Stupid things your school does/did

Nurses General Nursing

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Re: What age were you when you went to nursing school?

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Originally Posted by GraceNotes viewpost.gif

(I'll try this post again.) I am so apprehensive about nursing school! I am 51 and will graduate with a BSN in 2009 (starting in January, like you). We are expected to disrobe for male & female classmates to practice exams. Does your program do this?? I guess we'll see it all anyway, but doing this at my age is enough of a challenge...

Sounds stressful I'm 50 and have been in construction so I am in great shape. None-the-less I would be uncomfortable disrobing in front of the people I share so many other things with. Your school should think about hiring an artists model or get a volunteer an pay them with a professional massage or something. It seems as perhaps they are trying to get you to understand the being a patientaspect of our field. Their exercise,however, does not duplicate the true environmnet. There is no anonimity in this surender of trust. Sounds like your school or your instructor is out of touch.

This sounds like a good separate thread!

Oh, by the way I am 50 and just started LPN gragiate in a year.

Specializes in LTC.

There were other stupind things we were made to do besides procedures:

we couldn't have ANY hair touch our collars - which were rather high as far as collars went. Even the guys - as a guy, I had quite the mullet ala the 80's hair bands of the time, and they wouldn't let me put it in a pony tail. I was forced to make like a bun-thingy on the back of my head. As ridiculous as it was, I did it anyway, just to make a point. They had origninally reprimanded me and were trying to force me to cut my hair or be expelled, but I stuck to my guns and was a pain in the Dean's orifice until graduation.

When I showed up for graduation with my hair down, I was threatened with not being able to attend the pinning ceremony, but they relented.

We were made to wear the most ridiculous uniforms - we guys wore these 50's style white barber's tunics with light blue piping all over them, and these high Elvis-style collars - totally ridiculous. The women wore blue pinstripe, long dresses with white aprons and turned-up sleeves and HUGE white collars. god forbid if you showed up with any wrinkles, and some instructors gave us hell for not using enough starch.

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My school makes us disrobe and do physical assessments on each other and it was absolutely mortifying. Mostly because I had to get nearly naked in a room with half my classmates (including guys). Even more so because I am overweight and my partner was one of those gorgeous teeny tiny girls who works out every day. Despite that, she was far more modest than I (in the sense that she wouldn't let me practice the breast exam on her).

When it came time to do a full physical assessment for a grade, I felt extremely unprepared because she'd never let me practice the breast exam and a few other things before. Also, having to be almost naked in front of two of your instructors the first semster in the nursing program is rather embarassing. :imbar

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We don't do the practice on each other thing but I'm the only guy in the class and I have a great deal of FineArts training (I've visually studied nudes with great intensity for hundreds of hours m&f) so I have lots of experience with the differences between nude like you do for posing, naked like you do for an examination, and nekkid like you do with somebody. So I would not be uncomfortable, as long as it wasn't the whole class, but I imagine whichever f I would get paired-up with might have a hard time, because it is not a medical neccesity. Yon know my wife might have a hard time with it too for the same reason.

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Wow, I thought our nursing program was unreasonable. (I had calculus in college, but that didn't satisfy the algebra requirement. Luckily, they let me take the placement test.)

So did your instructors do a demo for you, as in getting into their bra and underwear and showing you how to do it? If you could insist on that, I bet the policy would be changed.

Most of the students in my class wore shorts and T-shirts for exams, and we didn't practice breast or other personal exams on each other. Only cathed the dummy. We did practice IV's on each other after we did the plastic arms. We had to sign a waiver to prove we did it voluntarily and wouldn't sue if we got an infection or something.

Nursing programs do seem to go out of their way to cause stress to the students. I think maybe they are trying to weed out the weak ones and the rebels.

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Specializes in Developmental Disabilities, LTC.
I was forced to make like a bun-thingy on the back of my head. As ridiculous as it was, I did it anyway, just to make a point.

