I hate nursing school! ~rant~

healthstar, BSN, RN · Oct 30, 2011

I hate school period, but I just love the outcome of it

ooomonkeys · Oct 30, 2011

Which nursing program is this?

yuzzamatuzz · Oct 30, 2011

That sounds awful you have to drive 3 hours to get to clinical. Unfortunately though, you'll do CNA stuff for most of school because you aren't licensed. In your first clinical you will do mostly bed baths, vitals, etc. because many people haven't been CNAs before. Everyone needs to know how to do that stuff before they can learn to be a nurse. The reality of the situation is that you also will do that stuff as a nurse too and you are not above giving bed baths. As a nurse, if I had a student who managed to "avoid" CNA skills every week, I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to teach you RN skills. Ask the nurses on your floor if there is anything interesting that day with their patients that you can see (even if it means just watching). Read your patient's entire chart, and you can always start doing your care plans for the day. Bring your textbooks to clinical and learn as much as you possibly can about your patient's diagnosis. If you still have time, play with spare equipment/instrument trays on the floor to get practice (IV pumps, kangaroo pumps, sterile foley trays, etc.). You might not always have an instructor or nurse who is ready to teach you everything they know, but make the most of your time there and you will enjoy it much more. It sounds like your teachers in school aren't that great, but unfortunately you won't always have the best teachers. Make the most of your time in class, use it as a review, and then teach yourself the rest. Unless you know everything about being a nurse you shouldn't be bored in class or sitting in the halls of clinical doing nothing. As a nurse I still look stuff up about my patients/read charts whenever I have free time

CrazierThanYou · Oct 31, 2011

In our case, we do all know those skills because CNA certification is required for our program. One thing that makes it worse, is the 5 other clinical groups aren't spending all of their clinical doing bed baths and such. I know that I'm not above it and I have no problem doing it but I'm not investing all this time and money into learning stuff I already know.

I do all those things you suggest but you'd really just have to know my clinical instructor to see how bizarre he is...

chevyv, BSN, RN · Oct 31, 2011

Wow! Well, this is the time to just get through it. It sounds like there is very little direction. Can you just dive in and help out where you can? I know as a nurse now, a student diving in will see and get to do procedures that others wouldn't. Sounds like the nurses dont' have much support so give it them. Dive in, help out, ask what they need. It will make a difference. You may just have to make the clinical work for you instead of hoping it will get better. I'm sorry for the drive alone. That just sucks :down:

NCRNMDM, ASN, RN · Oct 31, 2011

I am a second year nursing student enrolled in a consortium. Our nursing program is somewhat unusual in that we take our first year courses at one school and our second year courses are at another school, which is 2-3 hours away, depending on where we live. I really enjoyed my first year of nursing school. Now? I hate it. HATE IT.

We have 3 new instructors at the new school. I feel like I'm spending my day with strangers. None of the instructors even know our names unless we are in their clinical group. We have about 40 students so its not like there are hundreds of us. They haven't shown any interest in getting to know us either. One of them is a complete OCD control freak and everything is her way or the highway. Another has only been out of nursing school for 3 years and he's already "teaching", if you can call it that. He spends 99% of his time goofing around and cracking jokes. You can forget about getting a straight answer out of him and with all his goofing, one can never be sure when he's serious and when he isn't. The third behaves as if she is in the early stages of dementia.

Before we went to this other school, we were told that our driving situation (remember, its 2-3 hours) would be taken into consideration. They must have considered it for about 30 seconds, if at all. They scheduled our clinicals in such a way that carpooling is difficult and often, impossible. I have a reasonably efficient car and a trip there and back runs me about $25 in gas and we go 4 times a week. I'm slightly employed but most of us aren't employed at all and there are a lot of single mothers in our class.

We drive these 4 to 6 hours a day to listen to the control freak READ every single word of the powerpoints to us. We don't have any kind of class discussions and even comments and questions seem to be discouraged. I am learning not a single thing from these "lectures". In fact, I feel as if I haven't learned a single thing from these bobble heads the entire time we've been at this school. We can sit at home and read the PowerPoints and save $100 a week in gas money!

And then there are clinicals. I can't speak to the other clinical groups because I'm not in them, but ours is useless. Do you see a trend here? We are on a floor that consists of hospice patients and old people with lung issues. That's it. No variety, nothing. The nurses on the floor are assigned anywhere from 7-10 patients every single day so they certainly don't have time to teach us anything or hardly even let us watch anything. I was assigned to a nurse ONCE. She just graduated from nursing school, she said she hated being a nurse, and was completely frazzled with the patient load. We went to give IV meds and she mentioned checking for compatibility but because the computers were down, she didn't bother to consult a paper drug guide and gave the meds without checking. Excellent learning right there.

