I sit in my car outside of the hospital where I'm doing my second term clinicals at. Tears are just rolling down my cheeks. They won't stop. In LVN school, we have 13 week terms. This is only week 7. The tears increase with this sudden thought. I cannot do this anymore. I want to drive to campus and quit this very instant. Instead, I drive home through the tears, remembering the horrible 7 weeks I've had...
The last week of Term I, we all received our clinical assignments. I was so excited! I got the clinical instructor I was hoping for, at a site I was hoping for, life looked like it was going to be great in Term II. We even started at an acute care facility this term. I was tired of the nursing home. The first day comes. The group I'm with is different. All of them older than I am, except for two new girls who were restarts. I befriend them. There's all the wonderful paperwork, and video watching that comes with orientation. Then our instructor has us write down some things she wants us to know and use this term. She goes on to tell us how our day will work. I think I can handle things. She tells us that we'll rotate through Cath lab, ER, OR, GI lab and radiology. I leave feeling confident. That was the only day I felt confident.
I started off the best I could. Introduced myself to the patients as soon as I got on the floor. Vitals, AM care. I read the charts completely. I knew my patients inside and out. I even went above and beyond what was expected of me. I would write out every abnormal lab, every medication, and learn all I needed to about both. I checked on my patients every half hour or so. I helped out my fellow student nurses when I could. Stayed on top of my paperwork. I was working so hard.
I'm not exactly sure when my instructor started hating me, or if she disliked me from the beginning. But she broke me. Any answer I would give in pre or post conference would be wrong, or not good enough. But any other student who said what I said would be right. If I was passing meds that day, she would rush me through med confession and then accuse me of not knowing my medications. She always gave me the most complicated patients, which for a while I took in stride. I figured I was getting more experience. She would not allow other students to help me, but I was expected to help them. Checking on my patients every half hour wasn't good enough, she wanted me in a patient room at all times. I never rotated to any specialty. She would barge in on me when I was bathing or changing patients, and have a complete disrespect for my patients dignity. While I was doing AM care with one patient, she would go to my other patient rooms and find things wrong with them, then chew me out in front of all the staff after. The day I sat crying in my car in front of the hospital was one of the worst.
By this time I knew she hated me. I still wasn't sure why. But she did. The patient load she gave me that day was just like any other. One total care, one was a custody patient (I was the only student to receive those, go figure), and one who had stasis ulcers on both legs and ulcers on the toes. I was to do wound care with her watching me. I asked the student leader to be there as well, for moral support. I gathered my supplies and headed into the room. I let the patient know I would be changing his dressings and asked him if he needed any pain medication. The patient was a dear old man, sweet as could be. Everything was set. I went and got my instructor. I set up and began. She stood there with a horrible look upon her face, as she always did when she was with me. I went through each step, talking with the patient while continuing. I got to a point where I was slightly confused about how to put on the medicated strip. I told her as much, and asked her how I should apply it. She just stood there. Didn't even respond to my question. My patient was also expecting an answer, both of us looked at each other and I just tried to figure things out. The patient became more aware of my instructors attitude towards me and attempted to converse with her. She gave him very short answers, not showing any interest in what he was saying. I finished up about 10 minutes after I had began. I will never forget what she said. She told me it took me too long to do the dressing change, that I was unprepared and I shouldn't be allowed to do procedures, period! She stormed out of the room. I stood there, in shock. I began to shake, out of pure humiliation and anger. I felt like an utter failure. The student leader looked at me and told me I did everything by the book. The patient tried to console me, he told me that I did a better job than most of the staff nurses before me. He even asked me what was wrong with the instructor! He couldn't believe an instructor would treat a student, let alone a patient, like that. I worked hard to maintain composure in the room, and throughout the rest of the day.
When I arrive home that day, I thanked God for getting me there safely. I called my step-mom who is an RN and explained everything that had gone on in the past 7 weeks, topping the story off with what happened today. She talked me out of quitting, and told me some clinical instructors were just awful people.
The next 6 weeks weren't any better. I still was kept on the floor. The charge nurse came to know me well. She even bragged to my instructor about how much progress I had made. My instructor just muttered something under her breath and walked away. She would call the director of nursing to come to our site weekly, for the main purpose of making me seem incompetent. I was accused of a medication error, which wasn't an error at all. The review she gave me at the end of the term was absolutely awful. By the end of the 13 weeks, my confidence was completely shattered.
Term III started the week after. I was at a site which was about a hundred times more difficult than before. The patients were what we called train wrecks. Multi-system failures, diseases I'd only read about in textbooks, and more! How could I survive this if I couldn't survive the less complicated patients before? My confidence was gone and I had two instructors to impress this time around! Because of the way I was treated during my second term, I made sure I was always on top of everything. Meds, AM care, vitals, team work, documentation... while some students were struggling to finish up charting before post conference let out, I was done hours before we even started. I was doing everything I could to stay off the radar of my instructors. I just wanted to finish the term in peace.
By the time mid-term evaluations rolled around, I was expecting the worst. I had never received a good eval, why should I be getting one now? My main instructor called me in, and I sat down. She looked at me, and asked me flat out how my second term was. I was a little confused by the question, but I told her. After I was done, she looked at me and smiled. She told me that she could tell that I tried to avoid her when at all possible, and had been curious as to why. Now she knew. She pulled out my evaluation. She proceeded to tell me that I was the best student nurse she had ever seen. She was highly impressed with everything I had done so far, my extensive knowledge of medications and lab values. The other instructor was impressed as well. Apparently she had a few complaints about every other student, but not me. I was floored. I was good?
It was in that moment that I realized I was going to make it. My previous instructor, as horrible to me as she was, gave me motivation to be on top of everything, know everything about my patient and try to be the perfect student nurse. Even though nothing was good enough for her, she turned me into the best student nurse I could've possibly been. It was the worst 13 weeks in LVN school, but out of it came something positive, I knew how to be a good nurse. I think about that instructor from time to time. Because of her, I have the confidence to tackle just about anything a patient throws my way.
