Need help. How do I sound the politest way possible? - Page 2

Ok, I need to ask this, because I keep seeing this come up on here.

To the new grads: How many patients were you assigned in clinicals by the time you graduated? Seems to me like nursing schools in the US are not really preparing their students for the realities of a full patient load. I might be completely off, and if I am, I apologize. It just seems like over and over, we get threads on here about new grads freaking out about their pretty normal patient loads.

Where I worked as a PCA, they did orientation for new grad nurses for 12 weeks! The first week was general hospital information orientation and the last week was computer charting information. The weeks in between we're on floor orientation with a preceptor. Then they have the nurse 1-2 patients to care for and gradually gave them more. There was a nurse there who only had 4 patients on her own and she had been working there 6 months. This was a med/surg unit.

I assumed you are a new grad, sorry.

Ive noticed that too. Where are you from? When I was in school ( many yrs ago) it was nothing to have 30-35 residents in LTC and in the hospital we usually had 2 maybe 3 but we were told that would drastically increase once we were actually nurses out in the field. (as students they wont load you up because thats just it..your a student! Liability!) I guess it depends on your instructors...ours were very up front and gave us the info we needed to mentally prepare ourselves once we were on our own. Maybe new grads were prepared but once out here in the real world of nursing is just initially overwhelming! Who knows.

Just say you are feeling nervous and let them know you appreciate any advice/help they can offer. Don't try to negotiate patient numbers. That doesn't come off well.