So, in a nut shell, we drive 4-6 hours a day to stand around in the hospital hall and wait for something to happen, or for the day to end. I asked my clinical instructor to listen to my patient's lungs to help me understand what I was hearing. His response? "No, it doesn't matter what I hear. Everyone is going to hear different things." Really? Thanks, that was helpful. We get the same d**n speech from him EVERY SINGLE MORNING about how "we'll pitch in and help the CNA's because that's what we're there for". Now, I don't mind helping, I'm a CNA myself, but that is NOT what I am there for. I am there to learn to be a registered nurse. I don't appreciate all this traveling and getting up at 3 am to do CNA stuff. Bed baths? That's all we did the first 2 weeks we were there. I have managed to avoid that since but a lot of my classmates are doing CNA skills and nothing else.

I am just sick of it. Its a waste of time, money, gas, and its all completely useless. I enjoyed nursing school at the beginning but now I'm just marking time waiting for it to end.

I'm in nursing school too, and I agree with you that the class part sounds awful. When we go to clinical, we are assigned a patient, or two, or three (depending on our skill level) and we are expected to do EVERYTHING for that patient. The nurse doesn't ever come into the room unless we have an abnormal finding that we need to alert him/her to. I think that this aspect of clinical is really nice, because it makes us feel independent, and we learn what it is like to actually have to run our butts off to take care of patients for twelve hours. I hate it that everyone doesn't do clinical like this, because it is a great learning experience. Our instructor is always around if we need her, but we are expected to do procedures, give meds, chart, do assessments, take vitals, and everything else without her. She supervises us once (or until she feels that we are competent) and then she cuts us loose on our own. I have a problem with the part where you start complaining about giving baths and doing CNA stuff. The floor we are on doesn't ever have a CNA, and it's a post-surgical floor, so the nurses there do the CNA work. In the morning we get vitals, give a bath, brush our patient's teeth, wash their hair, and do a skin assessment. Then we chart all of that. We then give the 9 AM meds and go about the rest of our day. If the patient soils the bed, we clean them and change the bed, if they need to walk we get them up and out in the hall, we give meds and hang IV fluids, we empty NG tubes, JP drains, chest tubes, and foleys. We put in IVs, foleys, NGs, and do any other procedure that needs to be done. I'm not trying to sound rude, but when you actually get out in the real world, you may find that you don't have a CNA a lot of the time. You may find yourself doing the nursing duties, the CNA duties, and the unit secretary duties. The floor we are on also doesn't have a unit secretary a lot of the time, and usually only has two to three nurses. This means that the charge nurse is often in charge, taking patients, functioning as the unit secretary, functioning as a CNA, entering orders in the computer, answering the phone, calling doctors and staff, and trying to keep the floor in order. You've got to learn to wear a lot of hats, and you have to get out of the mentality that you are a nurse and are above doing other things that don't directly relate to nursing.

CrazierThanYou · Nov 1, 2011

Allow me to reiterate, I ABSOLUTELY DO NOT mind doing CNA duties and I am aware that I may be doing it on the job. But for RIGHT now, I need to be learning to be a REGISTERED NURSE. That is what I am investing all this time and money in. I've been a CNA since 1995. I've got that. I do not need a speech every single morning about how we are "there to help the CNA's". Although we're not exactly "helping" them when they're perched on their butts at the nurses station...

We can jump in to do things now and then, but on our unit, nurses have from 7 to 10 patients EVERY DAY. It's insane. They don't really have time to fool with us most days.

Seohyun · Nov 1, 2011

Really sorry about your situation... Hmm...

Is there anyway you can talk to your other peers, and as a group, make these issues known to the instructor or whoever is in charge of running the program?

CrazierThanYou · Nov 1, 2011

Really sorry about your situation... Hmm...
Is there anyway you can talk to your other peers, and as a group, make these issues known to the instructor or whoever is in charge of running the program?

As far as talking to my peers, we talk about it on an every day basis. We all hate it. As for talking to someone else, its been clear since we started this second year that no one gives a crap.

I will have a new nursing instructor in 6 weeks so if I can just suck it up and get through till then, hopefully it will improve. I certainly hope so since it will be our last semester and our last learning opportunities before graduation!

Ayala · Nov 1, 2011

You have my sympathy. Nursing school is a rough road. I just keep sucking it up trying my best.

Some days I wonder "What am I doing?" I think many nursing students feel like that from time to time.

Try to find a working nurse who can give you advice and pep talks.

Hope you outlast the craziness. If you can be a CNA, you can do anything.

RN_SummerSeas, MSN, APRN, NP · Nov 1, 2011

I can sympathize with you, my program SUCKS! I am due to graduate in May and I am just getting through until then. Anyone I know who is a nurse says the 'real' training starts when you get a job. We have instructors who read off the power points (snooze) and clinical instructors who are drill sergeants assigning more work than is remotely necessary. Nursing school is a nightmare unless you luck out and get a kick-but program, unfortunately there are none near me :/

Good luck, power through it and do your best. Its really all you can do, well here it is anyway.