When you’re in the middle of a marathon, it’s too late to train. That’s what Jeanette Crawford, RN, has learned in her role supporting nursing students at Georgia Perimeter College in Clarkston.
“We found that many of our students lacked the strong reading, studying, test-taking and time-management skills they needed to complete a professional program, so we gave seminars to teach those skills in the first semester,” said Crawford, associate professor of nursing and director of the tutorial laboratory at the college. “But many students didn’t have the time to come, once classes had started. It was too little, too late.”
So Crawford and other nursing faculty decided to help students before they entered the nursing program. In August, Georgia Perimeter College held its first nursing boot camp, but there weren’t any jumping jacks or pushups.
“This workout was exercise for the brain,” Crawford said.
The idea was to mentally prepare nursing students for the arduous program ahead.
“Even though nursing students are continually warned about the time commitment required of them and the rigor of the program, many don’t take it seriously,” said Diane White, RN, MS, Ph.D., dean of GPC’s health science program. “The program demands can be stressful on both students and their families.”
About a third of the 155-student incoming class attended the optional three-day event. The cost of the boot camp was $10.
“We brought in 15 different speakers over the three days, including most of our nursing faculty,” Crawford said. “Nurses spoke on topics like professionalism, critical thinking and building on prior knowledge to introduce students to nursing concepts.”
Other lectures covered nuts-and-bolts topics such as how to read and retain large amounts of information. Second-year students gave tips on how to organize materials, and manage time and stress.
“We introduced them to school resources such as iCollege [a website where professors post course information], the tutorial lab and online educational sources,” Crawford said. “Our student body is diverse, including about 30 students who have learned English as a second language.
“Many students are parents. It’s rewarding to teach them, and I admire them because they are juggling even more time commitments. They need all the support we can offer.”
Crawford said that the “proof in the pudding” would be seeing how students are doing half-way through the first semester, and she’s hopeful that the boot camp will help them.
As part of the boot camp, students visited Georgia Perimeter’s bookstore to buy books and supplies, and the clinical practice laboratory, where they participated in a mock skills activity. On the last night of the camp, friends and family were invited to a reception to learn more about what their student would be facing.
“I told my dad and 15-year-old son that the cake-and-punch reception was a bon voyage. I’d see them in about two years. Good thing they both know how to cook,” said Michelle Jarrett, a first-year nursing student.
Jarrett wanted to be a nurse when she was in college, but a job offer in another field in 1993 was too lucrative to turn down.
When the company Jarrett worked for shut down last year, she saw a chance to pursue a nursing career.
“The boot camp was an opportunity to gain more in-depth information about how the nursing program works,” Jarrett said. “In core classes, you mostly read, memorize and regurgitate back the material for tests, but for nursing school you need to think differently. Nursing knowledge is more application and critical-thinking based.”
When Jarrett was told information would come at a fast pace, she listened closely to advice about strategies for reading and studying better.
“I feel that these three days prepared me so much more,” Jarrett said. “At orientation, we just got to dip our toe into the water of what was expected.
“Boot camp was like wading in knee-deep. We got to see the types of assignments we’d be getting, learn how to look things up and even take a practice dosage-calculation test.”
Jarrett was impressed to meet most of her future professors. “They all showed us how much they wanted us to succeed,” she said.
Incoming student Klair Hammond said attending boot camp relieved anxiety about nursing school and made her even more excited to start. Hammond graduated 10 years ago from Florida State University with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, but wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with it.
The premature birth of her oldest daughter (now 4) inspired her to become a nurse.
“My daughter was born 15 weeks early at DeKalb Medical,” Hammond said. “The doctors were great, but it was the nurses who got me through it. They were awesome.”
With a husband and two little girls, Hammond chose to attend Georgia Perimeter because there are plenty of nontraditional students there.
After taking her core classes, Hammond took advantage of LINK (Learning Interactively Needed Knowledge), a pre-nursing tutorial for incoming students that was designed by Crawford.
Boot camp reinforced the skills Hammond learned in LINK class and acquainted her with classmates.
“I’ve met lots of other students who are moms and dads, and we’re already forming study groups,” Hammond said.
She sees nursing school as a second chance.
“I know I’m doing something with a purpose,” she said. “It’s different for me this time.”
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