Nursing School Insights: The Essential Guide to Everything You Need to Know

Hi everyone thank you for joining us today for this webinar nursing school insights the essential guide to everything you need to know hosted by Elsevier and led by nursing Educators Liz Lucas and Kel Lafayette from the osmosis from Nursing education team today's webinar is geared for nursing students and is set to run for 60 minutes with the final 30 minutes reserved for Q?A we have a pretty large group which is amazing but to help avoid distractions all of you are muted so when it comes time we ask that you please submit your questions using the Q?A which can be found at the top right of your screen and we'll try to get through as many of your questions as we can during our time there is a handout that's going to be referenced during the session you can access that by clicking on the handouts tab at the top right of the webinar console and if you would like to turn on live captioning for the webinar you can click on the CC icon to the left of the chat panel and finally this event is being recorded and all attendees will be emailed a link to the recording within a day of today's live session so now I'd like to introduce our speakers for today's webinar Kelsey Lafayette and Liz Lucas Kelsey Lafayette obtained a Bachelor of Arts and Nursing degree from Luther College in 2011 as an art and she has a clinical background in medical and Pulmonary impatient units urgent care and critical care and obtained her doctor of nursing practice degree at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2022 throughout her career Kelsey has had many opportunities to function in an education role by being a charge nurse preceptor to new RNs and nursing students as well as a clinical team lead in charge of creating orientation programs and policies Kelsey serves as a manager on the osmosis nurse content team and has been able to work on various projects that fulfill her love of Perpetual learning Liz Lucas has been a registered nurse since 2008 she received an ed with an emphasis in nursing and Health Professions education program from Brian College of Health Sciences an MSN in nursing education from Drexel University and a BSN from Duane University this's clinical background is in oncology and includes time spent working on a medical oncology unit a critical care bone marrow transplant unit and a Hematology Oncology Clinic later Liz transitioned into nursing Academia where she taught in a pre-licensure nursing program for several years at osmosis Liz manages the nursing assessment and scripting teams Kelsey and Liz thanks so much for your time today and for sharing your expertise with all of us thank you so much for such a lovely introduction Sarah and hi and welcome everyone thank you so much for joining us today we are so excited today to get to talk to you about some of our nursing school insights we're calling it The Essential guide to everything you need to know and also definitely some things in there that perhaps we wish we would have known early in our nursing Journey by the way I can see all of your reactions popping up and it's just the best thing ever so if you like what you're hearing please go keep going with that and like Sarah had mentioned if you have any questions we're going to save some time at the end for questions so feel free to use that Q?A box for any questions and if we don't have time for all of them depending on the size of the crowd we have today and how much time we have left we will work to get you some written answers for those as well definitely take a look at that handout it's got some real gold in there and even some discounts for you for some valuable resources so be sure to check out that handout all right so here's our objectives for what we are going to be talking about we're going to start with describing ways to become a nurse and the different types of nursing programs that you can choose from we're going to review the core components of the nursing curriculum we're going to outline strategies for academic success for once you're in a nursing curriculum and then we are going to discuss the transition from being a student nurse to going into professional nursing so we're going to start with how to become a nurse and personally this is one thing I really didn't understand at all before getting into nursing school it would have been really invaluable insight to have so whether you're considering nursing school you're on the nursing Journey we're going to go through some of the different Pathways of becoming a nurse so we created this graph to kind of break it down a little bit starting at the very top all nurses in the United States as well as some other countries as well need to have a nursing license so we put that up at the top it then breaks down into different branches because there's actually different types of nursing licenses we have LPNs also called lvns and RNs as well so starting there on the left with LPN and LVN LPN stands for licensed practical nurse and LVN stands for licensed vocational nurse and really the only difference between these two is that some states choose to use the term LPN while just a few States choose to use the term LVN each state actually determines the scope of practice for LPNs or LVNs within that state but just as like some general guidelines LPN provide basic care and comfort to patients complete some patient treatments they report patient status and concerns to register nurses or the health care provider and on average in the United States a salary for an LPN is about 49,000 per year now moving over to the RN side RN stands for registered nurse this is likely the nurse you maybe are more familiar with or have come in more contact with because it's actually the US's largest healthcare profession there are 4.7 million of us nurses RNs in the United States about that again each state determines the scope of practice for RNs in that state but generally RNs have a greater responsibility than LPN in providing and coordinating care educating patients their families and the public about health concerns and assessing the patient condition and making alterations to patients care based upon a patient shifting condition LPN and RN absolutely work with in conjunction with each other and we need all of these different types of nurses as we know there's absolutely a shortage not only in this country but globally so we need all the nurses we can get and the average salary for an RN in the United States is about ?75,000 per year now obviously that's going to depend on where you're located and also what type of nursing you end up going into so let's talk about then that third layer here let's talk about some programs that prepare you to for these different lures so again starting on the left on the LPN side some of the types of programs include vocational schools community