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Can Online Schools Lead to Maternity Nursing?

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by Nurse_Marijke @ June 7th, 2010 RSS Link

Question:
I want to be a maternity nurse. I’m a 19-year-old high school graduate and I have a 12-month-old son. I’m having another baby in October. I don’t have any time to physically go to college and I want to do this so badly. I need online classes I can take and to know what to take for a maternity nurse. I need to do this for my family and I don’t know how to get there.

Answer:
You certainly have a lot going on in your life but you also seem to have the drive to move ahead. Hang on to it and you’ll have a good chance to get where you want.

You ask about how to go about becoming a maternity nurse. First, you will need to ask yourself some questions and make some decisions before picking which school to attend:

  • Do you have the prerequisites for admission into a nursing program?
  • Will you be going part-time or full-time?
  • Can you attend on-campus classes for labs and nursing skills, and can you go to local facilities to do your practical experience (clinicals)?
  • Are you going to study for licensed practical nurse (LPN) certification, a registered nurse (RN) diploma, an associate degree in nursing (ADN), or a bachelor’s in nursing degree (BSN)?

Most hospitals want the nurses who work in maternity, called obstetrics, to have at least an RN degree, but many are now requiring BSNs. This is why you need to decide at what level you want to study nursing.

Straight to BSN

If you want to and can go straight for your BSN,  you need to investigate the various online schools available to you. Call your board’s state of nursing to be sure the online schools you are interested in are accepted in your state. If you have all the prerequisites and the school accepts you, you are on your way to becoming a nurse.

There is an important issue you have to keep in mind: you cannot get a nursing degree of any kind without having some practical and hands-on learning. This means, your online courses are only for theory classes. Anything that requires laboratory time or teaching and supervision by a nursing instructor, must be done in a traditional school setting. As well, your clinicals are done in local facilities so you can hone your nursing skills.

Slower Route to BSN

If you weren’t planning on getting your BSN right away, you don’t have to go that route. It may delay getting into obstetrical nursing, but it may a good path for you.

You could either go straight into an LPN or RN program and then work while working for your BSN, or you can get your foot in the door by getting a nursing assistant certification. If you are a certified nursing assistant (CNA), you can find work doing hands-on patient care to help support yourself while you study towards either an LPN degree or an RN degree. Then, after you pass your LPN or RN exams, you can work towards advancing your education even further until you have reached your goal.

While this method does take longer than going straight to your goal, there are advantages and many nurses do go this route.

Whichever path you decide to follow, good luck. It isn’t easy to juggle family and studies, but determined people do it all the time!

Study: Aspirin may lower risk of Hodgkin’s disease hodgkinsdiseasenow.net hodgkin s disease

AP Worldstream February 17, 2004 | LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer AP Worldstream 02-17-2004 Dateline: WASHINGTON Regular use of aspirin might lower the risk of Hodgkin’s disease, scientists report Tuesday.

More research is needed to prove whether the link is real.

Even if it is, Hodgkins’ disease is too rare a cancer to ever recommend aspirin as a preventive, scientists caution. After all, the pills have side effects. Instead, the research may point toward better understanding of how this cancer forms, which then might lead to better treatment.

Millions already take low-dose aspirin to help prevent heart attacks, and studies suggest it also may modestly lower the risk of a few cancers, most notably colon cancer.

Scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health uncovered aspirin’s possible connection with Hodgkin’s _ a lymph system cancer _ while studying what role a certain virus plays in the malignancy.

To hunt risk factors, they matched 565 Hodgkin’s patients with people of similar age and demographics who didn’t have the cancer.

Those who regularly used aspirin _ the equivalent of two or more regular-strength tablets a week for five years _ had a 40 percent lower risk of Hodgkin’s, researchers reported Tuesday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Hodgkin’s disease is linked to inflammation. Aspirin not only calms inflammation, but it is thought to inactivate a protein, called a transcription factor, which is important for Hodgkin’s cells to survive, said epidemiologist Ellen Chang, the study’s lead author.

Other painkillers don’t affect that protein, and the study found no benefit from other anti-inflammatory painkillers, such as ibuprofen.

However, acetaminophen is a different type of painkiller, and the study found risk of Hodgkin’s was actually 70 percent higher among regular acetaminophen users.

The researchers caution consumers not to be frightened by the acetaminophen finding, because they’re concerned it could be wrong. The Hodgkin’s patients may have used acetaminophen because of early symptoms of their cancer, thus mixing up the research, Chang said. see here hodgkin s disease

“There’s no clear biologic reason why acetaminophen would be associated with higher Hodgkin’s disease risk,” said Chang, now with Sweden’s Karolinska Institute.

But “it makes sense that aspirin could be associated with lower Hodgkin’s risk” because “aspirin has this unique property” of transcription-factor inactivation, she said.

The study raises an interesting hypothesis about aspirin, but just how strong a role the transcription factor plays is controversial, said Dr. Ernest Hawk of the National Cancer Institute.

“Even if it is confirmed, these results do not mean that anybody should take aspirin to prevent cancer,” stressed American Cancer Society epidemiologist Eric Jacobs. After all, aspirin can have some serious side effects, including bleeding and digestive ulcers.

Both cancer specialists downplayed the acetaminophen finding.

LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer

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