What are your Lab instructors like?

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How strict are your lab evaluators? I guess this question is more geared towards ADN students than BSN's, as I suspect the BSN's have more time and their instructors can afford to spend more time teaching them. (assumption-- correct me if I'm wrong, I know BSN's have no end of stress too, and don't want to belittle that)

In my program, we have an instructor who is very, very strict. She has a way of looking at you before you've even done something wrong that makes you THINK you've done something wrong and as a result you DO something wrong.

I swear, the instructor I have for LABs had to take a special class on how to intimidate students and make people feel like an idiot. She is ten times worse than 90% of the surgeons I have worked with. She isn't ALL bad, as she is actually very good on a one on one basis. She just is moody, and humiliates you on many occasions but I don't think she even knows this. I suspect that she is bi-polar, or possibly suffering from hyperthyoidism. She just looks like someone with a VERY high metabolism, and on certain days is waaay up there, and others, waaay down. Not quite sure what it is, but I strongly suspect something there.

Anyway, some days she is soo very negative. She will say rude things in front of others knowing that she is humilating you. I don't and never have taken that very lightly, and have bitten my tounge more than once when it came to her. I am an adult, and am not accostomed to such behaviour from someone who is supposed to be an authority figure.

But then again, on other days, she is so very receptive. She is so into her job as a teacher, that you see her face light up when she recognizes that you've GOT it! You just want to give her a huge hug and thanks.

Nine out of ten times though, everyone in my class will verify that she is a heartless, nitpicking unhappy woman who everyone hates. But then again nine out of those ten people are playing her game and passing. (well, make that six out of ten)

I am curious, what kinds of things have some of you failed on, and what kind of very ridiculous things have some of you (or your classmates) been failed on?

My own instructor hinted to me that my failure was over nitpicky stuff that she wouldn't have failed me on. This very same instructor couldn't say a bad word against ANYONE if her life depended on it. Yet previous instructors let me know that they thought this lab instructor held too much clout, and was causing more damage with her negativity to the profession than she was helping the profession by throwing students out for small errors.

I think the lab instructor is partially correct. She has to ensure that students understand things before she allows them to move on. The clinical instructors (RN's) that I have had in the past are also correct. She should not nitpick with the students over things they see daily and expect them to perform what professionals they deal with do not. (example: pushing a med with a 9th of a fraction of a bubble into someone when anesthesia pushes almost a cc of one)

That's actually an understandable nitpick for an instructor to make.

Try this one: How to push 5 cc's of a med over 2 mins. I thought 2.5 cc's a minute. That's .2 over 15 sec. Then .4 over 10... NO matter what, you end up with almost a cc after 2 mins have passed. if the PDR said to give the med "not less than 2 mins" would you have been failed for giving over 2.5 mins? As long as your post flush was at the same rate, who cares?? How to figure this out? The PDR says to dilute 2 ccs of pepcid with NS to equal 5cc or 10cc and push over no less than 2 mins. If I had to do it again, I would have mixed the 2cc pepcid with 8cc NS. So much easier to figure 10 cc over 2 mins than an odd number like 5cc.

Somone ask their lab instructor what I should have done, please? I am not sure if mine is having a manic or a depressive day! :confused:

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:)

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:chuckle If I didn't know better I'd swear I'd written your post, most of it any way! Guess every school has their share of instructors that one wounders about! I'm a new student who is very much an adult, older than most of the instructors we have, and I also find it hard at times not to say things. I find myself saying they are used to dealing with much younger ones and they feel they have to some how weed out the weak little ones! But I've seen some go like you say for little things that would have been very carring compassanate nurses. Maybe thats not what they want us to be, some have developed such hard rough shells you can't figure them out at all!!!! Still most would bend over backward to help any of us if we could only find the courage to ask, maybe thats what they are trying to develope in us the courage to be tough yet with compassion. In an essay written by one of the instructors recently killed by a student Cheryl McGaffic wrote " I worry that our profession will eat Jeanette alive because she is kind and quiet and genuinely cares for people." It appears they feel we have to be made tough, if we fall off the horse they want to know we've got what it takes to get back up and onto that horse again! It will be a hard world we're going into, but a little compassion going in surely couldn't hurt that much!!!! Could it??? Have no ideal what happened to my first post!

