Tell me about your clinical experience....

We start clinicals in a month or so, so I'm anxious to hear about others clinical experience as well..

Clinicals was fun. We did ours at a CCRC so we worked in different parts of the facility like the nursing home section, the assisted living section, the dementia unit & then at the clinic. We split up in groups of three and we took about 2 or 3 patients. At first we were nervous, but after the first couple of days we got used to the residents & really learned alot. We also got to see how to perform post-mortem care.

Our clinicals were three evenings a week for a month. I was glad to have them over with, even though I learned a lot and enjoyed many of the patients. Swing shift is mostly about getting the patients out of bed and ready for dinner, feedng the assists, and getting them back to their rooms, showers and vital where necessary, cleaning them up and getting them in bed. In the 5 hours we were there, we ran our butts off. I was exhausted during the entire course (not just clinicals), but I work full time too. That may have affected my attitude just a tiny bit... Bottom line is I passed the state test, and if I can, so can anyone who puts their mind to it.

Ours kind of sucked. We were told we'd "be running the floor by the time we left," which was not the case. The place had never had students there before and they were disorganized. We also weren't really allowed to do anything on our own. We each had a fellow student as a partner and each pair would get assigned certain residents that we were supposed to care for under the supervision of their CNA, but they'd give us residents that were on different CNA assignments. The CNAs didn't have time to stand around and wait for us to find them when they were ready. It was just stupid. They should have just paired one CNA and one student together for the night.

I did my clinicals in the cardiac unit of a hospital. We were also the first students to ever be there, and at first the staff was very leery of us, but they quickly discovered we were not in fact a buch of bumbling idiots, (well most of us anyway)
We were there Mon-Thurs, 6 hours a day for two weeks. I was really sad when it was over!
It was very interesting, but also scary, dealing with folks fresh from open heart surgery with tubes coming out of them from everywhere! There were quite a few diabetics on the ward as well, with very bad feet. That took a bit of getting used to, you really haven't lived till you rub lotion on a necrotic leg! One of the patients I was assigned to care for just had his leg amputated below the knee. I also was assigned a lady with suspected MRSA so I got to do the whole isolation deal, felt very cool in my gown and all, lol.
We were assiged 2 people to look after on our own, but we all sort of paired up to help eachother out, the teacher was OK with that. I actually prefered to work alone when I could though, it was less confusing and easier to get into a routine. Sometimes that was improssible though, there were many 2 person assists, as you can imagine there were a few overweight folks there in the cardiac ward.
My favorite patient was a lady I was not assigned to. 80 yrs old and must have weighed 90 pounds soaking wet. Just a teeny little lady. She had surgery and could barely walk when our class got there. Well, a week later, she was ZOOMING down that hallway, man that lady could haul a$$!!! Her student was a big guy, about 6'2 and very lean, looked like an athelete, it was hilarious to watch him barely keep up with her hanging onto her gait belt!