BSN as a stepping stone to medical school?

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Newbie93

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Hello, I am currently majoring in nursing but have plans on going to medical school in the future. The reason why I'm majoring in nursing is because I need to have a decent job to support myself before I go to medical school. Also, I thought it would be a great way to earn my clinical experience and give me a better idea of what I would like to specialize in after medical school. Please give me your thoughts and advice on this. Thank you!

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Hello, I am currently majoring in nursing but have plans on going to medical school in the future. The reason why I'm majoring in nursing is because I need to have a decent job to support myself before I go to medical school. Also, I thought it would be a great way to earn my clinical experience and give me a better idea of what I would like to specialize in after medical school. Please give me your thoughts and advice on this. Thank you!
From what I have heard on here, going the nursing way is a no-no. Either you want to be a doctor or a nurse. There is other jobs you can do to support yourself. You could try majoring in something else you like and work as a CNA for a hospital.
 
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Often the medical school pre-reqs will not be covered in a nursing education. At least at our school the organic chemistry, biochemistry, etc. were not the same as those for pre-med. Be very wary.

If your school has one, ask the pre-med committee (or whatever the group is that will write a committee letter) if they would still write you a letter of rec.
 
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The nursing science courses are generally not equivalent in rigor. The medical model vs the nursing model is very different; some of the most difficult students I've had have been nurses previously: they tend to have a "been there done that, know it all" attitude when nothing could be farther from the truth.

It's a good fall back career if med school doesn't pan out but I can't suggest it as a good background for medical school. I believe it's changing somewhat but I think there is still a stigma against nurses who leave the profession to go to medical school. There are several users here who have been in that position and could speak to it better than I.
 
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Honestly, did you only take nursing only for the job you can get after you graduate? If you are interseted in nursing I suggest you to continue with it. Nurses can have good job satisfaction, and good pay with less debt of medical school. If you really want to go medical school then talk to your pre-health advisor and see what they say.
 
Choose either nursing or medicine. You're at a crossroads and you need to pick one. If you have questions about the two careers feel free to ask me because I'm a medical student, my father is a physician, and my mother is a nurse. PM me and I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.
 
From what I've read the general idea is that if you know you want to go to medical school you shouldn't do nursing at all. If you plan on applying right out of nursing school that's usually really frowned upon because you actually are taking a seat from someone who probably wanted to be a nurse 100%. However, if you've worked for 1 or 2 plus years and realized nursing isn't for you but medicine is then that's just fine. I've heard nurses tend to excel in clinical because they already have had plenty of time interacting with all sorts of patients / seen a lot. But one thing I've learned in nursing that I think relates to all clinical jobs is to be humble. You don't know it all and the best thing you can do is collaborate / ask questions / bounce ideas off of others. But it wouldn't be worth it to pursue nursing then medicine just for those reasons. If you know what you want to do then do it.

Also, nursing isn't always a great idea because the majority of nursing schools don't care if you make straight Cs. They deflate the heck out of your gpa because all that matters is whether you can pass the board exam or not. I'd say the majority of people in my class made C's and B's. A few flunked out. There were very few A's and most people I've spoken to said it's much worse at other schools.

If you want clinical experience and money you should be a CNA imo.
 
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Go for it op, for those saying nursing to medical school is a no go, are speaking non-sense. CNA clinical experience or RN clinical experience? It does not compare.
 
How far along are you in college? How are you doing academically?

Nursing clinicals can be huge time sinks that will take time away from other things you should be doing. Nursing courses can also be graded in such a way that your gpa takes a hit compared with folks who major in psychology or biology or whatever. Either of these can sink your hopes of medical school or make it more difficult than it needs to be.

If the work of a nurse interests you, go for it and then consider whether nurse practitioner or nurse midwife or nurse anesthetist would make sense for you as you climb the ladder. There are also nursing management jobs at top hospitals that pay better than some MD positions.

If you become a nurse and have a decent GPA (3.5 or better) coming out of college and if after working a few years you decide that you must become a physician, then you might look into a part-time, evening/weekend program for a post-bac to fill in the courses you didn't /couldn't take as a nursing major but need for med school, prepare for the MCAT and go for it.
 
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From what I've read the general idea is that if you know you want to go to medical school you shouldn't do nursing at all. If you plan on applying right out of nursing school that's usually really frowned upon because you actually are taking a seat from someone who probably wanted to be a nurse 100%. However, if you've worked for 1 or 2 plus years and realized nursing isn't for you but medicine is then that's just fine. I've heard nurses tend to excel in clinical because they already have had plenty of time interacting with all sorts of patients / seen a lot. But one thing I've learned in nursing that I think relates to all clinical jobs is to be humble. You don't know it all and the best thing you can do is collaborate / ask questions / bounce ideas off of others. But it wouldn't be worth it to pursue nursing then medicine just for those reasons. If you know what you want to do then do it.