colleges and even some college programs these programs that are gearing you up to take the LPN NCLEX exam typically last a year or less and much of the pre preparation takes place in the clinical setting now moving over to the right side then the RN side programs that prepare you to take the NCLEX RN and just to back up for a second too all licensed nurses and you must have a license to practice as a nurse in the United States whether it's LPN or RN you take an exam in order to get that license and that exam is called the NCLEX so if you've graduated from an LPN program you take the NCLEX LPN or NCLEX PN and if you've graduated from an RN program you take the NCLEX RN so the programs that prepare you then for the RN exam and practice as an RN are associate degree programs bachelor's degree programs there's even Master's in science nursing direct entry programs where you're immediately going to get your master's degree before entering practice now there's a lot of variation here so depending on the type of program you select they vary in length anywhere from two to five years with the diploma and associate degree programs being a shorter duration a than the bachelor's and MSN programs and that also depends on if you have other credits from other programs maybe non- nursing programs that you can transfer in it also depends on whether you're going to school full-time or part-time because you have that option as well and Kelsey's going to tell you a little bit more about how to choose the right school for you perfect thank you Liz so once you've determined if you want to be an LPN LVN or an RN you need to select the type of school that has a nursing program and you want to make sure that you're finding a school and a program that fit your lifestyle and your goals so like Liz said look at all the different types of schools and find one that fits for you know do you want to do a traditional four-year would Community College work better for you consider all those different types and what would work best for you and there should hopefully be one that fits your needs because there are so many different kinds now and then you really want to consider can you go to school fulltime or part-time and do you want to go full-time or part-time and a lot of that comes into play with you know what are the options that your nursing program has a lot we'll have different tracks so you could do your RN and two four six years you know however long it's going to take you need to look at the lengths of their programs and see what they consider full-time versus part-time because we know a lot of nursing students now have families and other jobs you know maybe this is their second career or you're you know trying to work to pay for nursing school so you've got a job too so figuring out the time commitment that you want and if that program is going to be able to fit that for you and then the biggest thing when you're picking a nursing program above all else you need to make sure it's an accredited nursing program because if you do not graduate from accredited nursing program you can't take the NCLEX you can't get a nursing license you can't practice as a nurse so it has to be accredited and this means that the school's nursing program meets quality standards and these quality standards are set by nursing regulatory bodies called the ccne and acen or as and these regulatory bodies set these standards to ensure that the new grad nurses can safely practice so they these nursing programs that are accredited meet all these standards and you can figure out if a nursing program is accredited just on their website it usually always says in big bold letters we're accredited or accredited by this governing body and if you ever have a question or you're not sure if it's accredited reach out and email them you know just hey are you guys accredited an accredited nursing program because you really want to make sure that is one that you're choosing I haven't honestly heard of many non-accredited ones but they exist so just make sure you're selecting an accredited one and then next consider if the nursing program has any prerequisites and this includes things like classes a lot of times you have to take Anatomy physiology maybe chemistry some classes like that as a prerequisite to get into nursing school and some schools they might actually require that you take these prerequisite courses before before applying to nursing school so you'll take all these courses and then you apply to the nursing school and that application to nursing school can vary for me when I did my undergrad the acceptance into nursing school was based solely on your GPA from all your prerequisite nursing courses and that was it that was just your GPA the top 35 with the highest GPA got in the rest didn't get in so that makes you want to work really hard in your prerequisites too and the other thing is a lot of schools are also kind of vamping up their application process so it might not just be GPA based you might have to do like some written essay type things there's interviews things like that so make sure you understand what the application process is like you know because you can usually get accepted to the school and then getting into the nursing program is usually an extra step so you need to figure out what that extra step is if it exists which for the most part it does for most of them also some programs might require or at least strongly encourage you to be a CNA so you might want to look into that as well and even if the school year looking at doesn't require you to be a CNA or even strongly encourage you to be a CNA working as a CNA is a really great way to kind of test the waters and see if nursing is the path you want to go down there's a lot of overlap and you obviously working very closely with nurses and so if you know kind of work a few hours as a CNA and you're like this is not it you know then that might be a really good indication that maybe you don't need to pursue nursing but if you do some work as a CNN you're like wow I really love this I want to keep going that's really great and you can kind of find that out early on and then lastly begin to consider your future too you know what do you have any plans for after nursing school do you want to get into an advanced program like a master's or a doctoral program so consider if the institution and the nursing school that you want to go to have advanced programs because sometimes it's really nice if you already know you want to get a master's or a doctorate you they can have some kind of fast tracks to take you from your BSN to your Masters or your doctorate and it's nice to stick with the same institution so even if it's something you're not sure about something just to consider you know if they have it available or if they offer any fast tracks through those all right so next Liz is going to