patient for clinical tomorrow is a retired physician?!?!

[mollysaunt]

Here I go again with my pre-clinical jitters. . . Today I went in to my site to look up info on my patient only to find out that he is a physician. I am on the third day of my first real clinical so, of course, I am still pretty clueless. This gentleman will be likely be able to pick up on that....any suggestions? I guess there isn't much for me to do except try to be as professional as possible, which I would do with any patient...

[nursel56]

Retired doctors are usually great. Glad you had a good experience, mollysaunt!

[mollysaunt]

Great advice about not getting nervous. One of the nurses at clinical suggested to be confident with patients/nurses/techs/residents/doctors, etc even as a student because as soon as you don't some people will pick up on it and run with it in a possibly not so positive way.

[llg, PhD, RN]

My dad was a retired physician who spent a lot of time in hospitals during the last couple of years of his life. He always looked forward to having nursing students because he enjoyed meeting them, hearing about their studies, etc. It broke up the monotony of the hospital stay -- and I think he liked being respected for his knowledge and being able to teach a few things to a student eager to learn.

He had always enjoyed working with students while he was in practice, and he enjoyed feeling useful again. I think that too often, the regular staff treated him like "just another patient" and that made him feel diminished as a person to have his knowledge and experience go unacknowledged.