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Your posts have just verified what I feared about nursing schools all alone. That there will always be one unhappy, overly bearing, intimidating nurse who passes his/her misuse of authority onto the student, thus producing uncareing, cold, technical nurses. That is why I chose to study nursing via an independent study program. But I wish all of you the best of luck. and studying nursing from distance want completely exempt me from redicule and abuse of the unhappy and unfilled nurse.

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I'm only in my first semester, but so far, all of my instructors, and especially my clinical instructor, are extremely helpful, and forgiving.

Maybe I'm just fortunate.

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I am just curious why you would think that BSN students lab instructors have more time to spend going over things with them. I am not criticizing you or upset at all that you said that, I am just curious why you would think that. I know that ASN programs are shorter than BSN, but we have to take more classe (all those bs theory classes, research, stats, ethics, etc...). Trust me, our instructors do not spend much time with us. They usually go over a skill once and then you have to practice on your own and then pass check-offs.

Anyway, I am sorry you had suck a hard time with your instructor. We do have some that are not very nice, but they are not nearly as picky as your's sounds. It should not matter if you push a drug over 2 or 2.5 minutes as long as you do not push it too fast!!

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I wish I could say the same, but my clinical teachers were not "Atilla's", nor were they easy on us...they demanded just one thing, and that was that we were competent. I guess what I am trying to say would be best said by one of these such teachers in her introduction to our first year class and that was this...""there is no such thing as perfection in nursing, you simply do the best you can with what you have".....

I don't know what the school policies are/were for you guys, but where I am the students conduct professional evaluations on all of our lab/clinical/theory instructors each semester (q4months).....what better way to give the students a voice in their own education?

~dawn~

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My clinical instructors are very nice, however, there is one who isn't very helpful, she's kind of new and she picked one student in particular to favor.

None of my classmates are having trouble in the clinical area yet, but many of them are struggling with the lecture portions. :)

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overall...ours are good. but we have a couple that leave a little to be desired...

one lady said (on the first day of lab): i'm ms......i make people cry.

fortunately, i don't have her :D

most of our labs are taught by nurses in the np program so they know how valuable a good prof is...

there is one that barely speaks english (not in and of itself a bad thing) so people have a hard time understanding her and she doesn't understand why people don't understand her...(i don't have her either )

all in all, that's 2 out of several. this is one area that i can honestly say i have no complaints:)

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MINES GREAT

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AmiK25,

I am assuming that you get what you pay for in life, and as a BSN student, you are paying for an extra two years of school. That translates to more time. More TIME that a lab instructor can give a BSN student than a lab instructor can give an ADN student. As I said in my original post, I know you guys have the same amount of stress, (bless your hearts, cuz ya'll put up with it for two years more than those of us who can only do the ADN) I just suspect that BSN instructors get to know the students better and are less apt to have financial motives to fail students as the ADN instructors do. Maybe not. This thread is totally not about throwing the ADN's against the BSN's, and I'm sorry if it came out that way. Many times though, I wonder why I am in the ADN program, when I suspect that the really valuable teachers are in the BSN one.

I guess I'm saying, I suspect you BSN's are getting what you pay for and as a result have more professional instructors.

Again, please don't think that I was taking a jab at BSN students. If I had the money, I would be one. Trust me.

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Caroline,

I wasn't at all taking it as a jab...I was just curious. Trust me...the BSN route is really not the way to go! I need a BSN to get into CRNA school, and honestly, if I had it to do over again, I would go ADN and then get my BSN online so I would never have to sit through another boring class about nursing research or nursing statistics!! Anyway, about clinical instructors. We never have a clinical instructor more than once throughout the entire program, so we really don't know them very well. I have had some good clinical instructors and some very bad ones!! We really don't get all that much clinical time honestly. I am in OB right now and we three weeks (exactly six times). Now honestly, what can you learn in three weeks?

Anyway, just wanted to let you know that I would suspect that the clinical situations are not all that different. The extra years in the BSN are taken up with a bunch of extremely boring, useless classes about communication for nurses and nursing theories.

I'm sorry you have to wait until next semester to continue your nursing program. It sounds like a very unfair situation for you. Good luck in the future.

Ami

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