; it’s like adding salt
to the wound to even have homework and projects that are really time-consuming and
arduous. They could come in the form of a case study, a set of nursing care plans, a
report or thesis so brace yourself for some intensive researching and long hours reading
reference books. This factor trains students in time management and perseverance.

4. Dreadful tests and exams.

The test and exams you are to take as a student nurse are the ultimate challenges after
every series of lectures and clinicals. Consider yourself very lucky if you find some
lenient clinical instructors who give “basic” kinds of tests and exams but for the most
part, clinical instructors are motivated to prepare challenging drills to really test your
knowledge and understanding.
You can’t blame them, though, because they are training students whose future
professions are concerned with health and life. It’s an advantage if you do well with tests
in the form of identification and enumeration. But be informed that majority of your
exams will consist of situational questions in which the choices are so tricky because
each of them would seem as if they are all correct answers.

5. Stressful college life and limited time for other activities.

This one is self-explanatory. With all the things explained above, it wouldn’t take
a registered nurse to figure that you’d be dealing with stressful college life and very
limited free time as you study nursing. I even distinctly remember some colleagues of
mine who used to gain scholarship by sidelining as an assistant in our library but were
not able to continue it as we progress through the second year of nursing because of
conflicting schedules with our clinicals.

6. Post-graduation training

For most college students, the struggles from studying end as graduation day come but
in the case of nursing students, it’s an entirely different story. Graduating from nursing
school only leads you to more doors of mandatory training and certifications so you
could increase your chances of securing a nursing job. For starters, it is mandatory in
most countries that you pass the nursing licensure examination to be recognized as a
registered nurse, and that would entail some months of review. After becoming a
registered nurse, some hospitals would then require that you undergo certain training
such as basic life support (BLS), advanced cardiac life support (ACLS) and intravenous
therapy training before you could get hired as a staff nurse. Worse, the competition
could be so tough that you might want to consider taking a master’s degree to stand
out in the pool of applicants.

7. Unreasonable expectations and demands from people who know you.

For others, this is an honor but for some of us, this is also one of the pains. People will
expect you to know what to do during an emergency situation or when someone is ill.
You get it, these requests are uncalled-for. Many people have unreasonable demands
and expectations from student nurses.

So there goes your list. You may weigh each of them and assess yourself if you’re still
undecided about taking up nursing. But if you’re so sure about the career, fret not
because nursing is a genuinely promising profession once you get the hang of it.
Nursing is one of the noblest and hardest of all human endeavors — for we cannot
imagine the world without nurses as we cannot imagine a life without caring and
comfort. Besides, if nursing is what you truly love to do, you will excel at it no matter
how trying it might seem for others.