By 
iStock | Nikola Nastasic
Here is what my curriculum would look like if I were Dean Nurse Eye Roll.
Freshman Year
Anatomy Abbreviated
How to Be the Best CNA Ever
Vitals + Developing Your Nursey Sixth Sense
How to Talk to Patients and Their Families Without Sounding Like an Idiot
Mastering the Nurse Walk/Run
Optional Elective: Walking Quickly in Danskos
Mental Health Nursing
Lab Values That Doctors Care About
Nutrition + GI System
Optional Elective: How to Not Turn Into a Morbidly Obese, Lazy RN
Sophomore Year
How to Use IV Pumps + Give IV/IVPB Meds
Cardiac Nursing (Minus the Fluff)
How to Do 25 Things at Once
Optional Elective: Eating Your Lunch in Less than Seven Minutes
Giving and Taking Report
Meds You’ll Actually Use and How to Administer Them
Optional Elective: Becoming a Medication + Applesauce Mixologist
How to Make Kids Cry (aka Pediatrics)
Respiratory-ness
How to Not Get Sued
Junior Year
Med-Surg (Minus the Fluff)
Holding Your Pee for 12 Hours
Optional Elective: Learning How to Not Hate Your Life While Working Nights
Not Crying When Doctors Yell at You (Dealing With Difficult Coworkers)
Dealing With Pain Med Seekers
Understanding Diabetes and How to Teach Patients About It
Gross Wound Care
Optional Elective: Mastering 700 Different Kinds of Tape
Dealing With Dying People + Their Families
Head-to-Toe Assessments for a Nurse (NOT an Advance Nurse Practitioner)
Senior Year
Nursing Procedures You’ll Actually Use
Optional Elective: Helping Doctors with Bedside Procedures
How to Talk to Physicians
Charge Nurse 101
How to Not Cry and Be Useful During Codes
How to Delegate to CNAs
Critical Care Nursing
Mastering Microsoft Outlook
How to Realistically Manage Your Time
There would be no 25-question quizzes after being responsible for 300-plus pages of material.
There would be no memorizing ridiculous amounts of information and medications, just to forget it all for the next exam.
You’ll actually know how to be a nurse when you graduate and it won’t be up to your hospital to train you/teach you literally everything.
You would spend 10 minutes of the first class on nursing theorists and not an entire semester.
You wouldn’t be taught assessment skills for advance practice; you’d be taught assessments for normal nursing practice.
You wouldn’t spend four years learning how to work in a perfect nursing world that doesn’t exist.
You wouldn’t spend $400 to $700 per year on textbooks you’ll never look at again and can’t resell after you graduate because they’re outdated.
The focus of your education wouldn’t be on passing one single test.
You wouldn’t waste the time and money on two years of prerequisites that have nothing to do with nursing.
To read more, visit NurseEyeRoll.com.
Learning how to be a great nurse at the bedside while maintaining your sanity at home is no easy task. Becoming Nursey: From Code Blues to Code Browns, How to Take Care of Your Patients and Yourself talks about how to realistically live as a nurse, both at home and at the bedside…with a little humor and some shenanigans along the way. Get ready: It’s about to get real, real nursey. You can get your own copy at at NurseEyeRoll.com (pdf), Amazon (paperback) orGoodreads (ebook).
