Nursing School Patient Loads - page 7

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...

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.

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.