cna/aspiring nurse

hello!

i am so glad to have found this board! i have been searching all over!
i have been working as CNA for 3 years, i got my cert from my high school, a vocational/technical school. im currently attending a local school for all my nursing pre-reqs.

may i pick your brain?
i began taking a&p 1 last semester, but dropped because it was soo overwhelming with other classes. unfortunately i didnt have the chance to take biology or much chemistry in highschool so i was really lost with a&p. while it is all somewhat familar to me, mostly what i understand is from seeing at work, or reading ( thank you merck manual, haha)
so
would you suggest taking bio or chem ( or both) before attempting a&p?
i know i am a long way from nursing school but i want to be in the best possible position when i do get there.

thanks!

recka

recka wrote:hello!

i am so glad to have found this board! i have been searching all over!
i have been working as CNA for 3 years, i got my cert from my high school, a vocational/technical school. im currently attending a local school for all my nursing pre-reqs.

may i pick your brain?
i began taking a&p 1 last semester, but dropped because it was soo overwhelming with other classes. unfortunately i didnt have the chance to take biology or much chemistry in highschool so i was really lost with a&p. while it is all somewhat familar to me, mostly what i understand is from seeing at work, or reading ( thank you merck manual, haha)
so
would you suggest taking bio or chem ( or both) before attempting a&p?
i know i am a long way from nursing school but i want to be in the best possible position when i do get there.

thanks!

recka

Glad to meet you, recka!

I would suggest Bio first, as that would help you in A & P.

Hope you drop by as often as you can, and also drop by the CNA Forum, too. Please keep us posted on your path to becoming a nurse.

'Cat'

Thanks Cat!
Its nice to meet ya! :)

I agree- take Biology first- it's more closely related to A&P and will give you a better foundation

Welcom reca, I too started as a cna.

If what you want is to be as ready for a&p as you can be Bio 101 is a good starter class (the basics on the way cells operate is one of the main focuses for this class), but I would have to recomend an intro to Chemistry course also because of the heads up it will give you towards understanding how drugs may interact with intracellular reactions / the first pass effect, binding sites, intrcellular cat ions, positive and negativly charged ions, free raddicals etc.......

If you have a good advisor; preferably one of the nursing instructors, he/she could guide you on the path. Some of the classes I took, though not required by my school, I found the knowledge base very helpful when it came to classes like "Dosage Calculations" already knowing how to do dementional annalisis made my life a whole lot easier in that class. Thanks for this goes to Chem-111.

Now that I have you completly stupified, let me just say this: many people have done just fine without these classes, but I'm glad that I took them before-hand as they were a great resource for me and when they (finaly) mentioned somthing that I was framiliar with In Dosage Calc. and I looked across the room and saw one of my classmates from chem-111 smile back at me I knew that I wasn't ever going to regret those three hour lectures from back in Chem class ever again, now Bio Chem, well lets just say "I didn't know what I was thinking taking that class".

Welcome abord and I hope I didn't scare you too much.:D