start us off on talking about the core components of the nursing curriculum perfect thank you Kelsey so here I have listed some of the most common nursing courses that you'll come across now there is a ton of variation when it comes to your courses just like there's a ton of variation in the different programs that you have to choose from so it's going to depend on the type of program you've chosen such as a bachelor's degree program whether ultimately you're going for your RN and your LPN etc. also just different programs structure their courses in different ways sometimes you'll only see a number as the name of the course Sometimes some of these courses will be mushed together into one big Mega course or there'll be components just all spread out like some programs actually don't have a separate pharmacology course and instead pharmacology is split up into the different other courses or it's combined with another course such as pathophysiology and it will be called patho far so don't expect to see this exact list but overall here are some of the courses you'll run into in addition to that there also o be Hands-On components so these are like your classroom courses but Kelsey is going to talk to you a bit more about some of the different Hands-On comp courses and components that will help prepare you for graduation and going on to be a nurse there's also going to be some courses that might just be a requirement of the school that aren't necessarily directly related to your Nursing degree so for example some programs might have mandatory art or history or English or literature or writing math or statistic courses I haven't listed those out here but you'll also have to take some science courses as well things like Anatomy physiology perhaps microbiology pathophysiology and these might even be re prerequisites that you have to take before starting your actual nursing courses so for the sake of time I listed mainly the courses you'll come across in a Bachelor's of nursing program so we have first at the top fundamentals which is really an introduction to what it means to be a nurse and how healthcare works and within fundamentals sometimes they also have health assessment component as well where you learn how to actually take a head-to toe Health assessment of your patient so what is expected findings and what is unexpected findings on your patient how to document those things how to communicate for them how to look for them how to monitor them that is common a part of fundamental SP in gerontology you learn how to care for older adults and women and infant Health this covers things like reproductive Health pregnancy the newborn stage and Pediatrics you're going to learn about age appropriate care of children with various conditions and sometimes that Pediatrics and women and infant can be all combined into one in medical surgical nursing you're going to learn about care considerations for patients with just a wide variety of different conditions and diagnoses as you move on Critical Care Nursing will help teach you how to care for clients who are acutely and critically ill and then pharmacology some of you might kind of understand what that term means but it teaches you about how medications work how to administer medications as well as how to monitor patients who are on those medications psychiatric and mental health covers aspects of mental health and illness and care for clients with different aspects of mental disease and wellness leadership teaches you about aspects of management and administration as well as legal and ethical considerations for nurses there's sometimes is a separate then ethics and nursing course which will teach you professional conduct things like conflicts of interest Health Equity and lastly community and public health nursing which shows you how to care for clients in the community and to make considerations for certain populations a lot of the public envisions nurses as being in the hospital but really the vast majority of nursing occurs outside of the walls of the hospital in places like the community so yeah that's some of the common courses in the I'm going to turn it over to Kelsey to talk about some of the more Hands-On components thank you all right we'll go advance that slide there okay so in addition to all this these lectures and courses you're taking they are going to be tied to skills lab simulation and clinicals so skills lab this is where you begin learning the skills that you're going to use in clinicals it's a great place to engage and learn and really start you know playing around with catheters and IVs and blood pressure cuffs and things like that and skills Labs typically start very early in your program and they typically complement the course you're doing so if you look at that list of courses that Liz had there's a fundamentals course and so when you're in your fundamentals course your skills lab is going to be teaching you fundamental skills which is like how to take a pulse how to do a manual blood pressure how to use your stethoscope appropriately things like that and then when you're in say your med surge course your sim lab or your skills lab is going to be more things like how to insert a urinary catheter how to insert IVs things like that so they complement and a lot of times these courses will also have Associated skills lab time so you might have like a three-hour skills lab and like an hour-long course or lecture tied to that and then you have simulation which is very similar if not the same as a skills lab a lot of times it's used synonymously or in combination with the skills lab and this is where you really start to apply your knowledge and your skills to clinical situations but it's done in a controlled environment usually with mannequins and sometimes with real actors and those real actors might be people that the school actually brings in and pays to act like a patient or those real actors might just be your peers who are pretending to be a patient and whichever way you know this works at your school which however they do simulation it is meant to be a safe place for you to apply your knowledge and your skills without the fear of causing harm to anyone so it's a this is the place to make mistakes this is the place to trial and error things because they're not going to let anything bad happen even if these are real actors they're not going to let anything bad happen to these real actors you can't kill a mannequin so really dive in and just use what you can and use this environment and usually in simulation you'll work together with other peers in your class to care for a patient sometimes you'll do simulations where it's just you and then you get feedback but a lot of times you're working together because that's what nursing is really like you're never taking care of a patient just by yourself so you'll work together with other