Why is going into nursing a bad idea for pre-med in general?

[Geo16]

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Did some research and found some success and found some negative aspects.
Just want a clear heads-up before going into nursing for a pre-med.

 

[Lifeblood_20]

Um, because nursing is a completely different profession from physicians?

 

[Seihai]

If you're talking doing a BSN (over a bachelor's degree in another field), it's a bad idea because most of the science classes in a BSN don't actually cover the depth and breadth required of prerequisite courses, and so many of them do not actually count for medical school admissions requirements.

 

[Geo16]

If you're talking doing a BSN (over a bachelor's degree in another field), it's a bad idea because most of the science classes in a BSN don't actually cover the depth and breadth required of prerequisite courses, and so many of them do not actually count for medical school admissions requirements.

What about ASN? Just becoming an RN through CC?

 

[Seihai]

What about ASN? Just becoming an RN through CC?

Then... you don't have a bachelor's degree and therefore wouldn't meet one of the most important requirements for medical school anyways? Every US medical school requires you to have a bachelor's degree by matriculation.

I'm not sure what exactly you're asking. ASN is an associate's degree, which means you'd take even fewer courses (which again, almost certainly wouldn't count for premed prerequisites if they're the nursing version of the courses).

 

[AnatomyGrey12]

Because it's a different career? Don't take a spot from someone who will actually go into nursing to be a nurse. Being a nurse will not prepare you for being a doctor.

 

[Seihai]

I'll be clearer: If you're set on going to medical school, going into nursing is only a sidetrack to an application to medical school. It can't help you in terms of fulfilling prerequisites and working in nursing isn't going to override everything else. You'll still need to do almost everything else any other premed has to do, which means there's no significant benefit to going into nursing than going into any other career field if you plan to go to medical school.

 

[LizzyM]

Furthermore, the clinical training required is a time sink and if you think like a doctor then the way you’ll be expected to think as a nurse and to accept the philosophy of nursing will make you crazy.


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[la flame]

if you want to be a doctor, don't think getting your BSN and then taking premed classes is a good idea. It is a huge waste of time if you really want to become a Doctor because most nursing prereqs/classes don't even transfer to premed ones such as Microbiology or A&P (at least my school). Not to mention nursing school itself is kind of a beast and nobody in my program of 100 students made a 4.0; it's a GPA killer. I mean don't get me wrong, nursing school isn't medical school obviously in terms of how hard it is, but I do feel nursing (BSN) is one of the hardest undergraduate majors out there. Nothing worse than doing 12+ hr shifts at the hospital then having multiple tests that week.

but hey, I didn't decide I wanted to become a doctor until I was 3/4 done with my schooling so I decided to stick it out and finish. It's honestly not a bad paying profession and the job market is absolutely great for new graduates. If you want to be a nurse, then be a nurse. If you want to be a doctor, major in Biology or something.

 

[Ultimax]

I am nurse practitioner and I can give you me 2 cents. Nursing knowledge is different from medical knowledge, nurses are trained to recognize when something go wrong, to initiate interventions within their scope of practice and to alert the physicians immediately. Nurses are trained to take orders and to consult with physicians, and there is nothing wrong with it, as nurses do not go deep into etiology and pathogenesis. The route to become an MD from an RN is a hard one, because as many SDNers posted above: The classes do not meet the pre-requisite requirements for medical school application. I had to spend 2 years to retake all the classes, spent close to 10k for tuition out of pocket, and to study for the MCAT while working full time. I am fortunate to get accepted into a few medical schools on first try, but I know many of my colleagues did not. Nursing is great, dont get me wrong, its where my passion for medicine starts, and I am fortunate to be mentored by several physicians, and the funny thing is, one of the physicians are also my patient, while the other is my interviewer at one of the medical schools I interviewed at.
Now, you probably heard about nurse practitioner and Doctorate of Nursing Practice (DNP). NP is a great profession, and while I despise the world mid level and prefer physician extender, the term does reflect the limited scope of practice and the superficial medical knowledge. As I am writing this post, I am happily learning about the coagulation cascade and why I need to order a specific test and not the other. As NP, i am trained to practice it and did not go deep into the biochemical pathway. I am a good mechanic, but I will never be an engineer. DNP is just a useless degree, you can do some research and have your own opinion about it.
In short, go to nursing school if you want to be a nurse. If you want to practice medicine, then go to medical school. Nursing to medicine is a hard road, and when you have a family of your own, the challenges will be even harder.
Best of luck!

