Hello all!
I thought it proper to introduce myself after a few months of researching the valuable advice from the forums. My name is Heather- 26yo mom of 2 in elem school. I am currently an RN student set to graduate in Dec 2007. I also have my Associates Degree. I recently viewed an organ procurement which Reignited my passion to undertake this premed journey. I appreciate this site and all the valuable information within!!! It is a Godsend to all the premed students like me who dont quite “fit” the mold.
From what I gathered it is best to major in an area of interest (mine psychology) and take the necessary prereqs. My GPA is 2.9. I have had the intro to chem and bio classes. I know i have a lot of work ahead!!!
I would enjoy hearing from any other RNs or others in the medical field who have taken this premed plunge and any words of wisdom they might have in surviving…or getting in to a med school! I thought about working at a university hospital possibly?
It is an honor to meet you all!!! 
Best of Luck!!!
Hello and welcome!
I’m a MS III and an RN, you can do it, there is a long road ahead, you are very young still do not let anyone tell you otherwise,
My advice is to graduate pass the boards and work as an RN for a while, go back to school, many nursing jobs pay for college, do not tell others you are premed ( this will cause you trouble), just work towards the BS, be a grade hog! get the A’s
Welcome to the marathon!
I appreciate it!! Congrats to you for your success
Did you find that your work in trauma prepared you for med school?
I am struggling with what area of nursing to go into that would provide the best knowledge base…what would you recommend now in retrospect?
Speaking as a former OB nurse and a current family doctor, I have to tell you that nursing won’t prepare you for med school – at least not in the way many people believe. The content is related, of course, but it’s different. So go into an area of nursing that appeals to you.
From where I sit now, I think the best (as in most challenging) nursing positions are in critical care and emergency room. From the pre-med standpoint, they’re also good because you are working alongside doctors all day long, whereas in less high-intensity environments, your work as an RN is to direct a team of nursing personnel and your interaction with physicians is somewhat limited.
Good luck!
Mary
The part that Nursing helps in is the interactions with Patients and some assessment skills, as a RN you will learn to have good assessment skills as an RN but not as a DOC, when it came to assessment part of Basic Sci I dropped what I had learned and opened up to the way it is taught in Medical school, once out in clinicals ( soon) I then will incorporate it all together. You do get valuable experience
I think if I was to do nursing right before Med school I would do ER since many of the different diseases come through the door and you deal witha lot of different skills
BTW Mary is awesome and I would listen to her, I PM’d her a lot at the start here!
Good for you! I am a nurse practitioner who has finally decided to go on the pre-med journey. I am a 44 year old mother of 3 children ages 9, 7 and 4. I am currently taking pre-calc (to prepare my brain for physics), and am signed up for Bio and Chem for the fall semester, which of course have already taken but med schools won’t accept 20 year old grades. I know that I have a long journey ahead of me, and sometimes I think I’m crazy to start this now, but on the other hand I know it’s crazy not to.
You are not crazy NP2MD!!!
My greatest fear is to be old…rocking away in my chair…Pondering what dreams I should have followed as well as my regrets. You know those bitter old folks…
I think i would prefer them to say i am off my rocker now!!
I also believe DRFP is right in that you should tell as few people as necessary that you are premed. Even when other unit techs found out I am about to graduate with my RN, they feel threatened and start the whole junior high thing of talking behind your back and not liking you. Needless to say I am transferring and leaving silently to avoid the drama!!! I am very humble and have high moral and ethical standards…oh well…Se La Vi.
- NP2MD Said:
Yes, thats one of the reasons I went to the Caribbean, they accept the old work.
Heck, jealousy is not limited to the realm of nurses. I invited my boss to my graduation with BS in healthcare administration. What a mistake that was! I was fired shortly after. Turns out she didn’t have a degree and with my past military experience plus military degree I was more qualified to do her job than she was. Dooof that I was I didn’t know any of that. I was just so excited to finally graduate from college as a nontrad I ASSumed she had an MBA. I mean she talked about going “back” to school so my ASSumption was it was for another graduate degree. Her position required a MBA but I guess not…
Anyway that’s enough of that. 
- DRFP Said:
My advice is to graduate pass the boards and work as an RN for a while, go back to school, many nursing jobs pay for college, do not tell others you are premed ( this will cause you trouble), just work towards the BS, be a grade hog! get the A's
You're not kidding! I tried to keep my career aspirations on the down-low at the clinic where I work, but word eventually gets around. I noticed that a few of the RNs went from being very friendly, and full of helpfulness ("Hey, you should think about nursing school!...") to not very nice at all. I suppose if I worked more often, or planned to make my current job a career, I would be rather miserable. As it is, I have further motivation to do what I need to do to move onward. I'm not burning any bridges, but I'm not paying much attention to the fire-prone ones either. And I'm just an EMT/CNA... I feel quite certain that I'd be an absolute pariah here if I were an RN planning to "jump ship."
On the other hand... I'm also a hospice volunteer at my hospital's palliative care unit. The nurses there are saints. They love the fact that I want to go to medical school, and the charge nurse introduces me to the MDs as her pre-med hospice volunteer. They all seem happy to discuss the relevant clinical details of each patient's care. I've been on the unit during the deaths of two patients so far. The patients are all DNR, so there are no monitors and few alarms (an occasional IV pump). This is when these nurses really shine. I admire the way they make sure the patients and their families are as comfortable as possible. A person with the skills of an ED nurse and the compassion of a palliative care nurse would make a dynamite physician, in my estimation.
