Giving Nursing Students a Taste of NICU - Page 7

Just stumbled across this blog and so happy I did. I am a nursing student finishing my final term this fall. I have set-up a couple shadow days for this month, to help me determine if the NICU is a good fit for me. I have always felt deep down that it would and have such an interest in this area. I am looking forward to the experience and I hope that I am welcomed by great nurses on the team who share this same attitude as the OP. Thanks for your thoughts!!

When I was a NICU mom to 31-week twins five years ago, I was always afraid of dropping them, for some reason. These vivid images would come to my mind as I was holding them, bathing, etc. I never did drop one, and am now about to graduate from NS, hoping to be a NICU nurse. You can overcome!

I am really gratified to hear nurses and students alike sounding so positive about mentorship. We surely need more of this in nursing education. The NICU is a highly specialized care environment, and I never had to do a rotation there. OB was as close as I got. Perhaps, if mentorship were more like this discussions' environment, I might have tried it. As it was, I did get good mentorship in an ED during school, which is then where I went...and that mentorship saved me because I got thrown to the she-wolves after I graduated.

Thank you all for a refreshing look and what sometimes can be such a negative topic.

All i have to say is i love nurses like you... and wish there were more like you.....

I totally agree with your post. I had 1 clinical day in the NICU... didn't learn much of anything that I can truly remember. However, I really liked the unit, so I applied for a student nursing job there and worked my last year of nursing school. Now I work on that same unit as a RN. I think it definitely takes the right kind of nurses to precept a student... even if only for a 12 hour day (or less, heck we all know that we never stayed for 12 hours on a unit because our teachers wanted to leave by 4-5 pm. :P)

I think you definitely have the perfect attitude and you should be precepting tons if you aren't already! :-)

Very nice post

As a new grad, I still feel that throughout the entire 4-year course, we barely touched up on Neonatal Care.

I can't say that we have NOT covered the subject, on the contrary we do encounter it in some way or another on lectures or during clinical, but when we do there is that subtle feeling of uneasiness between myself (when I was a student nurse) and my instructor or professor--it's as if we were discussing a subject that is taboo.

This attitude towards neonatal care, in turn, facilitated a negative feeling towards a few of my colleagues and discouraged us further from exploring this field of nursing.

I am not even in Nursing school "yet", but reading your post gave me goosebumps and the desire to be a better Nurse than I ever in my wildest dreams thought that I could/will be. I originally wanted to a ped's nurse of some kind, then thought after seeing some or the "STAT" situations while working as a Hospital Asst./CNA/PCA in a University Hospital I decided thoes EXACT words to myself ie, not for me. In my heart (where it counts) really still have the desire to work with ped's in some form of nursing. Thank you , thank you for being authoritative enough to put it out there that you feel the newbies should learn and the desire to want to teach. If you are not already and if you have the desire to become a Nurse manager you have the skills to make it happen and you will be an AWESOME nurse manager.

Blessings to you and you endeavors, you wouldn't happen to be in the Houston, TX area would you?

Enjoy your day!

Can a nursing school not accept you if you were fired from a previous job.

Congrats on your interest to help newer nurses.