If you go into nursing school is it easy to transfer to becoming a doctor??
#medical-education #med-school #medicine #doctor #nursing
4 answers
Mary Beth’s Answer
They are totally different focuses on health and well-being. Medicine is disease focused on treating with pharmaceuticals mostly, and not looking at root causes. That is changing with some newer docs beginning to look outside the little black box of science. Many MDs specialize these days, and use a fairly narrow focus of who and what they treat...hence you see many folks with several docs treating various parts of their body, but not always communicating well with each other.
Nursing, in quality schools, is more holistically focused and looks at how disease and illness affect not only the individual, family, and community. While nurses do follow doctor orders, they are also the last line of defense in protecting patients from unintended consequences, and act as advocates for their rights. There a thousand kinds of nursing, and each new job you take you add to your knowledge base and skills. Only 50% of RNs work in hospitals, the other 50% in community settings, offices, schools, etc.
A registered nurse can practice anywhere, including alone. Doctors can practice anywhere, also, but need a nurse to help always.
Follow your heart and your passion, whether medicine or nursing. Both are honorable professions...but not interchangeable in any ways.
Richard’s Answer
Typical medical school prerequisites include:
Biology: Lecture – 4 semesters; Lab – 1 semester
General Chemistry: Lecture – 2 semesters; Lab – 1 semester
Organic Chemistry: Lecture – 2 semesters; Lab – 1 semester
Biochemistry: Lecture – 1 semester
General Physics: Lecture – 2 semesters; Lab – 1 semester
Math: Statistics – 1 semester
English: Rhetoric (Composition) and Literature – 2 semesters
Scott’s Answer
Scott recommends the following next steps:
Student Voices by CV’s Answer
On the one hand, going to nursing school won’t take away from the classes you have to take in medical school because they are different types of training. Doctors are trained to think about diseases and how to treat them, while nurses are trained to provide these medications and other care to patients. Going to nursing school and working in a medical environment will certainly make someone knowledge and more familiar with terms you will see again in medical school, they you are expected to apply that knowledge differently. Both forms of training require cost, so I would consider your reason for considering doing both if you think one position will make you happy. I do know people that were nurses and later decided to become doctors later in their lives because they wanted to help patients in a different way. Consider asking nurses you know why they choose nursing instead of become a doctor and vice versa for doctors,