The excitement you feel when accepted to your dream nursing school often kind of fizzles out in the first couple of weeks, and this is because of the many challenges that soon become a reality within a few weeks.
Luckily, you are not the first person to attend nursing school, and many people like you have been there and have experienced the same challenges before. Because of this, solutions have been invented and improved over time to help students like you overcome common nursing school challenges.
This post reveals the challenges nursing students face and how to address them.
If anybody tells you that nursing is difficult, you have to take their word for it. Studying nursing in college or university has its fair share of challenges.
And with a host of responsibilities and so much to learn, you will probably feel the heat as time elapses.
To become a nurse that everybody appreciates for their good work in caring for patients and their loved ones in healthcare settings, you must persevere through nursing school.
The journey is not without challenges. Below are some common challenges that nursing students encounter and how to navigate them to have the best of your days in nursing school.
The biggest and perhaps most common challenge facing nursing students in American nursing schools is the lack of money. Most students do not have enough money to pay fees, pay for accommodation, eat, and sustain themselves in nursing school.
This is because, in most nursing schools, these things cost thousands of dollars per semester. Therefore, they have to take a lot of debt or drain their parents’ savings for their education.
Of course, not many students want to drain their parents’ savings or accumulate debt.
If you feel you don’t have enough money to pay for your fees, accommodation comfortably, and so on, you should consider seeking scholarships. Apply for as many scholarships as possible to get the financial aid you need.
In addition, you should seek part-time employment opportunities near your nursing school. Many places will hire and pay a trainee nurse very decent hourly wages.
Alternatively, you can seek part-time employment online or with local employers, such as restaurants, if you don’t yet have the requisite education to work as a nurse or in a healthcare facility.
Scholarships and part-time jobs can help you to get enough money to survive the financial demands of nursing school.
Nursing school is very demanding because there are endless tasks, projects, and assignments that must be completed on time. And you need to get the best grades too.
In addition to classwork, lab work, presentations, and exams, nursing school is extremely challenging for most students.
This is, in fact, one of the reasons why many students who pursue nursing end up dropping out in the first year or midway. However, while nursing school is demanding, it is something that anyone dedicated enough can handle.
The endless nursing school projects and assignments can be handled in two ways – better planning or outsourcing. You should practice better planning to give yourself an excellent chance to keep up with your schoolwork in nursing school.
Better planning is about writing down a plan of things you will do every day and ensuring you do them.
If you do this and you follow through with your plan, you should be able to complete most of your tasks and assignments on time.
Another way to handle the numerous projects and assignments related to nursing school is outsourcing.
Instead of spending endless hours handling nursing school projects, online tasks, and assignments, you can outsource them to a nursing school academic research business like ours. If you do so, you will have papers completed for you on time.
This will enable you to have fun, read, and revise in nursing school like nobody else because most of your schoolwork will be handled for you.
Most nursing students find clinicals to be a bit difficult, and this is because clinicals involve applying nursing knowledge and also being in the best possible behavior in terms of attitude and professionalism.
In other words, they find clinicals challenging because clinicals put them under the microscope.
While clinicals can be somewhat intimidating, they should not be. They are an opportunity for nurse students to learn more, get a feel of real-life nursing, and identify areas that need improvement.
If you are intimidated by clinicals, you shouldn’t be. Rather than be intimidated, you should embrace them. The best way to ensure you are not intimidated is to prepare for them theoretically.
Read everything you need to know about them and what is expected of you professionally. And when it gets to it, behave as normally and professionally as possible.
Don’t worry about being watched or monitored; ignore it all. Furthermore, take clinicals as an opportunity to ask questions.
If anything you want to learn or to clarify, ask your supervisor. They will provide the necessary information to ensure the patient receives quality and safe care.
Most nursing students have a time management problem, and this is because they have so much to do and very little time to do it.
The list of things that a typical nursing student has to do virtually every week is endless.
This is why most nursing students are usually somewhat behind on schoolwork and have little or zero life outside of schoolwork. Of course, you do not want this to happen to you as a nursing student because it can lead to you being burned out and depressed. Of course, it can also seriously negatively affect your social relationships.
The good thing is that better planning can easily overcome the time management challenge.
Plan your week from Monday to Sunday; write down a schedule/timetable for studying, doing assignments, social time, and so on.
A reasonable timetable will help you to plan your week and to do everything you need to do. Make sure you stick to it for it to work.
Of course, you should tweak it after the first week to ensure it is 100% perfect for you.
Because of the intense schedule of nursing school, including assignments, projects, clinicals, presentations, theoretical instructions, lab work, and so on, nursing students usually experience burnout or burnout symptoms.
These symptoms include constant tiredness, physical exhaustion, migraines, depression, and so on. Burnout/burnout symptoms can lead to nursing students quitting or taking a break from nursing school. Of course, neither of these results is desirable.
As a nursing student, you must anticipate burnout because you will be affected at some point, whether you like it or not. Once you start feeling tired and like giving up, you should know you have a problem and begin addressing it.
