a question regarding nursing school?

Question

ok, i am in college preparing to become a nurse and right now i am extremely frustrated and i just have to ask this, do nurses really need to know the Krebs cycle and all that other chemistry stuff that they cram into your head in science, i mean i know that anatomy and physiology is important but to what extent??!!?

Answer 1

When you have a patient who has liver tests out of the park and they tell you about their high protien/low carb weight loss diet..you need to know the kreb cycle. When your post thyroid surgery patient has hands that can't open and arms that are curling up inside themselves, understanding chemistry helps you run like hell for the calcium gluconate so you don't spend the rest of the night looking for a toe tag. NG tube, think K, Na, Cl, think cardiac. Tachycardia..., is it salts, dehydration, metabolic balance, albuterol, fever, misfiring node...thyroid storm, how do you tell them apart?

Nursing is about thinking, to assess is to think. You need to understand how it works so that you know how it can break. You need a basic knowledge to be able to think with.

Answer 2

Well....you should know but in reality whatever area you choose to go into will/should provide you with adequate training. Understand the reason or purpose of the classes; they are there to provide you with a general base knowledge, not to make you a professor of microbiology. Each year (in nursing school and in your career) you will expand that knowledge base. So it is important to have a good solid foundation, so your new or more in depth information is supported by your previous information. Also keep in mind that prerequisites are also used to "weed out" those individuals who can't cut it. You are and you aren't going to use it? Make sense? It will make sense, soon enough. Just pass. Whatever that means to you or whatever is needed, just do what you have to do to pass. Nursing school is tough, really it is. Then when you finish you have another test, the biggest test you ever took,...THE STATE BOARDS! Take them right after you graduate, seriously do not wait! It makes all the difference. I have been a RN for almost three years now. I love my patients, I work in a NICU. You decide what type of nurse you become. Really its all on you. So decide what type of nurse you want to be and let that guide you.

Answer 3

Nurses and doctors work as a team... in an emergancy, they may need to rely on you to administer medicines... what if you didn't know the chemistry and the doctor made a mistake and told you to give a patient 2 medicines that don't mix well? You could kill someone! Of course you have to know all that stuff.

And if you don't know the anatomy, how will you find the veins? How can you check for swelling of glands or organs? Feel for lumps? find a pulse? Check someones retinas?

If you don't want to learn all that, please, for the sake of the patients, find another career... if this is the career you want, learn what they tell you to, you'll need it.