Follow your heart,
Tim
I just want to say from personal experience, only the real friends and Family that care for you will be happy for you, even my loving wife ( who is behind me) is having trouble now, where I do my clinicals student Doctors are called Doctors, (Yes we let the patients know we are students) but my wife said “Do I have to refer to you as Doctor?” I told her yes she will to others, out of respect. She does not like that she will have to do this for some reason?
Bill,
My assumption is she works there…yes? Because if you’re talking about your wife calling you doctor at home…well I can think of a ton of other words my wife will call me at home before she calls me Dr. Croooz. 
Yeah I was focusing on who really cares about you and your accomplishments, My wife cares and wants me to keep succeeding but it’s tough for her I guess due to the stereo typed MD, I think if its tough for her then others really have a problem with the concept.
Howdy,
BTW, you CAN do it… so just get cracking!
I agree with all the posts above, if YOU want to be a physician, then YOU just go ahead and DO SO.
I had an Associates in Nursing so my “fork in the road” involved almost no “backtracking”. There is a dirty little secret not shared with nurses (I learned only after I investigated going back). The secret is that ANYTHING you do after the nursing prerequisites the so called “clinicals” ARE considered “technical training” and do NOT transfer back to “big school”, in fact even the sciences do not cut the mustard; the Chemistry nurses take does not meet the gen chem requirment… The A&P, likewise…
SO, I decided just to do another 4 year degree, and go through and DO IT RIGHT, the advantage of nursing school was that while my undergrad peers were racking 16-18 hours, I only needed to do 14-16, it enabled me to focus and do well on the Pre-requisites AND teach a physiology lab from the second year ON
The grades were decent 3.77 overall and 4.0 in major, the MCAT sucked (<25), all those precious birthdays… experience galore, I sailed in on THE FIRST TRY
Let me share Richard’s rule #12 (these were developed for those returning to school for ANYTHING, thus more general).
12. The two general rules of the “hoopsâ€:
General rule #1: Every program of study has certain requirements. That is benchmarks or milestones that everyone in the profession has to accomplish. I think of them as “hoopsâ€. Everyone who accomplishes this goal has jumped these hoops. Understand, being older does NOT exempt you from jumping these hoops, fair or not that is the way it is!
General rule #2: The “fancier†the program (ones with new initials MSW, RN, PhD, MD) the more tedious and strict the requirements (the hoops). Nobody will ever help you bypass your particular set of hoops. Remember as well, some hoops have to be jumped high enough (the grades have to be good enough) as well. The Non traditional label is handy in many ways such as showing discipline and initiative. It is also helpful with getting help like tutoring. However, being an older student will never excuse you from your particular set of hoops. DO NOT EVEN TRY HOOP SNEAKING. You should know ALL of this in advance (remember number 1).
A word of warning, if you go to a school that grants a “degreeâ€, that bypasses hoops, like the “MBA-every-other-weekend†, you will not get the kind of status, respect privileges (and money) that those who jumped the hoops did. IN fact these may be a rip off and you will get nothing but a LOT of student debt. The easy way to test for a “hoop-by-passer†is to check and see how much of their courses transfer back to a traditional school.
Good LUCK
Richard
First, Richard, welcome to OPM and I am so glad you are here. I very much appreciated reading your story.
Second, I like your rules! The one people have heard me repeat ad infinitum is kind of the same as your “hoops” - “it’s their game, their ball, and their rules.” I wholeheartedly agree that there is no point in attempting to try and get around those hoops.
FWIW I will say that my experience at a BSN program wasn’t quite as tough in terms of credits transferred… at the time I did it (which was, OK, over 30 years ago!!), nursing school was an “upper-level” major and so the first two years of college were regular ol’ 4-year-college credits. Then during the two years spent in the nursing school, “elective” credits were also just part of the regular university curriculum.
But you’re right, all those courses that began with NURS did not count as anything but “all-other” credits when AMCAS toted 'em up, even if it was NURS340, “Pathophysiology and Disease” - sorry, it’s not a BCPM unless the course designation starts with CHEM, BIO, PHYS or MATH.
And I gotta say, when I took my science prerequisites I have to admit that those nursing science courses weren’t in the same category…
Mary
Hi and welcome Richard… I definitely appreciate the encouragement. Best of luck with your MS4 year!! It is quite the accomplishment juggling everything you have and making it this far…Gives me hope as I start the pre-med process in Jan as I work as an ER RN. Please keep us updated.
Heather,
Just be sure you interface with a good advisor so that your “trip”, is as efficient as possible, being this close out of school much of it will be a snap.
The other grand advantage for nurses is that we have been taught to be above ALL else the patient’s advocate. I think you will find as you move forward it is the interpersonal skills that will serve you best!
If you should need anything, even (and especially) an unqualified and heartfelt boost like the popular “YOU GO GIRL!”, give a yell.
I consider that a sacred duty, as they say… we are all in this together
Richard
- Richard B Said:
Just be sure you interface with a good advisor so that your "trip", is as efficient as possible, being this close out of school much of it will be a snap.
The other grand advantage for nurses is that we have been taught to be above ALL else the patient's advocate. I think you will find as you move forward it is the interpersonal skills that will serve you best!
If you should need anything, even (and especially) an unqualified and heartfelt boost like the popular "YOU GO GIRL!", give a yell.
I consider that a sacred duty, as they say... we are all in this together
Richard
Be very careful!
- Quote:
If this is what you want do not let anyone take it "Away"