Also, nursing isn't always a great idea because the majority of nursing schools don't care if you make straight Cs. They deflate the heck out of your gpa because all that matters is whether you can pass the board exam or not. I'd say the majority of people in my class made C's and B's. A few flunked out. There were very few A's and most people I've spoken to said it's much worse at other schools.

If you want clinical experience and money you should be a CNA imo.

I've never understood this. At my university at least, the nursing class never fills (which is why any applicant who has successfully completed the prereqs is guaranteed a spot). As someone who wanted to do nursing as a backup, but didn't because of the stigma, I still get annoyed thinking about this.

Also, a lot of the prereqs for medical school can be taken in replace of the nursing requirements. Pre-nursing students who took gen. chem instead of 'nursing chem' still qualified for admissions. Same for nurses who took 'gen bio' instead of 'nursing bio'. Also, our nursing students are required to take a semester of organic ('nursing' or real depending on your background). Really, the only difference between pre-nursing and pre-med is a semester of organic and physics.
 
No career should be a stepping stone for another career. Study what you like and move towards where you really want to be but what you study shouldn't be how to be something other than what you want to be.

World's most confusing pair of sentences but there yah go.
 
Go for it op, for those saying nursing to medical school is a no go, are speaking non-sense. CNA clinical experience or RN clinical experience? It does not compare.
LOL
 
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Speaking from experience...... I would not recommend it.

I initially started off with nursing mostly because my mother but I decided it wasn't for me. Since I had completed all the prereqs, I applied to one very competitive program while beginning my pre-med reqs. To my dismay, I got in. By then, I decided to do it to help pay for my future schooling as well as to help support the household and my siblings' education.

I've been working as an RN for several years now but I'm back in school finishing up the prereqs (none which were covered with by the pre-nursing reqs or nursing curriculum) and it's tough. I still work full-time and in combination with going to school 4 days a week (for the last year and a half + summer session x1), I feel like I'm floundering half the time or just zombie-like with no sleep.

The clinical exposure is great and I definitely have learned a lot with working as an RN. I'm used to being a busy body but it's extremely exhausting emotionally, mentally, and physically. Please consider these factors. I wish I knew someone in the same position as I was going through undergrad so I would have anticipated how hard it would be to make this switch.
 
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I've never understood this. At my university at least, the nursing class never fills (which is why any applicant who has successfully completed the prereqs is guaranteed a spot). As someone who wanted to do nursing as a backup, but didn't because of the stigma, I still get annoyed thinking about this.

Also, a lot of the prereqs for medical school can be taken in replace of the nursing requirements. Pre-nursing students who took gen. chem instead of 'nursing chem' still qualified for admissions. Same for nurses who took 'gen bio' instead of 'nursing bio'. Also, our nursing students are required to take a semester of organic ('nursing' or real depending on your background). Really, the only difference between pre-nursing and pre-med is a semester of organic and physics.

I've attended about 4 different schools (three state schools and mine which was a top 20 nursing school) and competition for a spot in each nursing school was very competitive from what I gathered. Maybe it's different in other parts of the country but in Ga and where I am now in Florida the programs have a ton of applicants. I do agree though that taking all the pre med prereqs will easily fulfill nursing prereqs.
 
I've attended about 4 different schools (three state schools and mine which was a top 20 nursing school) and competition for a spot in each nursing school was very competitive from what I gathered. Maybe it's different in other parts of the country but in Ga and where I am now in Florida the programs have a ton of applicants. I do agree though that taking all the pre med prereqs will easily fulfill nursing prereqs.

When I think of 'competitive', I think of MD/DO admissions, where a number of qualified applicants are getting turned away with "good" stats. I think an ADCOM posted that a 25 MCAT was strong enough to succeed in medical school, yet a 31 MCAT was the average accepted score of matriculants in the previous cycle.

In regards to you statement, I wouldn't go as far as to say that nursing school is 'competitive'. From experience with nursing friends at a number of different schools, I know this isn't true. If your GPA is up to par (meaning, you can handle the curriculum), you are pretty much guaranteed a spot regardless. I think the GPA requirements generally range from 2.5-3.0, which is not in any way unreasonable. While getting into a number of programs post-BSN may be competitive, I think getting into nursing school is pretty easy. And at my school (and I'm sure at some other top institutions), GPA isn't even taken into consideration considering the impeccable caliber of the undergraduate population.
 
