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Accepted!!!

Prelife

Lurker
Hi guys!! Im pretty new here and I dont post much but I read a lot of the threads.

Whelp 3 days ago my brother and I got accepted into nursing school. Im very excited and so is he. We go in to enroll on the 16th and I was just wondering if anyone had any advice to prepare us for nursing school?

Also I was wondering how male nurses get treated. Its not something Ive looked into much.


Anyone else who has applied for a spot I wish you the very best of luck, and Im sure you will get accepted too. :lol:
 

chinaski

Regular Member
Also I was wondering how male nurses get treated. Its not something Ive looked into much.

Big generalisation, full of subjectivity, but my personal preference is to work with male nurses. Not to say all female nurses are dreadful (indeed, the best nurses I know are women), but with male nurses there's less friction and back-biting from my perspective as a female doctor. Almost universally, I've found male nurses easier to work with.
 
Congrats!!!

My biggest piece of advice would be to learn what is studied. Sounds like a strange comment but often I saw students (probably goes for all fields) cramming for exams, memorising information for a quick once off recall rather than actually trying understand the information. The basics taught early will be things you draw upon in practice in a few years and a good understanding will set you apart from those who just tried to pass.

Also, treat every placement as an opportunity. Too many times I've had nursing students tell me, but I'm not interested in mental health nursing (for example) without realising that fields cross over and you will come across clients with all sorts of backgrounds no matter the area you end up in.

And I agree in regards to male nurses, often easier to work with, but again this is a generalisation and male or female a nurse can choose to be easy or difficult to work with.

Good luck!
 

Dr Worm

Regular Member
Congrats!!

When I did nursing (which was a long time ago) male nurses were generally very well regarded, and are common enough that I don't think there's too much stigma. Your brother won't be the only one!

It could well have been a quirk of my faculty, but in my experience, nursing faculties can be sticklers for rules, irrespective of how important they are (ie, if they say you need white shoes, they may well enforce it) and often teach from the textbook (ie, if your homework is to read pages 145-148 of Marieb, you will find yourself constantly frustrated if you have a different textbook).

Advice to prepare you: Enjoy your holidays, and make sure you have enough money to buy textbooks when uni starts. Also, a girl in my year had a name-necklace when uni started: a sensible idea, because it meant everyone knew her name :)
 

elixir

Regular Member
Hey There!- congrats on your offer and welcome to nursing world! which uni are you off to?

As people have already said, it would be a huge generalisation to comment on the entire male population of nurses as a whole. In my experience however (not necessarily just from a nursing perspective) I find male nurses are usually very down to earth people who are genuinely very helpful and well "cut the crap" a lot of the time. From a female perspective i've always found guys easier to work with in most settings!
 

dobes

Member
Congrats on your offer!

In my experience as a nurse, I've never felt that I've been treated differently because I'm a male. There is the occasional patient who isn't too happy to be looked after by a male, but that's VERY rare. The other staff don't treat you any differently, there are so many male nurses around that everyone is used to it. In one hospital I worked in, it was actually an advantage to be a male nurse. There were proportionally more males in nursing management positions (NUM and above) than females.
 

Prelife

Lurker
Congrats!!

When I did nursing (which was a long time ago) male nurses were generally very well regarded, and are common enough that I don't think there's too much stigma. Your brother won't be the only one!

It could well have been a quirk of my faculty, but in my experience, nursing faculties can be sticklers for rules, irrespective of how important they are (ie, if they say you need white shoes, they may well enforce it) and often teach from the textbook (ie, if your homework is to read pages 145-148 of Marieb, you will find yourself constantly frustrated if you have a different textbook).

Advice to prepare you: Enjoy your holidays, and make sure you have enough money to buy textbooks when uni starts. Also, a girl in my year had a name-necklace when uni started: a sensible idea, because it meant everyone knew her name :)

Sorry, just to clarify my brother and I are both males. Probably should have stated that in my OP. xD Thank you everyone for the advice. I feel that because of these forums I am fairly well prepared for this and I should get though without much trouble.
 

Nurse Jay

Member
Sorry, just to clarify my brother and I are both males. Probably should have stated that in my OP. xD Thank you everyone for the advice. I feel that because of these forums I am fairly well prepared for this and I should get though without much trouble.

I feel that, despite being only moderately experience (1 year - 2012) in studying nursing, I am a Student RN (yes we are Student Nurses with student registration on NMBA).

I will try now to offer, in this moment of passing, some perspective to the OP:
Male nurses are still treated like dirt, sometimes, unless - you are one of those men who is NOT a fool, who has a lot of female friends and so on and so forth. Misogynistic men have no place in nursing and always get thrown out/shown the door.

If you are a creative person - get out of nursing now, unless you are using nursing as something you love which just so happens to also be a stepping stone to get you where you want to go in a creative career. I love nursing. I also love songwriting, piano, music and prose fiction writing.

There is a lot to do in nursing. Do you like to keep busy? If not, you'd better learn or you will get picked on for being lazy - no daydreaming or the hospital trained sister will pick on you.

Younger nurses tend to progress through the ranks and earn money and recognition and develop a better careers, quicker, than the nurses of the old system. So don't be headstrong, narcisstic or arrogant. You are beautiful but first and foremost patients are beautifuller. Your job is not to be vain.

Your job is to help out the sick, the tired sore black and blue, the hopeless, the needy. You are the frontline and backbone of the hospital system.

So -
do a good fucking job and fly, spread your wings, friend!
 

frootloop

Doctor
Moderator
[offtopic]
I am a Student RN (yes we are Student Nurses with student registration on NMBA).
That'd be like me calling myself a 'Student registered doctor' based on the fact that I'm a member of the NZMA, lol. You're not a registered nurse (like I'm not a registered doctor) as a student....[/offtopic]
 

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I think the 'student RN' more so refers to student registered nurse opposed to a student enrolled nurse 'EN'... so it is a legitimate statement. As an RN that's what we were referred to when I was studying anyway many moons ago.
 

chinaski

Regular Member
I think the point is that it's a misleading title which hints at a level of experience and expertise not yet earned. Similarly, we discourage the use of "student doctor". "Nursing student" and "medical student" are far more transparent and accurate.
 

dobes

Member
I think the 'student RN' more so refers to student registered nurse opposed to a student enrolled nurse 'EN'... so it is a legitimate statement. As an RN that's what we were referred to when I was studying anyway many moons ago.

I was always referred to as 'Student Nurse', even had the abbreviation SN on the electronic medical records used in ICU on my final prac. Student enrolled nurses are titled 'Trainee Enrolled Nurses' or TENs in my experience.
 

leekiss

Member
Are you both prepared for the realities of nursing? Be prepared for lots of poo, wee and vomit. The job is very physically demanding, you have to lift patients and they will also pull down on you. Be prepared to feel like a servant/waitress and patients can and will disrespect you. I had an elderly patient in an acute ward try to bite my hand and then she opened up her stoma bag and played with the poo! Besides doing the basics like showers and beds, I found out from placement that the job is very routine and boring ie. taking vital signs and giving out meds all the time. You don't really feel like you are using your brain. Wound dressings are not my thing either. Also be prepared for shift work during uni, starting at 7am and finishing at 9.30pm even on weekends.

Also make sure you have a 100% attendance in everything. Not sure about your uni, but I did 1 yr of 2yr master course, was sick and missed a couple of days lectures and was not allowed to go on clinical placement. For a profession that's based on caring they don't seem to care if your sick. Sorry for not being able to mention any positives about nursing, but these are issues I wish I had known before deciding to try nursing.
 

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