Student sense of entitlement

[kris113]

Hi,

I am a second year student currently doing my third semester of practicum. During a praxis session, our teacher and my class were going through comments that had been made during our placement, and previous rotations that she had had. She said that one of the most common comments that she has had through the years was " Students always have such a sense of entitlement".

I'm wondering what this means. The students that I have always worked with help out around the ward, although we are limited in some areas as per our scope of practice (and we do have to do extensive research on the clients we have).

Our teacher couldn't tell us what the "sense of entitlement" meant. In school we are taught to hold ourselves equal to the staff, and advocate for our patients. As we do not hold a full patient load (often we only have one or two patients), and do not work full twelve hour shifts, we cannot fully understand the position the nurses are in on the wards. We also do understand that we are probably the last thing that a nurse wants to add to their day- more questions and responsibility.

I am asking this question in the hope that some experienced nurses may clarify what is meant by a "sense of entitlement". What are we doing/ or should we be doing to display this? (We really do want to be good, hardworking students, which contribute!)

- K.

[caliotter3]

I went to school with a few students who thought that all they had to do was to show up for clinicals, or lectures for that matter, and everything would revolve around them and them only. They would get upset if anyone should offer constructive criticism, and if their preceptors said they were not meeting standards and it seemed they might not pass, oh watch out! How dare anyone say that they were not the be all and end all! I believe it is this type of attitude that the OP talks about.

[Fiona59]

Hi, so you're in BC.

Out here in Alberta, we have been having an interesting time with students. It's getting to the point where some units dread their arrival.

Our students are all in the BScN programme and come with an attitude that can best be described as "I'm getting a degree and most of you old bags don't have one, and LPNs are lower than pond scum". The sad fact is they are learning this at their educational institutions.

They lack basic manners. Seats are taken in the report room and charting area, leaving the staff to hunt for places (this stops when the unit manager walks in and said "why are my staff standing?").

We offer them chances to hone their skills. Yes, you've inserted one foley catheter but please don't decline opportunities to insert another. We aren't trying to pass off our workload but are trying to let you gain a sense of achievement. One NG insert does not an expert make.

Charts disappear "I'm working on my assignment for tomorrow!" does not supercede our need to find out the dose of insulin on the sliding scale. We shouldn't have to hunt all over the unit for them.

Students have been "talked" to for trying to delegate to the NA and LPNs. The NA knows what she/has to do that shift and making your beds aren't high on their list. The PNs are independent nurses and don't take orders from students.

You don't know why those nurses are snarky, what is going on in their lives outside work and how they are dragging themselves in due to staffing shortage (deaths in the families, chronic illnesses, children/husbands serving in A'stan). We're tired of hearing what cranky, evil, nasty nurses we are and "how you will never be like us".

I hope you don't have to walk in our shoes but reality is a female dog.

[eriksoln, BSN, RN]

Hi, so you're in BC.

Out here in Alberta, we have been having an interesting time with students. It's getting to the point where some units dread their arrival.

Our students are all in the BScN programme and come with an attitude that can best be described as "I'm getting a degree and most of you old bags don't have one, and LPNs are lower than pond scum". The sad fact is they are learning this at their educational institutions.

They lack basic manners. Seats are taken in the report room and charting area, leaving the staff to hunt for places (this stops when the unit manager walks in and said "why are my staff standing?").

We offer them chances to hone their skills. Yes, you've inserted one foley catheter but please don't decline opportunities to insert another. We aren't trying to pass off our workload but are trying to let you gain a sense of achievement. One NG insert does not an expert make.

Charts disappear "I'm working on my assignment for tomorrow!" does not supercede our need to find out the dose of insulin on the sliding scale. We shouldn't have to hunt all over the unit for them.

Students have been "talked" to for trying to delegate to the NA and LPNs. The NA knows what she/has to do that shift and making your beds aren't high on their list. The PNs are independent nurses and don't take orders from students.