I don't know, but given the very low percentage of premedical students who actually end up making it into medical school, wouldn't it seem logical to gather some nurses out of the process? At least that would be more beneficial (to society and the ex-premed's wallet) than having a useless biology degree.

Maybe that's just my thinking though..

I don't think it's as simple as saying: "Study what you want, and move towards where you really want to be." Life happens, unexpected events arise, and at least for me, I would have liked to have something to fall back on in case things fell out of my hands. While nursing wouldn't have been my optimal career, I would have certainly enjoyed it more than being a professional pipetter in a bio lab making less than $30K/year. That's pretty much my only option with my current degree, other than being a high school teacher.
 
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Like LizzyM mentioned, the nursing programs around where I lived were notorious for being GPA killers and the coursework leaves little time for ECs and such (I'm not sure if this is the case for the nursing schools that the OP would be looking into). Being a non-trad who needed to support a family, I did still end up choosing a non-science career-oriented degree program.

That being said, if you are able to maintain a high gpa in your pre-reqs and in nursing school, and obtain a high MCAT score, fit in ECs, etc, then I believe that the "major doesn't matter" idea in medical school admissions extends to nursing as well. According to https://www.aamc.org/download/321496/data/2013factstable18.pdf "Specialized Health Sciences" majors (I believe this is where BSNs would fall) had a 32.6% matriculation rate. This is lower than the 41.1% for Bio majors. However, the average total MCAT score of specialized health science majors applicants was 25.6 whereas that of the Bio applicants was 28.2. The corresponding numbers in the case of matriculants were much closer to each other, i.e. 29.8 and 31.1 respectively. The GPAs of applicants vs matriculants were comparable for both majors in both cases.

Strictly from a gpa and MCAT point of view, this leads me to believe that the lower acceptance rate of specialized health sciences majors may have had something to do with the fact that the MCAT scores of their applicants were, on average, 2.6 points below their bio major counterparts as opposed to the fact that nursing was their major.
 
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The nursing science courses are generally not equivalent in rigor. The medical model vs the nursing model is very different; some of the most difficult students I've had have been nurses previously: they tend to have a "been there done that, know it all" attitude when nothing could be farther from the truth.

It's a good fall back career if med school doesn't pan out but I can't suggest it as a good background for medical school. I believe it's changing somewhat but I think there is still a stigma against nurses who leave the profession to go to medical school. There are several users here who have been in that position and could speak to it better than I.


You are right WS in that some nurses can be "been there done that, know it all," but it's certainly not true for all of us. Kind of makes me feel sad that you feel that way, but you know what your experiences have been.

Some nurses are just plain scary with that attitude; but the good ones always have the sense to know that there's a lot that they may not or do not know, and they always put the patients first in that regard. In nursing, there can sometimes be this anti-surgeon mentality. As a surgical recovery nurse, however, I have very much enjoyed working with surgeons. I think there can be very good give and take in the work relationship, if people care about making an effort. But there are some nurses that don't realize that they really have to prove to the surgeons that they know how to look out for the patient, and that they know when they really need to let the them know what's going on w/o being an idiot about calling over stupid things. My experience has been that once a surgeon believes you have enough sense to follow within your scope and do the safest thing for the patient and follow their directions, then they are fine with you.

Also, I really think that some nurses, at least early on, don't understand what a physician has to go through to become a surgeon. If they stood back and paid more attention, they'd get why the surgeons are of so particular when it comes to their patients. I have learned so much from surgeons--primarily about how patients should be managed post-operatively. As an SICU recovery nurse, it's good to know what the surgeon has done and what the plan/goals are from their POV. I am there more to be a set of eyes and ears, etc for their patients post-operatively when they can't be there. They are often juggling so much at once it's mindboggling. So you can't bug them for idiotic things, but you sure as heck better know when to contact them over the important concerns.

Not too long ago, I had to talk with a nurse re: the fact that she was whining about being busy (having trouble drawing some labs and other things), and she was miffed b/c the surgical resident commented about the last hour vitals, hemodymamics, ABGs, labs, infusions, CT drainage, and I&O's not being there on the flow sheet. What I had to help her understand was that surgeon must have the necessary data up-to-date and be in the OR all before 0700. It astonished me that she didn't understand all that needed to be completed by him by 0600. But sometimes nurses just don't even try to understand the other side of things, so they mouth off without thinking.