I love it!:rotfl:

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I can SEE the bun-thingy, half school-marm half samurii

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Specializes in FNP, Peds, Epilepsy, Mgt., Occ. Ed.

I taught assessment, to graduate students, and no one was expected to disrobe.

Although listening to lungs and hearts are best done with nothing between the stethoscope and the skin, for purposes of demostrating that the student knew where to listen, clothed worked just fine. Abdominal exams could be done clothed as well, if the student felt uncomfortable with the abdomen being uncovered.

Each student was encouraged to do more extensive practice exams at home on a spouse, partner, child, friend, or sibling, but even then things like breast and genital exams were excluded.

The object of the class is to teach students how to do an assessment, not to humiliate or embarass the students!

We also used plastic "models" to teach breast exam, pelvic exam, testicular exam, and prostate exam. I showed DVDs of exams being done on live, paid models. The models in the lab also have the advantage of having "abnormals" as well as normals, so that the student could palpate both. I used powerpoint and showed as many pictures as I could find of things that might be seen on exam.

Even "back in the day" the only thing my classmates and I did to each other was SQ saline injections; bed baths etc. we did fully clothed. If I'd had to undress, I probably would've quit school!

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Yeah our program did not let us perform genital or breast exams on eachother, rather, we did the head to toe on anyone that we choose (whether it be fellow student, family member or friend) and we had to perform the genital and breast exam on dummies. So it's not like we didn't do the breast and genital, but just not on somebody! Seems like our program is pretty reasonable!

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Ok this wasnt in nursing school but it was in 91w army medic training.

we had to do large I.V.'s on each other my partner was a 97lbs girl with probably 7% body fat she wore a size zero needless to say it was good experience starting large I.V.'s

I like to think i do I.V.'s well, better then most i have seen due to the training but I still have scars 6 years later from her doing them on me i looked like an addict and had tracks for a while lol.

In the army you have to do training I got to do small surgeries and even stitches =)

but one time in the Field our doc thought it would be a good time to teach field rectal exams and decided we had to do them on each other.

He said he and his friends did Rectal exams on eachother alot in med school in their dorms (makes you wonder doesnt it?)

This didnt go over well you really cant say no in the army but he got the point.

The new guy got to learn, =) while we watched it was the most disturbinig thing to see one man who you work with every day, into another mans butt who you also work with every day giving instructions on what to look for and such LoL.

I know this is a normal exam BUT not somting you do with your buddy for training and i would not consider it for fun.

I think wearing underwear and doing normal exams are nothing after that.

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so drakken I'm trying to picture this, were these speculum or digital

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Ok this wasnt in nursing school but it was in 91w army medic training.

we had to do large I.V.'s on each other my partner was a 97lbs girl with probably 7% body fat she wore a size zero needless to say it was good experience starting large I.V.'s

I like to think i do I.V.'s well, better then most i have seen due to the training but I still have scars 6 years later from her doing them on me i looked like an addict and had tracks for a while lol.

In the army you have to do training I got to do small surgeries and even stitches =)

but one time in the Field our doc thought it would be a good time to teach field rectal exams and decided we had to do them on each other.

He said he and his friends did Rectal exams on eachother alot in med school in their dorms (makes you wonder doesnt it?)

This didnt go over well you really cant say no in the army but he got the point.

The new guy got to learn, =) while we watched it was the most disturbinig thing to see one man who you work with every day, into another mans butt who you also work with every day giving instructions on what to look for and such LoL.

I know this is a normal exam BUT not somting you do with your buddy for training and i would not consider it for fun.

I think wearing underwear and doing normal exams are nothing after that.

Wow! OMG! :crying2:

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Specializes in Community, OB, Nursery.

We had to do basic exams on each other in our physical assessment class; we did everything but breasts and genitalia. I do remember, however, our instructor (a teacher's assistant/MSN student) stripping down to her bra & underwear (all of us in that particular skills lab were women) and letting us do skin, pulmonary, & abdominal assessment. That was a little unexpected.

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