You don't know why those nurses are snarky, what is going on in their lives outside work and how they are dragging themselves in due to staffing shortage (deaths in the families, chronic illnesses, children/husbands serving in A'stan). We're tired of hearing what cranky, evil, nasty nurses we are and "how you will never be like us".

I hope you don't have to walk in our shoes but reality is a female dog.

Yes, this sort of behavior kills the vet./new nurse relationship. I dont like the whole conversation to be honest. A lot of things that go on between vet. vs. new nurses are matters of simple manners and should not even have to be talked about. Yet, for some reason, there has to be an actual rule saying "Charts must remain in their designated area, are not to be taken off the unit for studying" for people to act right.

I consider myself one who is still new and I certainly remember what I felt like as a student nurse and new nurse. Heck, in a lot of ways, I still feel that way. But when things like this go on, its hard to defend/be compassionate towards new nurses.

When I was new, I showed up with a "go ahead, put me on the shift no one else wants. Sure, I'll work the holidays. Someone has to change assignments and take different patients than they had yesterday, fine I can do that." It was my way of being a part of the team, contributeing to the other nurses. Then, when something came up I didnt understand, the vet. nurses always took over and made things right for me. That was my learning process.

I think sometimes people dont enter the nursing field with the same.............concern for earning their way onto the team. That makes things very hard.......for them.

[talaxandra]

That was... very delicately put :)

[eriksoln, BSN, RN]

That was... very delicately put :)

Who? Me? lol, I am........too blunt. I dont mean to be a loud mouth, not trying to be. But I am.

Is there a pill for that?

[Fiona59]

No, Erik, I think we have enough experience on the floors to see the real world and are still new enough to nursing to be aware of how the schools are being run. I remember as a student being the oldest person in the room but I didn't sit because I was a student. Kinda like a master/student/grasshopper thing. Teach me all you know oh, wise ones. Now it's like was position will get me the most OT and how can I switch to days, oh, and can the NA give my patient a shower NOW.

The hospitals hosting students and the educational facilities need to get together and create ground rules.

[eriksoln, BSN, RN]

Oh my. NA's are not to be messed with. I know. I was one. I never did anything to my student nurses, but I knew a few evil ones that got along with the instructor and if you didnt get your own baths done..........wham.

But thats another topic.

[wooh, BSN, RN]

Oh my goodness. We had a nursing student "delegating" to one of our super experienced patient care techs. This PCT had been a PCT longer than this student had been alive, and she is absolutely amazing, works her behind off taking excellent care of her patients.

You're a student. You don't get to "tell" the staff to do anything. I don't care what rung in the ladder that staff member is on, it's their workplace, and a student is a GUEST in that workplace.

If nursing school is telling you different, then nursing school is going to lose the privilege of using the facility if they have their students irritating the staff enough.

[Pepper The Cat, BSN, RN]

We recently had a bad snow storm.

At report, one of the students said "We were all hoping for a snow day". I commented that "there are no snow days in nursing".

She then said "Well, we are not being paid to be here you know". I practically pierced my own tongue I was biting it so hard not to say "You are a 1st year student with 1 pt for 3 hours - that does not even come close to what I am here being paid for".

[eriksoln, BSN, RN]

Oh my goodness. We had a nursing student "delegating" to one of our super experienced patient care techs. This PCT had been a PCT longer than this student had been alive, and she is absolutely amazing, works her behind off taking excellent care of her patients.

You're a student. You don't get to "tell" the staff to do anything. I don't care what rung in the ladder that staff member is on, it's their workplace, and a student is a GUEST in that workplace.

If nursing school is telling you different, then nursing school is going to lose the privilege of using the facility if they have their students irritating the staff enough.

LOL. Wouldnt have worked when I was a CNA. Those evil ones I mentioned............they were VERY LOUD, CONFRONTATIONAL and did not like students. Oh my, I can see it now, her pulling students into the kitchen room and just hollering for fifteen minutes. She got turned in once or twice. Her response was always the same, "Then dont assign students to me, cause I'm not going to change." LOL.