students to care for a patient in a certain scenario and sometimes these scenarios are things like a code blue a trauma patient a birth things like that and so you'll go through all these simulations and then usually your Professor they'll give you feedback and be like how could you have done better so it's a place to really just be open accept feedback don't be scared to mess up nobody wants to mess up but if you're going to this is the place because when you mess up in simlab it doesn't matter whereas in the real world messing up can have con consequences so whatever you can learn in simlab in a safe environment do it is the best place to learn and then we've got clinicals which is probably the most exciting and tiring part of nursing school I would say this is where you're actually at the bedside caring for real patients you know the mannequins are gone the actors are gone these are real patients and most students are really excited to get to clinical because this is where they actually get to practice their skills you know they actually get to start an IV on a real person not a mannequin which those mannequins are great but the real thing is always more exciting right and skills are a huge part of Nursing in your nursing education but remember that all that content from your lectures and all that studying that you're doing is providing you the knowledge that you need for the clinical judgment and that clinical judgment needs to complement your skills so you need to know why am I doing this skill or how is this skill helping my patient and am I doing this skill right for my patient's condition you know so you need to be putting everything together so that you can holistically care for your patients when you get to clinicals and there are set standards for how many hours you have to spend in clinicals and it varies among states it varies among programs and if you're doing LPN versus RN but to give you a rough estimate a traditional BSN pathway is typically about 600 hours and the hours that you spend in clinical it depends on the setting and you know the nursing stuff that that setting has so you might be working a shift in the morning in the afternoon or even in the evening and you might be in settings like the hospital but you're also probably going to go out to like long-term care facilities you're going to be doing adult stuff peed stuff maybe even like some off office you know practices like that so you really need to be prepared for clinicals and you need to be prepared personally and professionally so personally I was terrible at this and even in grad school clinicals I was bad at this but you need to make sure like pack a bag for things you need like pack snacks pack a water bottle if you take medications or anything like that make sure you pack that just so you have everything that you need with you and then professionally make sure you're bringing your reference materials make sure you're wearing your uniform and you're at least somewhat presentable and be prepared with the knowledge that you've gained in Sim lab simulation in your lectures because this is where you really need to apply all that knowledge and the last thing is that I feel like I didn't know this when I was going into nursing school but you are really expected to do a lot you know you've got lectures you've got skills lab Sim lab that when you get to clinical it just feels even more daunting because you're doing all these things for school already and again you might have a job you might have a family that you're taking care of you might you know have all these other things going on and now you need to also go to clinical and take care of people so just be aware that nursing school and nursing as a profession really requires a lot of passion and effort and I remember when I was a new a newer nursing student and I was doing one of my first clinicals and it was an 8h hour evening shift that I was getting ready for and all my friends were going to hang out and you know do fun stuff and I was getting ready for this eight hour long clinical and that's when I was just like oh nursing majors are diff it's different you know my curriculum was much different compared to my friends that were doing say like marketing or accounting like they didn't have these late night clinicals so just be prepared nursing Majors have a lot of expectations a lot of high expectations placed on them because when you enter the professional world there's still going to be high expectations on you because you need to be able to take care of your patience regardless of what else is going on in your life so be prepared to have a lot asked of you and if you're passionate if this is your calling and it feels right to you it won't feel like they're asking too much of you but it can be a little I guess daunting at first when you look at the list of all the things you have to do all right so now that we've talked about nursing school what to expect in nursing school and maybe scared you a little bit by saying all these high expectations and stuff let's talk about how you can be successful in nursing school perfect like I had mentioned before we need all the nurses we can get and so we want you to be successful and we do have some tips some absolutely based upon both right and maybe wrong decisions that we made when we were in nursing school about how to succeed once you get to nursing school as Kelsey mentioned nursing school is absolutely challenging in fact some studies say that it's even the most challenging undergraduate program that you can get into so let's talk about some strategies that will work for you because it can work for you and you can get through it the first strategy and my first probably tip for success is to get organized as you begin your nursing school Journey this will be one of your best strategies is getting and then staying organized because like we said nursing school comes with lots of different courses so you have your classwork you have your simulation work you've got your clinical schedules you've got assignments you have to turn in you've got exams you have to study and prepare for and like Kelsey mentioned too this is on top of just all the factors of your life that are also happening if we could only just create this light nice little nursing school bubble and just set all the other problems and worries and concerns of your life aside and say NOP no nope I'm just going to focus on nursing school and nothing else that would probably make your experience easier but for many of us most of us that really can't occur and it's not realistic so I would say it's definitely helpful to keep and create and keep a calendar or some sort of schedule where you have all of your important dates in the nice thing about most nursing programs is that upfront they'll give you your syllabus and maybe even as what call a block schedule which