I've just had one of the worst days of my life. I'm an ADN student in my last semester and today I had my final clinical exam. It was horrible!!!! I sincerely doubt that I passed. I need a reminder why I'm putting myself through this hell!!!! If I had one more semester to go I don't think I could do this. I'm so tired of the nursing instructors that can't teach, tests that are designed to trick you (no, I'm not paranoid, the instructors actually told us that they get rid of the questions everyone gets correct, they don't want all of us getting A's, and I lead the class with a, get this 89.5% and I have a overall GPA of 3.81 after 106 semester hours!) being told that the nursing instructors are not there to accommodate the students, and basically feeling that these vultures are just waiting to pick me off. The kicker is that every single one of my fellow class mates feels the same way. Don't get me wrong, I know that nursing is a high stress field, and please believe me when I say that I I can handle stress alright. Today though was the icing on the cake. I'm being evaluated by an instructor I've never met and who's never met me, on an oncology unit thats basically a unit that cares for all the patients who are near death and with tubes coming out of every orifice. I now know all the hospice nurses by first name (god bless those nurses, they're fantastic!) and I have had a good semester so far. I've gotten to actually do all those skills we learned in lab a year ago. But today was to much. My patients were total care all the way. I'm talking TPN, lipids, central lines, NG tubes and enough medications to fill a PDR. I've never pushed 100mg lasix through a central line before, I pushed more meds and hung more solu-sets than I have almost all semester. Add to this a wife who took one look at my student uniform and refused to even let me in the room!!! I had to get report (not a mean feat in itself) do total AM care without help, adminster meds on time, get patients ready for transport for tests while fighting with the unit clerk and regular nurse to get my charting done and make sure my evaluator gets to see what I chart and tell me all the things I've done wrong in my charting, and come up this 2 nursing diagnosis per patient, plus interventions, goals and supporting documentation (all the while being harrassed by my evaluator, a messed up IV pump and a very anxious and frightened wife) all within 4 hour period. Needless to say I've been bawling since noon. Can someone please tell me again why I'm doing this??
Sorry to sound so whinny but I guess I just needed to get it off my chest and to hear back that it'll get better.
