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!