Nursing Student-a-Phobia
This is an affliction so common that even people outside of nursing schools have heard of it, simply from their associations with nursing students. No, nursing student-a-phobia is not an irrational fear of nervous nursing students with needles. This is a term that I have invented that refers to the paranoia that strikes all nursing students during their medical and science courses that makes them say – “I think I HAVE that disease! I have all the symptoms – I’m certain I won’t make it to sophomore year!”
I have the utmost sympathy for the nursing pathophysiology professors who, for generations now, have had to deal with these post-class hurricanes of hysteria. I mentioned in previous blogs, how incredibly academic and studious nursing students generally are. Combine this passion for information with the anxiety of nursing school and the result is that every headache is a brain tumor and every bout of stress related heartburn is stomach cancer.
This is in no way to callously disregard those nursing students who actually do suffer from serious medical conditions. In fact, a woman in my nursing class found a lump in her breast and was diagnosed with breast cancer while it was still in the early stages, thanks in part to her medical awareness stemming from nursing school.
I’m talking about the rest of the students in the class. The ones who absorb every last detail of every condition they learn about, seemingly by osmosis sometimes due to the heavy reading requirements. Nursing school is not for the faint of academic heart. Even the most prepared students find themselves overwhelmed by the demands of a nursing school curriculum, especially in the beginning.
The subsequent stress and lack of sleep can produce many different symptoms, such as sleeplessness, headaches, digestive problems and other signs and symptoms that often mimic more serious disorders. To their enormous credit, nursing professors graciously handle nursing student-a-phobia with patience and humor as they gently reassure each student that they are most likely not dying of a condition that almost exclusively afflicts the tropical populations of South America.
As a freshman nursing student, shooting pains in my left shoulder sent me screaming to health services, certain that I was having a heart attack. The calm, wise physician on duty reassured me that I had simply strained an axial nerve in my shoulder – from carrying my heavy backpack of nursing textbooks around campus!
Once referred to as “alternative”, many methods of complementary medicine have made their way into private health insurance plans, family medicine offices and nursing textbooks. That’s right. In today’s 
During these challenging economic times, when job seekers are braving lines for hours just to submit their resume, nurses and nursing students are bound to be envied. Nurses are being courted by hospitals and other employers with sweepstakes opportunities to win new SUVs, cash bonuses, vacation time and gift cards.
Nursing students are a notoriously studious bunch (note how I chose studious versus nerdy), myself included. A nursing education is extremely comprehensive on its own, covering cellular, chemical, physiological, mathematical, psychological and every other type of science with the possible exception of nuclear physics. Although now that I’ve said it, there is bound to be a dean of nursing in some BSN or MSN program somewhere who is considering a curriculum change.
Unless their last name happens to be Trump, collecting enough money for a college education is a challenge that all high school students face. During the current economic downturn, when one or both parents may be unemployed or at risk for it and budgets are tight, fund raising for the future is more difficult than ever. In addition to the rising cost of tuition, aspiring nursing students need to budget for more and costlier textbooks than most other majors, lab and clinical fees, uniforms, a stethoscope and all the other requirements of a program comprised of both clinical and hands-on training segments.
There is no one right path into the field of nursing. I learned this from experience, as I’m sure many other nurses have. Somewhere around junior year of high school, I combined an innate need to nurture with a love of science and a writer’s natural curiosity about the human condition and voila – suddenly I was an aspiring nursing major.
