The journey to becoming a nurse usually requires plenty of dedication, sacrifice, and learning. Your future patients will be putting their lives and futures into your hands. It is important that you know everything there is to know about the medical profession.
Nursing curricula are so dense and overwhelming because there is so much information that nurses need to learn. Unfortunately, this often leads to burnout and feelings of overwhelm among nursing students.
By focusing on what matters during your educational journey, you can protect yourself from burnout and ensure that you get the most out of your training. Here are some of the most important lessons that aspiring nurses should learn.
Hands-On Experience
One of the most important things that a good nursing major will offer is hands-on experience. Clinical internships, supervised care practices, and other hands-on learning techniques are important. While studying from a textbook can give you the foundational knowledge that you need, only real-world practice can teach you the skills you will be using every day as a nurse. This is where vocational courses help you build practical skills for career success, offering experiential learning to bridge classroom theory and on-the-job demands.
When looking into nursing programs, look into their curriculum to see how much they focus on hands-on learning. Experts at berry.edu recommend looking for the top nursing program that features a dedicated Health Sciences building, a simulation room, as well as clinical placements and shadowing opportunities. You want a nursing program that offers this breadth and depth of hands-on learning.
Once you are enrolled in the nursing program itself, make sure that you pay close attention to your real-life learning situations. Apply for internships and clinical practices your junior and senior years once you have some experience to supplement the classroom learning you received.
Community Health
As any aspiring nursing student knows, nurses are so much more than just the doctor’s assistants. You will be the first face people associate with healthcare, performing most tasks to keep patients on the road to recovery.
Nurses also play a vital role in public health. You may wind up in an educational role, helping people learn more about their bodies so they can expect healthy outcomes. You may also be expected to work on community health in addition to your clinical work, correcting historical inequities when it comes to healthcare.
The journey into the nursing field involves more than academics—it’s about growing into a multifaceted health professional prepared to care for diverse populations.
The National Library of Medicine identified social and community health factors as crucial to the future of nursing. During your educational journey, seek out opportunities to learn more about community healthcare. Try to connect what you learn in class to real-world situations.
Emotional Management
One important lesson that all aspiring nurses, unfortunately, have to learn cannot be put into a textbook. As a medical professional, you will be confronted by scenarios that are emotionally distressing, overwhelming, and difficult. Depending on your specialization, you may wind up working in environments such as ERs that are overstimulating and draining.
Emotional management is one of the most important techniques you can learn during your nursing education to help you prepare for your career. Some colleges even offer mindfulness and meditation courses as part of their curriculum. If not, look into supplemental classes or ask your professors for tips.
Learning how to manage your emotions will ensure that you can help patients to the best of your ability, even when the situation is less than ideal. You will also help yourself deal with a profession that is high-stress by stopping yourself from bringing work home.
Medical Administration
While interacting with patients is obviously important, medical administration is also a huge part of a nurse’s job.
Medical administration is more than just busy work. This is vital paperwork that ensures that a patient’s care team has accurate information about what is happening. Administration also includes performing the right checks before administering medication or doing certain tests to ensure patient well-being.
During your educational journey, drill certain procedures until you have them basically memorized. Make sure that you have important recording procedures down pat and practice administrative procedures.
By the time you enter clinical rotations and hands-on work, you want to be prepared for these small tasks, as they make up a very important foundation of what nurses do.
Preparing Yourself for the Nursing of the Future
While all of the curriculum is vital in your future career as a nurse, certain lessons will help you prepare better for the job. Learning how to navigate high-stress situations, community and social factors for health, and hands-on experience are all crucial aspects of your educational journey.
If you’re considering this career path, learn more about how to become a nurse in South Africa and the necessary qualifications required to get started. And, of course, it’s worth knowing what to expect financially. You can explore what nurses earn in Nigeria or the updated salary structure of nurses in South Africa to better understand your earning potential depending on your location.
When looking into nursing programs, look for schools that support their students holistically and offer learning opportunities to become well-rounded nursing professionals.
