#accesstonursing

[mybodyisawarzone]

So happy I’ve passed my first u it after blood sweat and tears!!! 👩‍⚕️👩🏼‍💻👩🏼‍🎓🙅🏼‍♀️💁🏼‍♀️ #accesstonursing #nursingcourse #passed https://www.instagram.com/p/BohakV1Hd648POtXiXvni6QcQxT1a7xDNaW3K80/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=146duv73n51zm

[mybodyisawarzone]

Got accepted onto my access to nursing course 👩🏼‍🎓👩🏼‍💻💁🏼‍♀️ #accesstonursing #futurenurse #mentalhealthnurse #generalnurse https://www.instagram.com/p/BnvbFYYHC702xbngYfkyoyM482jnm_1g7GcdZI0/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=10p1yy840z2sc

[nursingandthings]

My First Impressions on the Access to Nursing Course

Introduction

First off, hi! I’m Luka. I’m applying to university next year for the Adult Nursing course, but I need a level 3 qualification so I chose to do the Access course as it was a perfect fit for my situation.

First off, who can apply to this course? Anyone! As long as you are an adult learner (19+). You can have a level 3 already, or you may not. As long as you have some GCSEs. If not, you will have to do them alongside the course and get at least passes in your English and maths.

Week 1

Day one.

I started college on Monday 12th September. On the day I went into a computer suite with other Access to Nursing (I will now refer to this as AtN for ease) students and was taken through a register so everyone could find out what group they were in. I was put into group A with 18 other students.

After that we went into a classroom to meet our tutor and she went through everything the course entails and gave us a handbook to flip through. We were then met with a Nursing Assessment, which isn’t nearly as scary as it sounds. It was just several questions about why we wanted to do Nursing, and other such related questions. There wasn’t much else to the day other than that.

Day two.

Today we had another induction kind of day as we really didn’t do much. We went to a computer room to look up universities and list our 5 that we want to apply to.

Day three.

We had our first real lessons at last! Biology, my favourite. She took us through slowly but surely which was great, as all of us had been out of education for a long time. Our first unit is the cell structure and its components – equivalent to AS-level biology. We did a little practical on this. We took a swab of our cheek cells and took some onion cells on a slide and compared them. The lesson was fun and engaging.

Week 2

Day four.

We had a full day today of double psychology and nursing law classes. We started off in psychology where our teacher went through what we will be learning, which is stress and anxiety disorders. Not much note taking was involved as we mainly listened to him chat away. After our break we had nursing law class which was also like psychology: just an introduction on the class itself. We briefly went through some law terms (I.e. Tort law, common law, etc). Finally, we went back to psychology and we did an introduction on ourselves. We had to tell the class why we want to do nursing and what kind of nursing we’d like to do. It was a pretty good mix I thought!

Day five.

On Tuesday’s we were with our tutor all day as she holds the study skills class and the tutorial after. We have two units to hand in for study skills, one being a big presentation at the end. She went through different ways to study, it was a little boring but she herself said this class is boring, haha! After our breaks we started up our UCAS application – everything is all starting to become real now. I filled in my personal details and next week I will start writing in my personal statement! I already started drafting it months ago, though.

Day six (today).

It’s the third and last day of the week for college which is three full sessions of biology. Again, I enjoyed it. I felt like I learnt a lot. We studied the cell membrane and how molecules move across it. It was a lot to take in. We did a little practical at the end where we took two slides of red onion skin and soaked one in 1% sucrose solution, and one in distilled water, then compared the two. I was fascinated by what I saw and ended up taking photos of it through the microscope (pictures are soon to come!).  

Conclusion

I’m enjoying myself, and I feel like I finally have a purpose. For the past two years I’ve been working shitty retail jobs to save money for university. I like that I’m back to studying and I’m extremely excited to start my career! In terms of my experience at my college: it’s great. A few blips at the start as the college was quite disorganised; so there was a lot of confusion on the enrolment and induction day, but everything has smoothened out since. My peers are all lovely and friendly, as are the tutors/lecturers. So far I highly recommend this course!

*photo: notes from my biology class