Culture of PA school vs Culture of RN school

[AlexOkishkemuncie]

Yeah, I know, BSRN and MPA are not directly parallel in their level of education or scope of practice.   Let's set that aside.

 

Curious if anyone has direct experience of both.   I'm a nontraditional student with a BS and am back in school doing my first year of an RN program, primarily due to its convenience to my locale.   It is a bit rough, though, and I'm wondering of a master-PA program would be a better fit.    I know five other RNs or student RNs who hvae a similar story to me.... thrived with very high GPA in earth/bio/social science.   I also did very well in a variety of legal/business/politics tossed in for a good interdisciplinary mix.  

 

Now in RN school, I regularly run into language problems....

 

* words or turns of a phrase aren't always defined or need to be revised to be instantly understood at first glance...

 

* sometimes they're used in contradictory ways,

 

* exams include questions for which the right answer requires reading in something that is implied - only we have to know when to do that and when not to do that, but without any indicators or yardsticks to make that call

 

* If you really probe the language issues to get an answer you can hang your hat on, then what I hear is that I am a problem and my thinking is deficient .... but don't worry it will get better as I figure it out.....  in other words, bad communication and unwitting implications are my fault when I notice them and speak up.

 

I never had a chronic recurrence of these sorts of communication problems working in business, law, or science, so I have trouble believing that the problem is with my thinking or language skills.   It's hard to ascribe this to anything other than the culture of my program (and possibly nursing in general).

 

Comments anyone?    Anyone know about both RN and PA?   If not, would you mind sharing share your perceptions on the use of language in your program?   Do you think exams are fair?

 

Thanks for any thoughts,

Alex Okishkemuncie

[LT_Oneal_PAC]

Trust me, it's a nursing school thing. I struggled with nursing tests throughout both years. I heard the same things as about "I just had to learn to critically think." I also heard the same from countless students I precepted as a RN. It's not that, it's just figuring out what they want. You will learn what they want eventually. For the NCLEX I didn't study a thing, as I knew I wasn't knowledge deficient, and just took nothing but practice tests for days. Did about 2k questions the week before my NCLEX. Finally got the hang of it and passed NCLEX with the minimum (75) questions easy. Well I say easy. You still have the language issue and aren't sure, but I was answering a much higher percentage correct.

 

PA school is much different. Much more scientific instead of answering based on what you believe their interpretation of the question/ scenario. There are still questions where you aren't given quite enough info or it's poorly worded, but it's not deliberately trying to trick you like in nursing. It's usually an honest mistake when it's poorly worded. I think the exams are challenging, but fair. I won't give specifics, but my GPA in pa school is, as well as my undergrad sGPA, MUCH higher than my nursing GPA. So don't think you're stupid or don't know how to think, just realize you need to learn how to think like them.

[dannydude57]

I went through a BSN program and am currently a first year PA student. In my opinion, you will face similar challenges in any high level medical field. Medicine has its own language and you have to learn it to thrive. Medicine (and nursing) have their own thought processes and values you have to learn to succeed. What worries me is that it sounds like you are asking for help, but your instructors have trouble giving you rationals for how you should think or what you should value and why. These are concepts that pave the way for critical thinking. 

 

Finding a mentor may help, either faculty or fellow students. Sorry to hear about your difficulties. When I was in nursing school, they always told me "careful, nurses eat their young."

[winterallsummer]

Honestly, it all depends where you go.  The faculty at my school are very unreasonable with struggling students and honestly would rather see them fail than succeed (because they think they may worsen their PANCE pass rates).  Other schools are much more lenient.  I don't think it's fair to make a broad generalization either way.