Do I need prior medical experience to be a nurse?

A lot of people ask me whether or not prior medical experience is a prerequisite for nursing school, and I summarize it in a word…no. This is the short answer, however, there is a longer answer. You don’t need formal medical training prior to entering nursing school, but spending some time in a medical facility around patients is a good idea. Why, you ask? Nursing is a highly specialized field that is not just a job, but a career choice. If you haven’t spent any time in a medical setting, say volunteering in a hospital, how can you know it is the right choice for you? To get some informal time in a medical setting, you can volunteer at a local hospital or shadow a nurse for a day. You can go to an under served clinic and volunteer there as well. Look at your local medical facilities and see how you can help and observe.

I actually feel that a lot of nursing students that have a medical background (CNA, EMT, MA, etc) are at a disadvantage in nursing school. They have learned a different discipline in the medical field and when asked to change their way of thinking, sometimes it is a difficult task to do. Let me give you an example. Say you are a waiter for 5 years and then get promoted to manager, you have a different set of tasks that must get done, a different way of thinking and you must look at the restaurant in a different way. You are now not just concerned with getting your customers food out on time and making sure their needs are met, but you now need to make sure that the whole restaurant’s needs are met and that the restaurant is making money. Some managers can’t see past their customers food getting out on time, and therefore, they struggle to be good managers.

People with prior medical experience also have a lot of opportunity to pick up bad habits at their current medical job and sometimes that will spread into nursing school. They are constantly comparing school to “how it is done in the real world”. Just because it occurs in the real world doesn’t make it the right way of doing things. A lot of nursing students will fight the way things are done in nursing school, because they see how nurses do things at work, and want to do it that way. It becomes frustrating for the students as well as the instructors.

Some people that have prior medical experience coming into nursing school have a preconceived notion that nursing school will be easy because they see it and may even do some of the tasks that RN’s do. They can have somewhat of an attitude, if you will. This is a difficult mind set to overcome as a nursing instructor, as these students often feel and treat you like they have nothing to learn from you.

One more thing, students with prior medical experience sometimes have a harder time on written exams. This is due to their being exposed to more experiences and therefore they may read into the question more and come up with exceptions, rather than just reading and answering the question at face value.

So to sum it up, you do not need any formal medical experience prior to entering a nursing program, however, some volunteering or shadowing of an RN to see if this is the right choice for you is a good idea. You don’t want to spend a lot of time and money to realize that you don’t like nursing and all the tasks that go with it. So good luck and don’t ever feel like you are the one at a disadvantage because you don’t have medical experience, you are and will be just fine.