Nursing School Patient Loads

[Tait]

There is a discussion going on in the Nurse Educator forum related to clinical expectations. Anyway something that has come out of it is the amount of patients this student is responsible to take on.

In my ADN clinicals back in 2005ish in our last clinical rotation we were expected to have total care over two patients. We were on the same floor for 8 weeks, had two new patients per week with three days of 8 hour clinicals.

The student I am talking to is expected to ramp up to five patients by her last semester, do full care yet not have access to the PIXIS without the primary RN, and has to move to a new floor and learn a new stocking layout about every week.

Does this sound common? I have yet to ask where she goes to school, so this may be an outside of the US situation.

I am just curious as to what your degree is and what clinical expectations they had for you during school.

Tait

[KJM-RN, BSN]

1-2 patients, but often help out with other patients. Can't do meds without instructor so when it's our med day, we do "district meds" and do meds on many patients, but that's pretty much all we do for the day. Often get set up with a willing nurse to do other things during the day, which I feel teaches me the most. Clinical is once a week for 9 hours in an AAS in nursing program. Not sure how prepared I feel to go out and work in a hospital soon as I graduate in May, but all the nurses I've asked ensure me that there will be a lot of on the job training- most hospitals in my area give new grads a 3 month orientation till they're on their own with patients. We'll see...

[FineAgain]

That having been said, I need to clarify that we did total care for 1-2 patients, including ADL's, baths, assessments, meds...during our sophomore semesters. This gave us the experience; the senior year is geared more towards being an RN.

[SGroRN87]

I graduated in 2005... During our final 6-week course we worked 1:1 with a preceptor (and no Pyxis code) we were expected to take a full patient load for that floor. I was on a step down unit with open hearts so that was 3-4 patients.