[NPInfo] my nursing education oddysee

[Eric Doerfler]

Good God, man, just go to MEDICAL SCHOOL!
e 

-----Original Message-----
From: npinfo-bounces at nurse.net [mailto:npinfo-bounces at nurse.net] On Behalf
Of Jeffrey Hazzard
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 12:32 PM
To: npinfo npinfo
Subject: [NPInfo] my nursing education oddysee


  I went to a generic BSN program at a big state university after completing
the prereq requirements.  I was told that the education was, indeed,
theoretical, but there was a purpose behind the theory.  If I understood the
concepts I could plug in the facts easily and I would have a conceptual
basis for evaluating the indication, application, and effectiveness of
interventions.  I went with it, tried to hide in clinicals because I quickly
recognized that the question-askers appeared unprepared to the instructor,
and muddled my way through.  I persevered, survived a gauntlet of
young-eating faculty, graduated wholly unprepared to do the job, and taught
myself nursing after I graduated.  I did this out of shame for the sham of
the degree that I held.  
   
    I wanted nothing to do with any more nursing school.  Then, a decade
went by and I realized that clinical nursing was a young person's game.  My
knees ached a little.  My back ached a little.  My mind had stopped
expanding.  Nothing but the ER interested me, and yet I was like a sled dog
in the ER, working with ever-fewer staff and ever-more acutely ill patients.
   
    I got recruited for graduate school.  I was told it would all be
different.  This would be a private school which was much more accountable
because it was tuition-driven.  It was a clinical masters, not laden with
inane theory.  I challenged that I couldn't sit still for any more theory.
I was calmly assured that I should start the program and find out for
myself, that I'd be pleasantly surprised that all the instructors were in
practice themselves and firmly planted in reality.  I bit.  I went. 
   
    Soon, I was back from wherest I'd come.  In the belly of the beast.
Let's just say that the shiny wore off real quickly.  If this was clinical,
I'd have hated to sit through a theoretical program even more.  Only 1/3 of
the classes in the program had anything to do with patient care.
RIDICULOUS.  I beat them at their own game.  I got a 4.0 with honors and
then I wrote a scathing nationally published editorial and told them what I
thought.  I was cast out like a red-headed step child.  Embarrassed by the
sham of the graduate letters behind my name, I hurriedly taught myself to be
a NP.
   
     So, another decade has gone by.  I am being wooed again to believe that
a DNP is grounded in reality.  This time, I'm not biting.  Only now I know
why it is not a clinical or practical doctorate.  Because there aren't any
nursing faculty to teach reality to us, only a theoretical parallel world of
idealism.
   
           Jeff Hazzard
   

       
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