Nursing graduate Teá Minor felt ready to start her career as a nurse after graduating in 2020, thanks to the education she received in the Department of Nursing at UL Lafayette.
Teá knew that she wanted to return home to Baton Rouge and work at Our Lady of the Lake once she had her degree. She applied for and was offered multiple jobs at the hospital, but she decided to become an RN on the surgery trauma unit.
"I haven’t been anxious on any of my shifts. I feel well prepared and know what I’m doing,” she said. “I hear a lot of new nurses are nervous and anxious for like their first six months to a year of working, but I had a good preceptor at my job, and I had a good education, so I haven’t been very overwhelmed yet.”
Hands-on experience in the nursing program
Teá’s experiences as a nursing major prepared her for her first job out of school.
“I really like the nursing program because it’s very hands-on from such an early start,” Teá said. “You start going to clinicals your second semester sophomore year. You immediately get to start going into the hospital and find out if you’re actually going to like being a nurse.”
All nursing majors at UL Lafayette take NURS 209: Health Assessment Skills during their first semester of clinicals. In that class, they learned the foundational skills they need for clinicals.
“That was a semester-long class breaking down the whole head-to-toe assessment you do every day on every patient. That’s so you can fully grasp what’s wrong with them and how they’re doing,” Teá said. “That was broken down over the whole semester, so we were learning a very in-depth head-to-toe assessment.”
Alongside her experiences in real-world healthcare settings, Teá also had classes in the simulation labs on campus each semester.
“We practiced codes, like going into cardiac arrest, which was great because you rarely get those opportunities as a nurse,” she said. “And then we were going through the different phases of shock. It was great to see things that you don’t normally get to see.”
Preparation for a Career in Nursing
Her last semester, Teá took NURS 419: Contemporary Approaches to Nursing Leadership and Management, a big part of her training as a professional RN.
“It taught you the more business aspect of nursing and hospitals,” Teá said. “I really liked that class because you’re about to go into the working field. It was good to see how you should try to work as a new nurse, how to be a professional, and how to be a leader.”
Throughout the nursing program at UL Lafayette, Teá felt supported and prepared for her career as a nurse.
“A lot of the clinical instructors are very helpful — and nice — and they want you to succeed,” she said. “I feel like lots of people are very encouraging in the program, which was great.”
Her advice for other nursing majors? Don’t get discouraged.
“I absolutely love my job, and I’m so glad I never gave up along the way,” she said. “You have to study every day — literally every single day. That was my recipe to success: Don’t give up, and study and try every day.
“Keep trying if you know that you really want to do nursing,” she said. “Nursing school is really hard — that’s not a lie. Everyone says it. But it’s totally worth it.”
