I just think an NP should be like a DO extremely light edition. Not a cheaper MD alternative. Should be mostly holistic stuff, nursing side, possible prescribing some basic meds, not much more than that.
That's why I said "extra light edition". I know that they are physicians with the same scope, but I mean in terms of joint manipulation, etc. Non pharmacological approaches is what I guess I meant.
I think this is my mindset. Medical school may be very intensive and require work, but noone is trying to kill me. I just dont see how it can be THAT bad. I may have had a different perspective had i didnt enlist in the Army at 19 years old, and it was my first experience in the real world, but I'm not worried. Just focused.I'm a former RN that is now in med school. First of all, how different programs are perceived is highly subjective and you should take everyone's opinions with a grain of salt, including mine. Nursing school for me was fairly easy, and I received all A's. I hated a lot of it though, because a lot of it was working on bull**** group projects. I find that med school is much more up my alley since it is hard science-based and the instructors don't give us busywork.
That said, I don't think med school is that bad. I go to the gym every day, hang with family, and I rarely study past 6pm, even during exam weeks. My performance thus far is in the top 5% of my class. I had a good MCAT score and from talking with my classmates, those with higher scores tend to think med school is more chill. Some people have to work harder than others to pass, and that's ok. You need to just do you, and be aware of your strengths/weaknesses. I think you'll find that none of the material is terribly challenging from an intellectual perspective, there can just be a LOT of it. If you can get through organic chemistry I don't think there's any reason you can't get through med school just fine.
I think SOME first year med students are kind of whiny and want to paint the picture that med school is the hardest thing one could ever undertake in order to impress family/friends. In reality, it can be a pretty good life. I have more time with family than I every had when I was working full time. I never work nights or weekends if I don't want. How many other post-college grads can say that? The reality is that if you want to get ahead, you gotta bust your butt at some point. Some people do that in the work world, and we just happen to do it in school. If anything I think that med school has given me more respect for the average working person who does their job day in day out for a mediocre paycheck. At the end of med school we'll all have great jobs which is not something that everyone can say.
Hahaha we'll see what I think next year when I'm preparing for step, I think that I'll be a lot busier. I know that MS2 can be a bigger challenge and I don't want to underestimate it. Just taking it a year at a time right now
I finally figured out my problem nursing. I was studying too much. I pulled off all As at the end. I realized in nursing school there is a happy medium. If you study too little or too much it hurts you. You had to study just enough to pick the right answer. I enjoyed learning medical stuff, so Id read my textbook, then pull out my Grey's anatomy, then look up questions I had about the material online (because the instructors never knew. Sometimes I even asked my "little brother" in the program who had been an LPN for 10 years). Knowing too much info made it easier to talk yourself into wrong answers. Towards the end I studied maybe 3 hours a week.
I was a RT student, but found the material about four times or more difficult than respiratory school.
That excites me. I am a total nerd and love knowing the intricate details of things. For instance, I am a long distance marksman, and have BOOKS of handloading recipes I have developed and love figuring out the exact amount of gunpowder for a certain brand for a specific rifling twist rate and bullet weight. I am also a homebrewer and keep recipes of my brews, and track my nutrients and workout routines for powerlifting. I think this is why I'm so dissatisfied with nursing. You just do things and there is no experimentation. I mean even titration in the ICU is dissatisfying for me. I'm bored, frankly put.
Not "experimenting" per se, but practicing medicine. Choosing what medication to give in a certain instance. I really enjoy calling up a physician and either requesting a different medication or a new medication for something, and having them say "You know what, thats a good idea. Lets do that." Which happens fairly often. I notice at times for instance I'll have a patient that's on the high end of pulse range, yet he gets a low dose of metoprolol and lots of labetalol or hydralazine either scheduled or PRN, and when I suggest that we simply up his 12.5 mg metoprolol to a 25mg and see what happens, I'm met with approval.
I can relate to that. Anxiety is why I took it in 45 minutes. I didn't sleep the night before and when I got in there I found myself just anxiously clicking at answers. I'm never a nervous test taker but they drummed it up so much.
I agree. It'll be BUSY, and take work, but hard is subjective. I've always been a huge nerd, so studying books is what I do. I think I'll find this less hard than many of the other things in life that I've done, like combat in Iraq, or break up domestic disputes (several where I got injured pretty good), or just going 22 days in a row as an armorer getting only 4 hours of noncondecutive sleep per night. (I was the only armorer because my chain of command didn't replace the ETSing and PCSing fellow armorers so they had no choice. Our cops needed weapons for patrol, and I had to ensure the weapons were all cleaned, and all 3 million dollars worth of weapons and BII were maintained to standard. I was hallucinating and barely coherent towards the end, when a SGT finally came in and took over.) Im just now, 6 years later getting to the point where I can sleep for 6 hours straight without waking up in a dead panic.
