Rant: Nurses

Started by Whale2018
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Whale2018

Whale2018

Full Member
7+ Year Member
How come they have a free pass for not taking organic chemistry? Every pre-med has to? How come they don’t? The only class that weeds them out is anatomy and physiology. Should Nursing school revise there requirements? Organic chemistry is the foundation of medicine. Without organic, we be hopeless
 
I taught nurses in a class that had "organic" and "biochem." in the title.

They actually do learn functional groups, basic condensation/dehydration reactions (no mechanisms though), etc.

So no, nurses don't take the classic "organic chemistry course". However, I think they learn more than you think.
 
Whale2018 said:
How come they have a free pass for not taking organic chemistry? Every pre-med has to? How come they don’t? The only class that weeds them out is anatomy and physiology. Should Nursing school revise there requirements? Organic chemistry is the foundation of medicine. Without organic, we be hopeless
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Because they're not doctors and Flexner wrote the report on medical education for, wait for it, the training of doctors, not nurses.

BTW, Orgo is challenging because it's so conceptually based. Which is something that a good deal of Medicine is all about.
 
Whale2018 said:
How come they have a free pass for not taking organic chemistry? Every pre-med has to? How come they don’t? The only class that weeds them out is anatomy and physiology. Should Nursing school revise there requirements? Organic chemistry is the foundation of medicine. Without organic, we be hopeless
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I graduate in a few months and not once during med school did I need organic chemistry
 
O chem would have little benefit for anyone going into nursing. Been a nurse for almost a year now and not once do I recall having to use what I know about sn2 reactions to care for any of my patients.
 
most nurses don't prescribe medicines or make decisions themselves, they take directions from the doctor. so they probably don't need to know the level of pharmacology that doctors do.

you are right though, organic is the foundation of not just medicine but biology in general (at least on earth; imagine having to retake organic chem for the silicon based life on mars 😉
 
CloverBale said:
I just wanna know why we gotta take physics lmao.
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It of course depends on what field you go into, but if you end up doing much of anything with any sort of imaging modality you will need a working physics knowledge. In Cardio at least I had to learn a fair bit of ultrasound and nuclear physics for the imaging tests we used.

Organic chem on the other hand.... haven't used a lick of that since undergrad.
 
nlax30 said:
It of course depends on what field you go into, but if you end up doing much of anything with any sort of imaging modality you will need a working physics knowledge. In Cardio at least I had to learn a fair bit of ultrasound and nuclear physics for the imaging tests we used.

Organic chem on the other hand.... haven't used a lick of that since undergrad.
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I think we need orgo because we need biochem...like that makes sense.
 
I think we need orgo, physics and the rest not because they teach you what you need to know but because they teach you how to think about complex systems.

An athlete goes to the gym not because they have to deadlift or bench during a game but to train their bodies to perform in different conditions.

Orgo is the bench press of pre-med lol
 
Whale2018 said:
How come they have a free pass for not taking organic chemistry? Every pre-med has to? How come they don’t? The only class that weeds them out is anatomy and physiology. Should Nursing school revise there requirements? Organic chemistry is the foundation of medicine. Without organic, we be hopeless
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I think everyone is better off if all schools stopped requiring prereqs. The MCAT is a good test for competency in necessary prereqs and a good predictor of med school success.
 
CloverBale said:
Yeah but that’s like...one concept....don’t need a whole year of physics
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Fluids is the most common aspect of physics I'd assume, but electricity and magnetism is also very useful. You can use the idea of induction and magnetism for transcranial magnetic stimulation for Parkinson's patients

Also force and all that can easily be applied to orthopedics and bones etc.

Not to mention radiology either that's hardocore physics
 
Wow, I don't know why everyone is giving the OP such a hard time. It was a good question and honestly it would make our jobs a lot easier if they knew organic chem.

For example, earlier this week when a nurse asked me to put in an order, I uploaded this to the EMR:
upload_2017-12-23_17-36-28.png


she didn't even know what it meant :smack:
 
I was a nursing a student and then obviously went pre-med. You don't need organic for nursing, it is outside of the scope of a lot of what they're required to know. More emphasis is placed on anatomy/physiology and the years of clinical courses.
 
Lawpy said:
The GPA is still there for adcoms to see though. So people are still expected to do well in school.
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The thing is, I know people with PhDs in certain "social science" fields who would be completely unable to stay keep up in, say, AP (high school) math and science. It's pretty easy to go four years through college and not be tested on a single falsifiable concept.
 
Lawpy said:
They wouldn't do well on the MCAT.
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Of course, you're right - I'm just saying that the range in difficulty between degrees is so vast that it can entirely eliminate GPA as a meaningful data point, and if you were in admissions, wouldn't you prefer two sources of data over one, all else being equal?
 
