subject: Lvn Students And Stress [print this page] I cant handle another crisis! My schedule is already full this week!
This is how many LVN students may feel sometimes. Well, no wander! Being in a fast-paced LVN program, like the one at Gurnick, can be tough. Our students have to juggle school, work, family, often with kids, and dropping the ball is not an option!
Nursing students are often overworked and overwhelmed with all their responsibilities: finishing homework for the Basic Pharmacology and Medsurg, as well as the second grade Science Project Making sure, the kids are fed, and the dishes are done Oh, forget the dishes!.. Squeezing in the parent-teacher conference between the clinicals, keeping up with the bills (or not!), yelling at the husband for not taking out the garbage, while dealing with the 5 loads of laundry accumulated over the finals week.
Oh, the beauties of being a back-to-school parent!
Now, lets examine the effects of all that on the body of our typical future LVN nurse. For one, there is no way, she can pull this off without any caffeine. Even those that dont drink coffee at the beginning of an LVN program, eventually give in to the black devil.
What was it that those doctors recommended? No more than two cups of coffee a day? Yeah, right! Surely, they meant the 8-oz cups of coffee, not the 24 oz Venti Americano from Starbucks that can wake the dead. Then to this speed in a cup we add a heaping portion of sugar for the brain, because otherwise, it will definitely go blank on todays quiz. And dont forget the cream! We dont want the body to miss out on a serving of cholesterol and saturated fat!
All that caffeine has the same effects on the body as adrenaline, naturally produced in response to acute stress. So, in addition to the adrenaline an LVN students body would release around the exam times and during clinical assignments, the regular excess caffeine intakes put her in a chronic state somewhat similar to shock. No wander, she is jumpy and nervous. Anyone would be.
So, all that adrenaline, natural and artificial, plus all that sleep deprivation of studying until 3 AM, then getting up at 6 AM to study some more, rides the cortisol levels up. Now, that cortisol is a real beast! It has so many undesirable (to say the least) effects on the body! First, it brings down the immune defenses, making our student more prone to flu, colds, infections, acne, you name it. Like, you didnt have enough stress, now you are stressing over the zit on the morning of your cousins wedding! Great! The same cortisol stimulates your insulin production, which packs all that sugar from your 24 oz Venti Americano into your fat cells, making you gain weight like there is no tomorrow. So you are getting pimples and you are getting fat. An average nursing student gains around 15 lb (or more) over the course of one year on the accelerated LVN Program.
You think, working out would help? Going to the gym? You can forget it! At least, until the program is over. Who has the time?!!! With all the aforementioned LVN classes, homework, kids, husbands, dishes, laundry, and clinicals, an LVN student simply has no time or energy for herself.
And yet, there is that light at the end of the tunnel. Thank God, in spite of the economic crisis and the high electric bills, no one has turned that light off!