will have all of your important dates on it so for instance if I'm in a pharmacology course it might say like week one we're covering introduction to pharmacology here's your assigned textbook chapter Maybe here's your two or three assigned osmosis videos do these things in preparation for coming to class so I'm going to put that on my calendar class is on Monday so by Sunday night because I've got an early class Monday I have to have done all of these things but it'll also give you your layout for the rest of the semester things like dates of your examinations clinical schedule even simulation schedule things like that and then adding just the things you know you have to do in your own personal life I have appointments I have to get to I've got family birthday parties that I want to get to I've got church events that I know I can't miss so write everything down have it organized in one spot that way you can really get a sense of the time you have available to dedicate to your preparation and your studies yes that's what I already said there reading my notes Here for number two you want to understand your own learning preferences so think back onto your Learning Journey that you've experienced up until this point you've absolutely gotten here through good hard work and discovered some things that have worked for you so have you noticed that some information tends to click better you have that kind of nice light bulb moment when learning through visuals listening speaking or by doing these things would be considered your learning preferences so then you can help to or you can try to locate resources and there's so many good resources out there but you can find resources that really kind of hit off of your learning preferences once you've identified your preferences dive deep see what's out there ask your classmates have you find something that works for you what have you found that's really audiovisual or kinesthetic or I'm using my hands or I'm teaching it I'm showing it to somebody but keep in mind too that nursing school is actually going to be different from learning you've done in the past so be prepared to Pivot if what's worked for you before isn't working for you now I've had in my teaching experience and also myself as a student too certainly the experience of hey I was an a student I got straight A's up until I got to nursing school what am I doing wrong now I'm just like really grinding through to get B's and C's like what is happening and that's because nursing school is challenging and it requires a different way of thinking and learning so definitely be open-minded to hey you know what this is what's worked for me in the past but turns out it's not working so well for me now let me pivot because whereas a lot of your learning up until this point might have been a lot of memorization that's definitely one part of nursing school but it's on the smaller side you have to do so much critical thinking and clinical judgment when you get to nursing school so these are the skills we're working to develop all right another tip would be to form a study group there's been actual research conducted that forming or joining a study group will help you to succeed and students who are in a high functioning study group get better grades than those who are not and high functioning meaning not a Social Hour which is tempting when you're together with your classmates and you all like each other but really have a plan going into those study sessions maybe have a leader and then follow that plan to the best of your ability but also absolutely take breaks like you're a human being you need to take care of yourself you need to understand when you've reached your own mental capacity limits like I've had moments I'm concentrating I'm concentrating and then I realize oh no wait I'm just staring at a page at this point no longer am I doing any actual thinking maybe not even any reading like I've read the same sentence four times that is a sure sign you need to like step away take a couple minutes get some fresh air take a walk refill your coffee mug whatever it may be come back and then you can refocus again and then lastly I would say that this was the biggest thing I should have done when I was in my nursing program and did not do or waited too long to do which is reach out for help and I would say reach out for help early and often many nursing programs in Colleges and Schools offer a fantastic list of resources there's things like a Dei office writing centers tutoring centers Librarians counseling and then most importantly your course faculty who are really there to help you and want you to succeed so reach out to them if you realize within the first even few weeks hey I'm struggling I'm really not grasping the things I feel like I should be grasping or my classmates it seems like they're a bit ahead of me and their understanding more than I am what can I do reach out to your faculty really quickly there might even be peer tutoring available which is another wonderful resource because sometimes you just need someone who's kind of more on your level saying it a different way explaining it a different way and all a sudden you're like oh my gosh yeah that makes sense now or they'll show you a new resource that you hadn't heard before and Kelsey's going to tell you about some of these available resources all right so resources knowing the resources you have access as to which resources are required by your course that you're taking and which resources actually help you learn the best really are essential to succeeding when you get to the real world of nursing you need to know how to find information if you don't know it so familiarizing yourself with resources is really a lifelong practice and you'll have resources that are required by your course so your fundamentals course is going to maybe require this and this and your med surge course is going to require this and this and those resources they might be perfect for your learning preference that Li just alluded to they might be perfect and you don't need anything else but sometimes maybe those resources that are required just aren't cutting it and you've asked for help you've reached out for help but you might just need a the information presented a little bit differently so you need to look at other resources to supplement your studying and so there's a lot of different resources when I was in undergrad it was basically like here's the textbook read it learn it go about your day but now there's so many different kinds of resources but we'll start with textbooks which now have eBooks as well and there are lots of different books that can help you develop clinical judgment now there's NCLEX test prep books which are great for not only preparing to take the NCLEX but also for studying during school and helping you get used to those NCLEX test question formats