 

[Select All That Apply]

Here's something that often does not come up nor has come up within this thread.

The major reason why you should consider not going into nursing is because once you experience working as a nurse, you will be shackled by golden handcuffs. The amount of pay that you are given after you choose a healthcare system and settle in after the first six months to one year within that system is incomparable to how much money you would make for similar PGY-1 training experiences. Average resident salary in 2017 was $57,400 with rules in July for 2017 changing the upper limit maximum hours per shift from being a 16 hour shift to now being a 24 hour shift. Excluding surgical specialties in which residents would likely work most of the 4 weeks close to 80 hours per week, it can be expected that medicine related specialties work at least 40 hours a week with it likely being around 60 hours a week during their residency training (50 hours per week - conservatively speaking) [conservative estimate compiled from anecdotal accounts, if there are hard data sets from ACGME would be greatly appreciated].

Compare this to shift nursing work in which the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that between May 2017 and May 2018 nurses earned around $71,730 per year with typical shift duty being 36 hours with likely some overtime rounding that to 40 hours in a given week. In most cases, nurses can expect at maximum to work a 16 hour shift in which there are laws in many states prohibiting nurses from working a full 24 hours. What happens when a nurse decides to work comparative hours to an internal medical resident? Once you put in six months to a year on a specialty unit, you likely understand the major nursing algorithms that are involved in patient care. You will have likely used your eMAR to "assist" physicians in placing orders and also will get proficient at charting/billing assessments. Also, due to the high friction of nursing you will likely have outlasted many of your peers who are already going on to another job thinking they will be fulfilled there or will transition to their dream specialty. At this time you should be able to schedule yourself vigorously and have priority on shifts, know how to schedule the +20 hours to maximize pay bonuses, and be able to still make a schedule that is somewhat comfortable if you are normally an active person e.g. used to wear/tear and recovery.

It's not absurd that at the end of it, you gross six figures if that is your intended goal. When you reach a point like that where you are comfortable at your site (no shifting rotations at different hospitals unless you get paid almost double salary in order to do it), understand the framework of care, and finish off paying nursing student loans (v. medical student loans) then you have to decide whether or not medical school is a financially sound decision once you've figured out what works.

This is not a fair comparison in the sense that the payout for attending physicians is after their clinical training. Salaries for attendings in the midwest in primary care specialties like family medicine and hospitalists are around $250,000 to $300,000 if negotiated appropriately. This is incomparable to many other occupations in terms of financial compensation. However, there needs to be a long term assessment of how undergraduate loans, medical student loans, and interest accrued on those loans during education in addition to credit card loans [no likely source of income from M1 to M4 with some schools having strict rules against work] need to be paid off. Student loans from nursing school on someone who is going through a straight-to-BSN approach can be high [private schools, financially predatory schools], however these loans are often subsidized meaning that the interest on these loans do not accumulate until after graduation. This is a benefit that does not occur with grad plus loans [subsidized v unsubsidized, grad plus v stafford]. This can make a substantial difference when considering the amount of time and energy being invested into the education process of becoming a physician.

 

[Select All That Apply]

@Seihai Nursing programs will take the same courses that would have been accepted by a medical institution. Prestigious programs like Loma Linda require nursing applicants to take Organic Chemistry. We could debate whether introduction to Organic is the same level as taking an Organic Chemistry A/Organic Chemistry B course, but you have to try really hard to convince me that spending more time on Sn1/Sn2 reactions or curved arrow diagram structures on nucleophilicity is something that will translate into clinical practice v barrier for admission entry. Pre-meds have a tendency to harp on the importance of them having completed Biochemistry and the importance of knowing the deep structural complexities of warfarin or Krebs/Electron Transport Chain dynamics. However, will have dumped all this information by the time they start M3/M4.

