Advice for clinicals... Pleaseee

Penelope_Pitstop, BSN, RN · Jun 16, 2010

Since it's your pediatrics clinical, there are special considerations to take. I know that students are more restricted in what they can do because of the precarious pediatric population. I was very bored during my peds clinical because there was very little we were allowed to do during it.

Asking your instructor is a good idea, maybe he or she has some suggestions. If you inform him or her that you don't feel like you're doing enough, perhaps you can convince him or her to use the clinical hours in a different way. For example, our instructor realized that we were all bored and figured out a way for each of us to go to a more specialized area for the day. I was able to go to the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit, and had an awesome day!

As for the staff nurses, there are nurses who will take to a student and those who won't. Peds nurses are known for being protective of their patients (it makes sense, though!) It's kind of obvious who will let students see and do things and who will not. And don't be afraid to talk to doctors, techs, unit clerks, etc. You can learn a lot! I learned more from talking to the physicians than I did the nurses on my peds rotation.

carebearsRN · Jun 16, 2010

Being a student gives you full advantage to "bother" the nurses so you can learn a lot and get the most out of it. Don't be afraid to ask questions. If you've learned how to do assessments then ask if you could do it. Having strong assessment skills is a must and this is a great time for you to master it before you really have to work. Tell them that you would like to observe procedures going on at the unit whenever there is a chance.. other than that, i found it very resourceful to read patient charts and learn the diseases & drugs. Also, this would be a great time to look at the charts to see how nurses do their charting :) theres lots to learn from.

LoveMyBugs, BSN, CNA, RN · Jun 16, 2010

I had a peds rotation that we were not allowed to do very much, ask not only your nurse, but others who appear "student friendly" if there are any procedures you could watch. My instructor told me that whenever the MD is on the floor, follow them into the pts room and observe and listen.

After I read my patients chart, and looked for anything that I might be able to observe, I then found a computer that was not being used and the hospital had a great online library to which I would look up all of my patients conditions and read at length about them (just be sure to pay attention if somone on staff needs the computer).

ChristineN, BSN, RN · Jun 16, 2010

As a peds nurse, I would recommend asking the nurses if there are pt's that are parentless, as you could always spend some time with a pt distracting them from the hospital stay. You could also ask for opportunities to observe other disciplines such as Child Life in their work with the pediatric population.

mollyj91 · Jun 19, 2010

I had the exact same issue in my first two clinical rotations and in my CNA clinicals at the VERY beginning. Keep in mind, for my CNA clinical, I had the hardest patient on the floor, and I was SO nervous. I constantly asked questions to the nurse and she turned at me and answered my question and then said " There, you've used up your questions for the day". She was joking, but I realized I asked a lot of questions.

For my first nursing clinicals, I talked to my professor in her office after our lecture because I thought I was being annoying to the nurses when we would be at the clinical setting. She told me not to worry about it and that it is excellent that I ask so many questions because if you do something wrong, you're kind of screwed. I also talked to one of the nurses when we had our lunch break, and she said she worries about the students who DON'T ask questions, in fear of they think they know what they are doing... but they don't.

Asking questions shows that you are willing to learn!

Good luck with your clinicals!!