As far as the sciences, well, truly it depends on the school. Some school's nursing programs require the same general bio or chem, whilst others have less robust science courses for nursing students.

I don't know if it is a good background for medical school. Some nurses, who are now physicians, say yes, and others say no. In the end, I really think it depends upon the nurse and her/his individual, professional experiences and clinical exposure.

ITA that it's probably not the best major to go for if you KNOW you want to pursue medicine. To me, a better undergrad choice might be something like biochemistry. If I had it to do all over again, that's what I would go for, but I really wasn't seeking to go any other path but nursing when I studied nursing. I think biochem would be a great program of study. Either that, or I would consider microbiology; b/c for some reason, I really got into general microbiology.

So, WS, I am wondering how many med students/former nurses with whom you have interacted as med students were post-surg recovery nurses, and if that made a difference? I did a lot of CTICU/OHS recovery. Let me tell you, nurses that seem to be a little too know it all, well, they slap that right out of you. LOL. The CT surgeons pretty much make it clear what they expect, b/c the really good ones usually run a tight ship. You gotta want to play on their team, and they are the coaches. LOL. They do a lot of quarterbacking too. :)
 
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When I think of 'competitive', I think of MD/DO admissions, where a number of qualified applicants are getting turned away with "good" stats. I think an ADCOM posted that a 25 MCAT was strong enough to succeed in medical school, yet a 31 MCAT was the average accepted score of matriculants in the previous cycle.

In regards to you statement, I wouldn't go as far as to say that nursing school is 'competitive'. From experience with nursing friends at a number of different schools, I know this isn't true. If your GPA is up to par (meaning, you can handle the curriculum), you are pretty much guaranteed a spot regardless. I think the GPA requirements generally range from 2.5-3.0, which is not in any way unreasonable. While getting into a number of programs post-BSN may be competitive, I think getting into nursing school is pretty easy. And at my school (and I'm sure at some other top institutions), GPA isn't even taken into consideration considering the impeccable caliber of the undergraduate population.

I only mean competitive in that tons of people are applying so it's actually more difficult to get into than one would think. That's at least how the schools in Ga and one of the local schools in Florida have been. And it seemed a lot of them were no nonsense. Fail a test and you're out. They get away with that probably bc there are so many people waiting to take a seat.
 
So, WS, I am wondering how many med students/former nurses with whom you have interacted as med students were post-surg recovery nurses, and if that made a difference? I did a lot of CTICU/OHS recovery. Let me tell you, nurses that seem to be a little too know it all, well, they slap that right out of you. LOL. The CT surgeons pretty much make it clear what they expect, b/c the really good ones usually run a tight ship. You gotta want to play on their team, and they are the coaches. LOL. They do a lot of quarterbacking too. :)
SICU nurses are a different breed. THEY take ownership; they know their patients and I've rarely, if ever, had a problem with one. A good one is invaluable and they saved my butt many times as a junior resident (one got me in trouble once as well, by recommending a certain med that the attending "preferred" which was not the case. To his credit, he took the blame and told the attending that he had recommended it. I loved him for that.)

The nurses I've interacted with as medical students have not been, AFAIK, ICU nurses but rather floor nurses. They do tend to have a negative impression of surgeons which may be borne out of not understanding how sick some of these patients can be and why we are pedantic about their care.
 
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I'm an LPN. I plan on taking the MCAT next summer and apply that cycle (fingers crossed). My story is a little different, I graduated high school, took a year off and then attended a 14 months LPN program. Since then, I've been working part-time for the past 4 years as a nurse while attending state uni as a full-time biochemistry major. To make the story short, I grew up with lots of family, personal and financial issues. I had to raise myself, my mother and my younger sister. I needed a job that was well-paid and would allow me to work shorter hours while pursing my degree. I made those decisions based on the life circumstances that I was in. Do I regret it? Not at all. Am I struggling and do I wanna quit everyday? More than I can count. But after working as a nurse I realized even more that I want to be able to dictate patient's care and lead the team with more responsibilities without the ceiling effect. I don't know how ADCOM would feel about my situation, but it's the honest truth. I did what I had to do it the situation I was in. Were there other options? Sure. But for me, I felt that given my circumstances, this was the best route for me.
 
I'm an LPN. I plan on taking the MCAT next summer and apply that cycle (fingers crossed). My story is a little different, I graduated high school, took a year off and then attended a 14 months LPN program. Since then, I've been working part-time for the past 4 years as a nurse while attending state uni as a full-time biochemistry major.
That's a completely different story than earning a BSN concurrent with the pre-reqs for med school.
 
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