You can fight burnout by creating a better weekly schedule for yourself for better time management, taking a break for recharge and rejuvenation, talking to an academic counselor to find ways to re-plan and ease your academic workload, and/or getting more sleep and rest every day.
We also have online nursing writers who can help you to complete homework and assignments. So, instead of reading for many hours to complete a nursing paper, let our experts assist you.
Lack of family support is a big problem facing nursing students in classrooms across the country. Family support is important. Nursing students with supportive parents, siblings, and other relatives often have an easier time than those without. Because the support they get often includes financial support, emotional support (a shoulder to lean on), assistance with child care for students that are parents, transportation (to and from school), phone plan, and insurance coverage. Students who get family support usually perform better than those who do not.
The only problem with this challenge is that the lack of family support cannot be directly addressed. You cannot force your family to start being supportive if they are not. However, whatever you need help with, you can find ways to address it. For example, if you need financial support, you can try to address it by getting scholarships or part-time work. If you need emotional support, you can, and you should make friends at school and find the ones that you can talk to genuinely and talk to them. Find an affordable daycare and use it if you need assistance with child care. Talk to your partner about it (even if separated) to see if they can directly or indirectly provide care for the child while you are doing your schoolwork.
Most students in nursing classrooms right now have grown up around technology. While they know how to communicate via different apps and gadgets, their physical or verbal communication skills are usually non-existent.
Even communicating in writing via paper or email is often quite tricky. In many professions, you can survive without proper communication skills, but not in nursing. Because nursing is 100% teamwork, teamwork is only possible when there is proper communication among team members.
If you are a poor communicator and not a very social nurse, you should take deliberate steps to correct the situation. You can correct the poor communicator situation by taking communication skills courses or programs online.
There are many such programs online that are cheap or free. They will teach you the skills to communicate and collaborate effectively with your peers and members of other professions, e.g., physicians, clinicians, etc.
You should also try as much as possible to become more social or outgoing. This will help you to easily create conversations with strangers, especially when it matters (at the workplace).
Nursing students have to handle the challenge of grueling lectures virtually every day from Monday to Friday. The lecturers usually cover complicated theories and concepts that require a strong background in biology, chemistry, physiology, and anatomy. Intense or grueling lectures generally continue from the first year to the last year of college. So there is no escaping them, taking a break, or anything like that.
Long and hard lectures cannot be ignored or avoided and can only be embraced. This is what you need to know when it comes to these lectures.
Moreover, if you have not yet started nursing school and are reading this article to prepare for the future, you can take biology, chemistry, and physiology as pre-nursing subjects to give yourself a good foundation for nursing school.
If you are already in nursing school, try taking notes during lectures and reading them afterward. This will help you retain the knowledge contained therein and help you find out if you need to read more on a topic.
When in class, you should pay attention to what is being said. In case you do not understand anything, you should ask questions.
Remember, your lecturers are nurse educators. They are there to educate you, and they are usually happy to answer any questions. So don’t be afraid to ask if you do not understand anything.
Nursing school can be broken down into two words – lectures and exams. Ten or even twenty years after nursing school, you won’t remember much about it other than the fact that it was most tough lectures and exams.
The typical nursing school semester will have you taking multiple tests and exams. And most of them are often tough and require deep knowledge of nursing concepts and theories to pass. Therefore, most students usually do not have an easy time when tests and exams roll in.
The challenge of tough exams and tests is probably the toughest for nursing students. Because if it is not addressed, it can lead to failed tests and exams, which can prevent graduation.
The best way to overcome this challenge is to study hard. Make a schedule for studying every day of the week except for one rest day. Study effectively by taking notes and asking yourself questions. Proper and consistent studying will give you the knowledge you need to pass your nursing tests and exams.
After nursing school, post-graduation training is usually needed, which is vital for licensure and certifications. Post-graduation training is often very mentally and physically draining, and there is nothing you can do about it than try and make it to the end.
Making friends and having a good work-life balance can help you to make it through post-graduation training. Furthermore, finding a physical hobby like hiking or running with a group of friends can also help you to make it through post-graduation training.
Nursing school is not easy! However, the struggle is worth it in the end. The hard work and long hours you put in will eventually pay off.
Do not stress yourself with school. Instead, map out your strengths and weaknesses, and find ways to live with them. If you are pursuing your BSN, ADN, MSN, DNP, or Ph.D. in nursing, go after your dreams. There are many nursing colleges and universities that offer competitive nursing programs. Once you get admission, use the above strategies to defeat challenges and emerge victorious. We need more nurses as the nurse shortage is an ever-evolving issue.
Related: Interesting nursing theories and theorists
You are on the right path. It is only a matter of time before everything will fall into its rightful place, as it always does for those who are resilient, committed, and resistant to giving up.
That said, we offer complete nursing assignment help that can help you accelerate your nursing degree. We charge affordable costs for nursing papers. Talk to our chat support experts for assistance. All the best as you do what your passion drives you. Nursing is a very noble profession.
Our expert writers can come through for you by helping you with your nursing class assignments online.
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