I feel awful. Practicum experience is suppose to be one of the best learning experiences in nursing school. I am working on the postpartum unit, and it was my number one choice. I thought for sure that I would love it; however, ever since week 1, I have just been clashing with most of the nurses on that unit. I found a lot of them seem to be either lazy, clueless, or both. I was assigned to a preceptor, and I constantly asked her what I could do to help. I always consistently checked on the patients and was willing to help her out and the other nurses out as well! Well, she went to the manager at the end of my first week and told the manager that "I wasn't interested in what she was doing....." When I worked with her, she was so lazy, sitting at her computer the whole time and kept talking about her pregnancy. She barely checked on her patients...all she did was complain about her nausea feeling and how it will be like 9 months from now..... Anyways, I got really upset but the manager did change my preceptor.
Now my new preceptor is much better at teaching me and is more pro-active than the other preceptor; however, I feel like she thinks i'm a dummy because I forgot how to do some nursing skills, since I didn't work in the hospital for about six months. And it's been a year since I was in OB clinicals. I don't trust that she would give me a fair and accurate evaluation report. I was suppose to work with her this week, but she had another job to do on the unit, and she wasn't assigned to patients that day; therefore, she could not precept me that day. The manager told me not to show up even because she had no one to work with me. Basically, in nice words, "no one who is working that day will wanna work with you...."
I only know one nurse on this unit who likes working with me and likes to teach me. She lets me do most of the skills and I learned from her in one day more than I have the past 5 weeks I was on that unit. Unfortunately, she can't be my new or secondary preceptor because she's a new nurse
I basically feel alone and unsupported at all. I've tried talking to my school instructors about this, but they don't say or do anything about it.... I've tried talking to my friends about it, but they don't understand because they have awesome working relationships with their preceptors. I tried talking to my parents, but they just blame me and think i'm just bugging the nurses and that's why they don't want to work with me.....This is one of the worst experiences in nursing school...and I do not know what to do.....
Luckily, I'm half way done with my practicum....but it has been stressing me out, when it's suppose to be a learning experience for me..... Any tips or ideas on how to deal with this practicum misery????