there's also Illustrated study guide type books that if you are more of a visual learner and you can't just sit there and read text and learn there's these Illustrated study guides that you can use if you're more of a visual learner for your learning preference and you can see I have a couple of the textbooks that Elsevier offers which there is a link to a count in our handout if any of those textbooks are maybe required by your course or if you just feel like they would help supplement your studying there's a discount code there for you and then if you're not much of a book person like if the books are just not cutting it and you feel like you need something else look Beyond textbooks for multimedia and multimodal learning opportunities obviously me and Liz are part of Osmosis where we offer a multimedia product that that has videos with animation and colorful illustrations that are breaking down these Concepts that you need to know and this comes along with gamification NCLEX practice questions we've even got some case studies and dosage calculations videos and blogs that are kind of bridging that Gap to applying practice that are coming out this month so there's lots of multimedia things certainly osmosis is not the only one so you know kind of reach out and see what out there a lot of companies also have these quizzing Solutions now too that again help you prepare for NCLEX but also exams and your clinicals as I said osmosis we have some we have NGN style questions and Elsevier also offers adaptive quizzing and these are questions they're quizzes that select questions based upon how you answered the previous question so this gives you a really personalized learning experience and it also gets you kind of used to how the NCLEX works because the NCLEX is a similar thing where it's basing what it gives you off your previous answer and then mobile apps this kind of goes back to like multimedia learning multimodal learning almost everything has a mobile app now right like everything has a mobile app and these are really great if you if you're on the go a lot maybe you have to commute to school or work and you need something that can be on your phone or something you want to like listen to or review quick when you're heading to class so check out mobile apps because you'll be surprised that the things that have mobile apps these days and then lastly just try out a bunch of resources take advantage of free trials lots of places will give you a free trial if you are looking to see if a product works for you you know if you've formed a study group talk to your classmates to see what they use to study where they get their resources so just never confine yourself to using only one resource or using only one resource that's been required of you as a nurse you're going to find that you have to be resourceful so just get out there and explore all the different types and consider your learning style and just know that if you have a course and it just requires one textbook that doesn't mean what you're tied to all right so now we are going to talk about you've made it through nursing school yay let's talk about what entering the professional world is like so you most likely are probably going to be applying to not necessarily just RN jobs but LPN or LVN jobs before graduation and probably even before taking the NCLEX which I did not realize when I was in nursing school but you can apply to these jobs before you graduated before you've taken NCLEX and so you want to start considering you know the closer you get to graduation what rotations you enjoyed those where you Excel because you need to kind of start figuring out like what kind of job do I want what kind of nurse do I want to be and one of the most common questions that I get asked by nursing students is med surge do I have to go into med surge when I graduate and the answer in my opinion is no I went into a pulmonary unit and that then got absorbed into a med surge unit so I was in Med surge for the first five years of my career and it was the greatest place to learn I learned so much I really excelled I really loved it I would do it again however some people come to me and they're just like oh I hated Med-surg clinicals I don't want to work with adults I don't like it and if that's you if you just you don't feel it you're not excited about it it's not fulfilling then don't go into med surge that's perfectly fine consider all the other Specialties you know you've got Peds you've got Critical Care you've got other inpatient units like pulmonary inpatient or oncology things like that I will just say that if you do choose a specialty especially something like Pediatrics or Critical Care just make sure that when you take that job that there's going to be a lot of support for you in orientation and in mentoring because Specialties like Peds and critical care are very intensive and these populations are much more vulnerable compared to other Specialties these patient populations can also have much more subtle changes in their condition that can be more difficult for you to recognize as a new nurse because you're not used to it so if you go the specialty route just make sure you're going to have adequate support and training before you take that job because you don't want to take a job that's super intensive and very specific and nobody's there to help you next consider your point status so Point status means do you want to be full-time part-time or PRN which means just as needed you work on an as needed basis most people are probably going full-time but some of you might be going to work part-time or even just PRN you know whatever works for you but consider you know pay do I need full-time pay am I okay with just working a few days a month PRN and getting that pay consider benefits and your work life balance when you're choosing your point status and point status a lot of times is reflected as a number on a job listing so something if you see like 1.0 or 0.8 that is a full-time position a part-time position might be something like 0.5 and a PRM position might be something like 0.1 so if you're seeing numbers on job listings those usually relate to the point status and you'll want to ask too when benefits kicking because for most places you don't get you know medical insurance or anything like that unless you're full-time so consider if you need that and what kind of job would get you those if you need them then make sure you consider the institution as well as the unit you're going to so start ask if they have a formal mentoring program the first one to two years after nursing school are the most difficult and a lot of new nurses end up leaving their first job because of lack of support and then even if they don't have a formal mentoring program ask if there's some type of opportunity for informal mentoring you know can you be paired up with a senior