I am currently in school for nurse anesthesia with about a year and half left. I am enjoying time in clinicals and I am certain that I would enjoy a career as an anesthetist but I have a nagging desire to pursue medicine. I am going to complete the current program I'm in and after I'm finished I would have to take some sciences because all I have are the basic chemistry courses required for nursing school AND hopefully pay off some debt (I will be 120K in the hole once I'm finished). In addition my undergrad GPA is less than fantastic at 3.1. However, I am making excellent grades in graduate school. I also have 3 years of ICU nursing experience. Anyone that has taken this route or have any advice??
student nurse anesthetist wondering about med school
- Thread starter maze50
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Hey Maze50! Welcome to the wild ride. If you are thinking about doing it, I suggest you just do it. I am a certified-nurse midwife and some days I get very frustrated at the limitations of my scope of practice. Considering I am in a situation w/ tons of autonomy (very different from CNMs in some states), it is concerning. I work in a hospital, I work very closely with doctors, I help train med students, and it naws at me constantly. So, I just decided it is time to do something about it.
(Stepping down off my soapbox now) My humble suggestion to you is to finish your program, find someone to pay your loans while you work and gain experience as a provider (very different from being a nurse) i.e. Military, work in a rural area, etc., get an idea of which school you want to attend, get your pre-reqs and mcat done, make sure you realize that you apply June of the year prior to fall which you want to matriculate (apply June 2011, matriculate fall 2012), and go for it! You can do it!
Best of luck to you!
(Stepping down off my soapbox now) My humble suggestion to you is to finish your program, find someone to pay your loans while you work and gain experience as a provider (very different from being a nurse) i.e. Military, work in a rural area, etc., get an idea of which school you want to attend, get your pre-reqs and mcat done, make sure you realize that you apply June of the year prior to fall which you want to matriculate (apply June 2011, matriculate fall 2012), and go for it! You can do it!
Best of luck to you!
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What are you thinking you'd get out of being a dr that you'd pay at least ~$2-2.5 million and spend at least 7 years doing that you couldn't do as a CRNA?
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Exactly. You start compounding the interest on that $120k and add it to the CRNA wages lost during the training...phew. That's a lot of cheddar.
Hi! I would definitely go for it....IF you have the motivation to do so after all that schooling! I myself have an MSN and hated everything about nursing. I was debating on going to CRNA school actually, however I asked myself if I would truly be happy with that career. In retrospect I would have, however at the time I figured you have "one life to live." Now med school is pretty hard to get into, and once in ...it's no cake walk...in fact it's like hell esp coming out of an already difficult curriculum like anesthesia. I would suggest you really do some soul searching and determine if you are truly wanting to give up all the sacrifices medicine calls for: endless studying, lack of social/family time, moving, living away from loved ones, etc...etc... If you still have that calling, which I did....... then go for it. I don't regret my nursing degree at all...well actually sometimes I do when I think about the horrible nursing days, but when you're in school on a rotation and they call u "Dr" I realize that I made the best choice for myself, despite all the sacrifices med school has. oh yeah....you can pick up some shifts if you decide to go back to school 
Good luck with your decision! Also ....don't let anyone tell you med school is impossible to get into...I've been told that many times ...and Im a student at a well known school here on the east coast
Good luck with your decision! Also ....don't let anyone tell you med school is impossible to get into...I've been told that many times ...and Im a student at a well known school here on the east coast 
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I would not do it. You already have a career road that essentially gives you the same job as an anesthesiologist without the student loan debt (120K is NOT 300K), without the malpractice headache and generally you have complete autonomy in your job. Seems silly to me. Not sure what else you think being a doctor will do for you except create more debt and have a bigger salary to pay down the bigger debt. Viscious cycle. The patient care is the same. The paperwork is the same. You can work anywhere.
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I would definitely discourage you from going to medical school. Like someone said, you already have a career that mirrors a lot of the responsibilities of being an anesthesiologist. Why would you want to put yourself into such great debt and time investment just to end up in a place that's essentially the same? Also, with your current GPA and not having all the necessary prerequisites, you're adding another layer of work before ever starting on a long journey. Finally, I think you'll have a hard time convincing ADCOMS to take you seriously when you've, not only completed an undergraduate in nursing, but have also gone to graduate school in the field. How are you going to justify the sudden career change from a very proximate field (more so than RN alone)?
Please reconsider what you're doing. Everything points out to this being a mistake you're making just for a "feeling" about medicine. At the very least, touch back on this issue after you've worked as a CRNA for a while.
Please reconsider what you're doing. Everything points out to this being a mistake you're making just for a "feeling" about medicine. At the very least, touch back on this issue after you've worked as a CRNA for a while.
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People get into MD school with a 3.1, so why is this even surprising? There's more to applications than a raw number.Congrats on getting into CRNA school with a 3.1. I don't even
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^^ x2.
Finishing your current program = no brainer. it would only hurt any future applications to other programs and also be an astronomically bad financial decision to not at least bag that degree if you can while you've already taken out loans for that program.
Then, I would advise you to get a year or 2 of experience as a CRNA, pull in & bank some beaucoup bucks while paying down your current loans a bit & enjoying having a real life (train for a triathlon, learn to cook, whatevs). THEN buckle down take your science classes left/take MCAT etc.
it's kinda wack to change horses mid-stream while you're halfway through a program and haven't even gotten a job yet to see whether or not you like it.
good luck with your choice! cheers
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I'm not doubting him/her, but with such a low GPA, the only way to dig out of it would have been a strong GRE score (something I'm sure most applicants will have). 3 years of ICU experience is barely over the minimum. I'm hoping OP can enlighten me on this
.I know several former nurses who are now in medical school, although none were nurse anesthetists. It's certainly possible to make the switch from nursing to med school.
It sounds like you know the course you should take - finish nurse anesthetist school, start working and taking science prereqs while you make loan payments. It will likely take you two or three years to finish your prereqs, which should 1) give you enough time to decide how you feel about working as a nurse anesthetist, and 2) make a dent in your student loans.
Do you like anesthesia? Do you imagine that, if you were to go to med school, you'd ultimately end up as an anesthesiologist? Or are you interested in another field of medicine?
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Did people realize this was a year-old thread that got bumped?
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Nope LOL.
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Heh. Good catch, eagle eyes. I just like to spout opinions on the internet without really thinking or checking facts, obvi
Think OP stayed & finished her CRNA?
