Advice for tomorrow’s nursing school students

Considering their rightfully elevated status in this post-pandemic world, could there be an increase in nursing-school applicants in the future? If so, it might be time for some advice. We asked several nurses for some tips on how they made it through their time in school. Here’s what they had to say:

“What helped me the most was finding a group of students that I could study with. I was really against the entire idea of study groups because for some reason, any time I had to do any sort of group project in high school, I was always lumped in with the students who didn’t want to do anything. But one of my classes had mandatory study groups and it was a huge help.”

-Rebecca Doran, Chicago

“You don’t really think of nursing school as a place where you would exert a lot of physical activity but I found that if I would take a spin class in the middle of the day or do Pilates in the morning, it would help keep me sharp. You just spend so much time focusing on minutia that your brain shuts down unless your body remains active. Yoga helped a lot, too.” -Geraldine Plank, Schaumburg, Ill.

“If I could give anyone advice, it would be to pay close attention to your charting. It’s such a humongous part of your job when you are actually working and I always felt like it was underemphasized when I went to school. But really, charting is everything. The docs won’t know what’s going on and the other nurses will have a hard time deciphering what is happening with your patient if you don’t chart effectively.”

-Ben Mullen, Fort Myers, Fla.