nurse and maybe just have like monthly check-ins or something like that where you can feel supported by a more senior nurse that's been around for a while and this also kind of goes along with asking about the orientation so if you take this job you know how long is my orientation going to be is it going to be two weeks or is it going to be three months who's going to be orienting me you know is one of the more senior nurses going to be orienting me or is it another new grad that's orienting me how long have they been there and what's their background and then another question can also be am I going to be orienting on the same shift I'm going to be working for me I actually oriented on day shift for probably two months and then I went to night shift which was my actual job for only a couple weeks so you kind of flip you get used to you know the regular characters on one shift and then you flip to your actual shift so asking you know where your orientation will be and when it will be is super helpful you can also inquire about Nurse residence programs and these programs are meant to help new grad nurses transition into their roles it's specifically to help that nursing school to professional World transition and they're great at they kind of continue developing your skills and your knowledge specific to the institution and it really helps you bond with others in your similar situation too so you'll meet a lot of other new grads and you can kind of commiserate over things and share your experiences and everything and then a big note about sign on bonuses there are a lot of sign on bonuses out there and they look really enticing and don't get me wrong nurses deserve all the money in the world we definitely deserve to get paid more but just beware of what is tied to these sign on bonuses before you sign anything almost all of them will have a contract tied to them which usually states that you have to work at that Institution for so many years and in doing so you'll receive that bonus over the time period so you might have a ?5,000 sign on bonus but there's a contract that says you have to work at this institution for five years and you'll receive that ?5,000 dispersed over five years and usually if you leave before that contract is up you have to pay back the bonus so just make sure you know what you're signing up for also you want to kind of consider researching the institution if they offering a lot of really high sign on bonuses you might want to ask yourself why are they requiring you know such a high sign on bonus to hire and retain nurses and again they certainly deserve all that pay but in the real world those sign on bonuses usually come with a catch so just make sure you do your research before you sign anything and then lastly make sure you ask about Staffing ratios you know are you working in a state where Staffing r ratios there's laws on them that says how high they can be and you can always ask what the expected ratio is versus what the actual ratio and then also what kind of goes into that is you know maybe you have six patients to one nurse a follow-up to that is okay well what is the acuity of those patients you know are they all pretty much self-sufficient or are they pretty sick patients because that makes a big difference and then also asking how those patients are assigned you know am are we just are we assigning based on Acuity or are we assigning based on how much experience the nurse has things like that all right and now I think Liz is going to talk about advancing your career yeah and I'm going to make this relatively brief to save some time then for questions too because we promised you some question time and I see we do have some good questions there in the Q?A so thank you for putting those in there but there is many ways to advance your career your first year or two are absolutely going to be the most challenging because there's just even upon graduation you've already learned so much and you just need to celebrate graduating and passing the NCLEX there's still a lot more to learn that was a big surprise for me so your first one or two years might just really be dedicated to adjusting to the role but once you're feeling a little bit more competent and confident then you can start thinking about advancing your careers in different ways and one way is to become a leader just within your own organization some organizations have what's called a clinical ladder where you can show your expertise within that institution by completing either different assignments or presentations or just years of experience and that usually comes with increased pay as well you can also join committees which is a really important way to get your voice heard within the organization that you work in and make some important decisions related to working or patient care you can join a professional organization and these can really help you build Connections in the field of Nursing and they also look really good on your resume which is always helpful so some options include the American Nurses Association the national league for nursing the American Association of critical care nurses national student Nurses Association you can join now if you're a nursing student the acronym is NSNA there's also organizations for I would guests basically all of the Specialties of nursing including oncology psychiatric nurses so many others you can obtain a c certification so nursing certifications show your expertise experience and skills in a particular area of nursing they are not mandated but they really do to advance your career improve your knowledge and patient care they often involve showing that you have some amount of experience in the area for example when I had my oncology certified nurse I had to show that I had so many hours of clinical experience and also pass an examination and then you might at some point or perhaps you're already thinking about it now decide that you want to actually go for more formal education such as your master's degree there's a lot of tracks to choose from when it comes to a master's level education one really popular option is a nurse practitioner and there are several different Specialties within this such as family nurse practitioner psychiatric NP pediatric Women's Health and others but there's other master's degree programs as well these include education which I decided to go for and an informatics leadership others and lastly at some point you might even decide to pursue a doctorate degree and now my son loves to call me a doctor nurse so there's three primary choices or types of doctorates you might want to consider the first is probably the most commonly thought of which is a PhD and that has a research Focus so if you're like oh man research is for me and maybe I want to teach PhD is what you want to look into if you just love teaching and education go for your