I think that there is a lapse in communication when the OP mentioned doing a CC program in order to answer your initial statement about being sidetracked. This is something that doesn't get discussed on this board a lot, but not everyone has the income to go straight to medical school. Not everyone has parents who are there for them during the four years in school and for some students they might be the first in their generation to actually attend postsecondary education. Because of this, cashing in on the first degree and building up savings is absolutely necessary when there is no support structure. Doing a community college program in which only nursing prereqs are taken is often a needed "sidetrack" to afford the journey. Education doesn't exist in isolation, especially when considering rising tuition and higher CoL across the United States. Generational wealth plays a larger part in academic success than what the majority of people would like to take into consideration. Tuition is currently 4x-5x what I would have paid for when I went in for my first degree and I'm still within the millennial age demographic. This issue will only continue to be exacerbated with time.

@AnatomyGrey12 I agree with the sentiment, but most nurses have a GTFO mentality before a year passes. Lots of units are revolving doors in which new grads are in the door and out in less than 6 months. Which is sad because honestly the first 4 months within our hospital network is dedicated training in which they have limited exposure to patients and their exposure is always guided with another preceptor who is inside the room with them. I blame nursing education for teaching "philosophy" and how to "think as a nurse" when they should be drilling kids with ACLS and other nursing algorithms so they don't let a patient slip through the cracks within their first 6 months on the job.

@la flame Sounds like a bad program if they are hindering students on a GPA basis. You could have also been affected by working 12+ hour shifts right before taking exams. Noticed pretty early on that everyone from administration to a majority of the professors were nurses who couldn't hack floor nursing and had little to no innate interest when it came to clinical medicine. Nursing questions have expected answers and test questions are often regurgitated if enough test banks are covered. The analysis that goes into figuring out the anatomy of a nursing exam was far easier than having to deal with drawing out chair conformations or applying a differential to a thermodynamics question. Most of the people aren't stimulated by intellectual challenges or decide to explore different degrees so I can see how a widespread occupation like nursing could fall into the mindset that they are the "hardest" major when most nurses don't really bother with anything clinical outside of work.

@Ultimax PT v PTT testing? We may have had this conversation before, but I feel that the lack of adequate medical instruction in nursing school and the lack of students having the gumption to take classes like Biochemistry on their own time results in an over idolization of academic oriented research. If nurses were to work in a lab and do Western blots or sequence analysis I feel that this mysticism behind deeper level academics would be widely erased. The deeper seated issue that I feel which is common to human nature is that people are lazy and unwilling to look into deeper enrichment, but are willing to depart with $1500 to take a course in Introduction to Biochemistry if they receive an arbitrary letter grade at the end that validates to the world they they can put in the effort if they think they will be recognized for it. I think that this issue is pervasive even with NP clinicians and those who decide to hide away from clinical practice and do full time academics in which their lack of knowledge becomes abundantly clear to their students and what gets taught is intellectual apathy for deeper understanding.

 

[DO_or_Die]

I'm a nurse matriculating into medical school and want to say that I don't think it's the best route, although it is a good route. I have loved being a nurse and have honed my bedside/clinical skills in the years that I have done this. Nursing starts out w/ a pretty decent salary and tons of time off. I vacation at least 3-4x/year about 1 week at a time and am thankful for nursing for showing me how much I love patient care. I know medicine is my calling and don't know if I would have felt that way as a traditional bio major. The downside is it took me an extra 2.5 years to take the prerequisites to apply to med school/shadow/volunteer/research. It's the path less traveled, but for me it was and has been incredibly rewarding and by the chance you aren't accepted to medical school, it is a good career in its own right, although physically and mentally demanding. Do not go into nursing with plans to move into medical school, be comfortable with being a nurse forever, if you can't be then definitely do not do it.