I just have to laugh now thinking back to that. I was lucky on clinicals I guess. Our instructor was very adement about us not being in the staff's way.

[Virgo_RN, BSN, RN]

Sigh. Nursing students can be pretty clueless, as I'm sure I must have been when I was one. I can recall running afoul of a particular CNA who felt that the presence of nursing students meant that she didn't have to lift a finger for those patients. I recall a nurse I worked with snapping at me that I was going to be on the floor for five hours but wouldn't have time to do baths. What she didn't know was that I was still new at taking more than one patient, and I had to have my clinical instructor present for checking meds and anything to do with IVs, and that because all of these run of the mill nursing skills were new to me, I was incredibly slow. I also remember being called onto the carpet in the middle of the hallway in front of a bunch of other people because the physical therapist, unbeknownst to me, had left a pile of linens on the chair in the patient's room, so when their disabled family member came to visit, they couldn't sit down.

Now when I have students I try to be very kind and patient, but there are little things that irritate me, such as sitting at the computer that I need to use for hours while they collect their information, or I even had one ask me to make copies of the H&P and labs on a patient because she didn't have time. I was attempting to start an IV on a frail LOL with teeny little tortuous veins, when a nursing student walked in bearing the dinner tray and started talking to the patient about eating and how she should try and eat something, while getting ready to set the tray on the bedside table that contained my IV supplies all laid out.

But, specifically toward the idea of the sense of entitlement, I recall when I was a nursing student, I felt that since I was going into debt to pay for my education and since I was in clinicals to learn, that I was not there to be free labor, especially to the CNAs that spent their entire time sitting in a corner chatting about their personal lives instead of working and helping out the team. Even though I tried to stay out of the way at computer stations, I still felt that I had the right to use them if I needed to collect information. When we were told that we were not allowed to go into the report room or use the employee break room, it felt like a personal slap in the face. But now, when I go into the break room for my dinner break and cannot use the computer in there to check my work related email, look at my schedule, or double check my paycheck because a nursing student is occupying that computer, it is frustrating.

It really depends on what side of the fence you are on, but ultimately I think it comes down to everyone wanting to be treated with respect. I didn't like being treated like something scraped off the bottom of a shoe when I was a nursing student, and now as a nurse, I don't like when nursing students are oblivious to things that are important to me, like computer access, and not placing dinner trays on my work surface.

[Suri08]

I am a recent graduate and I can see what nurses and nursing students are talking about. As a student the teachers would like us to think of ourselves as "equal", which we are not. We are there to learn and have new experiances to hopefully one day be able to say we are "equal". I have always made it a big deal to make sure I am not dragging my nurse down and helping her/him as much as I can. In turn I have noticed that I was always pulled in to see the different procedures or try my techniques. I experianced so many different things because I went the extra mile to make sure that I was not a burden. (My favorite was being charge nurse for the day and was allowed to go to meetings and answer the charge nurse phone.) I think it is a balance...we as student must realize we are guests and act as such. This is not our hospital we are visitors and must be respectful. Yes we need to get our paperwork down for the day, but the nurses need it more than we do. I really do think that in orientation the instructors need to remind the students that we are guests and we need to act as such. I have seen too many times where students think they are above everyone. (Maybe they don't realize they are acting this way, but actions speak louder than words.) In our group our teachers made us delegate tasks to our CNA and in a few situations it didn't work out so well. I was a CNA and I know how it is, I made sure to help out if I had the time and always remained respectful. I truly think that people that would like to become RNs should take a course as an assistant so they can later remember what it is like. Okay off topic...but overall I have seen the sense of entitlement in students and I think that we need to learn how to balance everything. I have met nurses that hated to have students but I made sure to stay out of their way and try to be helpful to earn the chance to be taught by them...in the end they usually always became friends and I learned something that I may not have learned from someone else. Everything is a learning experaince, be it good or bad...so learn from it and apply it to your next experiance.