Ed and lastly if you want that practice Focus go for your DMP like Kelsey did and all of these Specialties are absolutely needed and with our couple minutes of time left let's answer some questions if we don't get to some we'll try to answer them at another time in writing too Kelsey has is did you scan list and did you find one you want to answer I scan the list I found a couple that I'm going to Rattle off and then I'm going to Rattle off a couple to you so one that I think is a really great question here are there things you should not be doing or asked to do when you are a student nurse and clinicals or should you pretty much do it all I will say so to give you some context when you are a nursing student in clinicals you are operating under the license of your preceptor your professor so you are assuming scope of a nurse right and if there is anything that is out see one need to understand the scope of a nurse you know if somebody's telling you go perform surgery on someone nurses are not performing surgery it's a hard no from me so understand the scope of what a nurse can and can't do and then remember that you are a student and you're working in this scope of nursing but you're still learning so if there is something where you don't feel comfortable doing it or something in your gut is just like that doesn't seem like something I should be doing I haven't learned about that say no say no because this is all about patient safety right so if somebody asks you know go start an IV on this patient and maybe you've never started an IV on a real patient before and they're asking you to go in there alone that's probably not appropriate so just stop and be like hey this is the first IV I've done can you come with me or you know where's my Prof my clinical instructor can they come with me so I would also certain programs just don't permit certain skills like there are just some programs who say like within the boundaries of our nursing program we have decided that our nursing students are not starting IVs and that's just a hard Rule and they'll communicate that to you yep and they'll usually give you a list too here are the things you're allowed to do don't do anything that's not on that list so never even as a nurse when you're in the professional world don't just assume you can do pretty much do it all oh you can always question things that's perfectly fine and then there was one that was specific to me that I kind of wanted to answer oh I I've heard about a Bachelor of Arts and nursing instead of Bachelor of Science and nursing what is that it's probably not valid in Canada right I'm surprised you caught that there are not very many Bachelor of Arts degrees in the United States I'm not sure about Canada I went to a small liberal arts school and because it was a liberal art school they gave you a bachelor of arts degree with a concentration in nursing so I took all the same courses as a BSN course but I had all this other liberal arts education behind it I honestly couldn't tell you if it's valid in Canada though or not Liz I'm going to throw a couple to you here that I think you might be good at what is your opinion on accelerated nursing programs yeah what a good question so I did not attend an accelerated program and accelerated programs are most often designed for students who have a degree in something else so let's say you became an accountant and then you had a change of heart and decided I want to become a nurse instead so you already took a lot of these like core courses you take your English maybe you took well I would think you would have taken a lot of math to be an account so you've taken all the math things maybe you need some science stuff and you definitely need your nursing courses so an accelerated program in that case might be a good option for you because you're just going to have a jam-packed nursing intensive program and you're going to be able to get your degree quicker than if you elected for a more traditional program with that being said with that speed comes intensity so just be like mentally prepared for the intensity of an accelerated degree program good answer good answer another one for you if I may in the last few moments here oh where' it go any tips on how to create a plan for a study group so how to maybe structure a study group is this for me yeah if you want otherwise I am happy to as well oh well feel free to tip in but I would say a really good starting place are your objectives so the ma vast majority of your faculty will start with learning objectives just like we did at the start of this presentation like Oh by the time you're done with this presentation here's the things you should have learned and that's a great place to start so bullet point number one we should have learned this did we learn this how do we fill in those blanks so that's a really good way to structure it I would say take advantage of the technology you have in front of you too like I would experiment a bit with AI even being like hey AI now don't necessarily trust the output right because we're nurses and we're using our critical thinking here but it can at least be a good basis and also an interesting start of conversation there's quizzing applications there's even things on Pinterest these days like hey I'm learning this topic what do you have for me so I would say just explore there's probably some structured things too for study groups that I haven't even found yet should we turn it over I see we're in our last minute so sadly so thank you all so much for attending and I'll turn it over to Sarah to lead us out yes thank you everybody we do have a lot of questions that came in which is great so since we ran out of time we will we'll work with Liz and Kelsey to try to get the bulk of those questions answered and we'll figure out a way to get you the answers to your questions after today's session so look for that in your in your email probably just a reminder too you're also going to get a survey emailed to you tomorrow and we appreciate in advance if you can take a few minutes and send your feedback to that survey when you receive it and you will also get a link to this recording sent to you in that email so you'll have all this information that you can go back to if you need to or share it with friends if you have others who might benefit from the information so Kelsey and Liz thank you so much for your time we really appreciate all your words of wisdom and your expertise today and to all of you who joined we just thank you so much for joining us it shows your commitment to your future career which we all really appreciate and we at Elsevier want to wish you an early happy student Nurse's Day which will be celebrated next week thank you all so much have a great rest of the day thank you everyone you helping current and future clinicians Focus learn retain and Thrive learn more am