To think Nursing is one of the hardest degrees?

[UndertheCedartree]

I did a nursing degree as a 2nd degree as a mature student. I actually felt sorry for the 18 year olds starting it as they didn't get the usual Uni experience. No Freshers - as we'd already started a few weeks before and were in back to back lectures/classes. Social life was limited due to work load and placements with early starts and long hours.

I found it very stressful. Long hours in Uni due to hours needed to pass the professional qualification. Half the time spent working full time while having to write assignments and study for exams. Also the OSCEs (practical exam) and VIVAs (oral exam) that were so different to anything I'd done before.

So AIBU than Nursing is one of the hardest degrees?

Pretty much all degrees have all of those things (often at a much higher level) bar patient/client contact (although even there a lot of degrees do have an element of this even outside of health sciences). Even if you limit your statement to undergrad degrees I can think of a lot of degrees that wouldn’t be a reasonable conclusion to draw.

How long ago did you qualify OP? Are you now working as a RN?

@Savidog - that does sound very hard! How do you fit the placements in? How long are the holidays?

@Reginabambina - of course different people find different things hard. I personally found the academic work fine but you should have seen me doing my first bandage! Others things I found really hard to learn were canulating, naso-gastric intubation, and I though doing a manual blood pressure was so hard the first time! I would argue most (not all) other degrees have longer holidays and a bit of space to breath! I felt I had this doing my Maths degree.

@Letsallscreamatthesistene - 8 years ago. I'm not currently working due to my mental health. But I had progressed to a specialism.

I think this is quite unusual but our community trust used to give us a booklet of work to complete each year! As if we didn't have enough to do. We had lectures at the hospital too but at least that only involved reading around the subject mostly.

Placements you do in your own free time. So summer,easter and Christmas break.
In the first two years, it's all animal handling and the uni decides how many weeks and which areas you need to work on.
Up to 12 weeks can be ordered depending on what level of experience and animal exposure you have already had.. stable yards,dairy,beef farms,piggery, lambing sometimes kennels/groomers/cattery. Up to the student to find and get placement certified. I grew up rural around farms and with working dogs so didnt have to do all of the above as got mulitpe exemptions. Just dairy,lambing-did that both easters as it was great experience, piggery and stables. Theres an exam on handling at the end of second year and we do additional training in the first two years as well.

In the later years again its placement, but now its with other vets so you can get some hands on experience. I cannot remember the exact breakdown but it was either 23 or 26 weeks over the 3 years-again in our own time off and a set amount of each element of practice so we had a broad level of experience before graduation. So weeks of equine practice/large animal/ small animal mixed and a week in an abbatoir. Learned a massive amount of how to actually be a vet during placement to be honest. Lectures can only teach you so much. Did most of the farm animal stuff in easter so we could see the spring workload and lots of cases.

So essential spend 4 standard years in lectures,free time doing hands on work. Then final year of supervised training and hands on work where students do externships in specialist interest areas-dogs trust to learn surgery -again all under supervison. and actual clincial rotations within the vet hospital in the different areas of vet medicine-large animal medince. large animal surgery,equine med,equine surgery, small animal med. small animal surgery. anaesthesia. radiology and diagnostics etc

Made working pretty much impossible to be honest. Would be almost impossible with a family or kids unless you had an amazing partner and a lot of savings/big loans. I went in straight from secondary school.

And despite all that effort and training theres still massive issues keeping vets in industry and a scarily high suicide rate in the profession.
A hard uni course doesnt nessecarily prepare anyone for life in the real world.

I was always jealous of the student nurses in Uni because they used to get paid to learn and it happened during the academic terms so got to learn and do hands-on stuff in the same timeframes. They worked damn hard for it though and used to get a lot of commuting time up between hospitals for placements though.

I graduated in Ireland not England btw. There was outrage when the student bursaries were reduced.

They worked damn hard for it though and used to get a lot of commuting time up between hospitals for placements though.

Your telling me. Our placement patch was huge and they didnt give a damn if you relied on public transport, you had to get on with it. My commute was minimum 2 hours each way on public transport. Proper killer and left me permanently frozen in the winter. Good times

Ps no idea why I'm on two different names.im tamberlane lol Must have had a really old account on my laptop!

Its a practical degree

Mine is a science degree, and the level we have to learn is high as we are trained to be autonomous, not work directly under doctors orders as some seem to think.

I was a nurse and the first year to go from 4 to 3.

Nursing is a hard degree as is any other degree, I do think that perceive nursing to be different to actually what it is, I was told you don't need a degree but to actually care for critically ill patients with multiple complex conditions you need well trained knowledgeable nurses. Perhaps because a lot of what nurses do is unseen, so a DR may prescribe IV morphine but the nurse will monitor the patient and adjust the dose, possibly give an antiemetic or maybe even not give the drug, all by assessing the patients condition. But all people will have 'seen' is the DR prescribing not all the thought processes that go on when that care is delivered.

Gone are the days nurses do only the physical care. Doctors have very little contact with patients now they diagnose and prescribe but the nurses deliver the treatment. There is also an expectation that nurses do continuous study so nurses are constantly developing their skills and knowledge.

I been a funeral director and done a professional qualification for that was hard for some on the course, in fairness most had never done any kind of study.

I have also just finished MBA that was very hard as multiple aspects of sociology, economics, finance, psychology and I'm sure so other ologies! All whilst working full-time with a family.

Every course or degree I have done is hard but isn't that the point of doing them to gain large amounts of Information quickly, efficiently and with the ability to apply that knowledge.

Sorry for the typos was disturbed half way through by my teen moaning!