ProspectivePostPreDent said:
Of course, you're right - I'm just saying that the range in difficulty between degrees is so vast that it can entirely eliminate GPA as a meaningful data point, and if you were in admissions, wouldn't you prefer two sources of data over one, all else being equal?
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The GPA is already less meaningful because of variations across universities and their overall grading policies (e.g. it's harder to get an A in a science course at MIT than at Brown but getting an A at either of these places is still harder than some no name state school with low admissions standards). The MCAT by its nature is standardized and thus inherently has meaningful value in isolation.

This is why schools select for MCAT scores and why top schools have high MCAT medians, even though nearly all schools have GPA medians of around 3.7-3.9.

Regardless, someone getting a 3.9 regardless of their major shows that they did well academically in college. If we want to assess their science competency, just see their science subsection scores on the MCAT and evaluate accordingly. A humanities major with a 3.9/526 (but did not take any science courses at all) is viewed to be good in sciences... but another humanities major with a 3.9/506 (with 124 in both science sections) might be recommended to take science courses to demonstrate competencies.

The MCAT provides a lot of information regarding an applicant's analytical and critical thinking skills, especially their ability to critically analyze science/research-based passages. That is more credible than making everyone taking prereqs without having any way to reliably assess the quality of those courses.
 
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Mr. Hat said:
I'm convinced that while Ochem and physics are to a large degree weed-out courses, they are also very useful in teaching one how to reason through difficult concepts. Medical school taught me how to think about medicine. Undergrad taught me how to think.
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Ahhh...Somebody gets it.

But we're drifting too far away from the OP, who was complaining why nurses don't have to take Orgo. Which was explained very early on.
 
Mr. Hat said:
I'm convinced that while Ochem and physics are to a large degree weed-out courses, they are also very useful in teaching one how to reason through difficult concepts. Medical school taught me how to think about medicine. Undergrad taught me how to think.
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Goro said:
[

Ahhh...Somebody gets it.

But we're drifting too far away from the OP, who was complaining why nurses don't have to take Orgo. Which was explained very early on.
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I mean people can do well in undergrad by cramming last minute and learn how to think by studying for the MCAT. I don't see how this justifies the need for having prereqs. But I guess this discussion is best postponed for another time.
 
ProspectivePostPreDent said:
The thing is, I know people with PhDs in certain "social science" fields who would be completely unable to stay keep up in, say, AP (high school) math and science. It's pretty easy to go four years through college and not be tested on a single falsifiable concept.
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Yooooo I majored in art/art history in UG and besides my cars score, scored 90+th percentile on my mcat. 98th on physical
 
Lawpy said:
The GPA is already less meaningful because of variations across universities and their overall grading policies (e.g. it's harder to get an A in a science course at MIT than at Brown but getting an A at either of these places is still harder than some no name state school with low admissions standards). The MCAT by its nature is standardized and thus inherently has meaningful value in isolation.

This is why schools select for MCAT scores and why top schools have high MCAT medians, even though nearly all schools have GPA medians of around 3.7-3.9.

Regardless, someone getting a 3.9 regardless of their major shows that they did well academically in college. If we want to assess their science competency, just see their science subsection scores on the MCAT and evaluate accordingly. A humanities major with a 3.9/526 (but did not take any science courses at all) is viewed to be good in sciences... but another humanities major with a 3.9/506 (with 124 in both science sections) might be recommended to take science courses to demonstrate competencies.

The MCAT provides a lot of information regarding an applicant's analytical and critical thinking skills, especially their ability to critically analyze science/research-based passages. That is more credible than making everyone taking prereqs without having any way to reliably assess the quality of those courses.
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Yeah, yeah, but I don't view the gap between various o chem courses as the same as the gap between majors. I've taken science courses at CC, UMass Boston, BU, and Harvard Extension and while there is definitely a gradient, again, some of those majors are essentially vanity projects by whimsical faculty which contain no content beyond the understanding of a middle schooler. Of course the MCAT is more standardized, but the flip side of the argument is that you're talking years of sGPA data versus a single test that doesn't penalize guessing, which introduces a modest degree of randomness in another way.

But yeah, I obviously wouldn't worry about the lib arts student with a 526. Either way, I'm fine with disagreeing.

CloverBale said:
Yooooo I majored in art/art history in UG and besides my cars score, scored 90+th percentile on my mcat. 98th on physical
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I was more taking a shot at "(anything) studies", but my point isn't that those majors are for dumb people. It's that graduating with them doesn't prove much about what you're working with one way or the other. You proved yourself on the mcat, and presumably, in your prereqs.
 
sb247 said:
I graduate in a few months and not once during med school did I need organic chemistry
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Lol... You never know; you might need to use some of it in your last rotation.

That's med school for you. 3+3 and another 3+ years residency would have been more than enough, but for some reason they add another 2 bogus years to it.

@Goro When was the Flexner report again? Do you think that thing is still applicable after... wait... 100 years?
 
Physics was a waste of my time. I went through 2 semesters of that all to learn how things move in microscopic detail. Honestly, I much rather have taken more Calc classes than physics.
 
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