[hollyberry678]

I have a question for educators regarding clinicals: is it appropriate to change clinical times due to conflicts that the teacher has in their own extracurricular life? Also, is the 'pre-clinical important? Meaning that, is it up to the discretion of the instructor to not have them, and have the students show up the morning of, and get their patient assignment? Also, the post clinical meeting-- is it ok not to have them because the instructor is still running around on the unit? Like NEVER have them?

[KellNY]

Clinicals should be held at the times and dates that they were posted as at registration barring some sort of very special circumstance (ie hospital decides to change time, natural disaster, emergencies, etc). Starting clinicals 2 hours late because your instructor has tennis lessons, or holding them on tuesday instead of wednesday because her daughter is home from college is not acceptable.

Re: Pre and Post clinical...define "okay". It's not against the rules to not have a pre or post clinical. Is it the best practice? No. But then again, many teachers are not the best either, and truth be told, I've had some pre and post clinicals that were rather pointless and a waste of time.

Yes, I do agree wholeheartedly that pre and post clinicals is where much of the learning goes on (talking about the rationale behind protocol and procedures, discussing lab values, how to improve on patient care that was offered, etc). And if you feel like you are missing out on this experience, then by all means speak to someone, because you're paying (good money-I'm sure) for your education, and you only go through nursing school once--hopefully--so really you're entitled to voice your opinion.

ETA: Not to be too blunt, but instead of tip toe-ing around it and using pseudo-hypotheticals, why not just come out and say what the exact situation is, that way we can better judge. It'd give more insight.

Pardon my spelling and grammatical errors, as I'm on my 4th night in a row (third 12 hour shift).

[hollyberry678]

Thanks for responding. We had a 1.5 hr orientation-- the shortened version, a week early (when learning labs were being done) b/c teacher had to go out of town. Then, our pre-clinicals were shot b/c teacher told us the unit is 'hard to plan for'. We had to come in early the day of (and it isn't possible for me). Then, during clinicals, I never really saw the teacher (maybe a good thing?). Our post clinicals were spent chit-chatting in the back room while instructor finished up with the last stragglers/paperwork. No help with DARPS, was told 'I can't help you'. Poked his head in once a linical or so and said, 'any questions'? Was preoccupied with an extracurricular thing he was doing. Even stated he checked his email during the clinical day to check on it to me. Last clinical day assigned two patients, no prior notice, no prep time for me. And was actually gone for the first few hours to fulfill his 'extracurricular activity', theough there was a diff instructor filling in.
Should I be glad it was this slack? It felt discombobulated. PS we had no computer acces for labs, ect. So basically we passed meds, did vitals, made beds, and did a DARP.

[AuntieRN]

I had an instructor who ran her lectures, exams and clinicals around her daughter's basketball games and pagents....yeah one day she was almost 2 hours late for an exam then got mad at those of us who complained because we all did terrible on the exam. We were told we would have done just as bad had she been on time...and that nursing was all about being flexible...

[supermom27]

This past semester my clinical instructor was on her cell phone constantly during clinicals. She has 3 kids who are 'homeschooled' (How with her gone all day was always a mystery- although they are teenagers so I guess they home school themselves!!) OMG.....I won't even go into when her dog was having puppies!!!! We were left to our own resources as she could not be found half of the time or was otherwise occupied on her phone! Then....she sold a puppy to one of her students.....NOT very professional in my opinion......