Regarding nursing students- was this too much to ask?

[blondy2061h]

I have a new nursing student starting with me next week. She'll spend 50 hours with me. She emailed me to introduce her self and asked what the unit was like. I work on a BMT unit. I wrote her back telling her that, and telling her that we give a lot of medications. I gave her a list of a dozen of our most common meds and asked her to come familiar with them. Now that I think about it, though, I'm not sure that was appropriate. I feel like I gave her a homework assignment, and that's not really my job. I'm sure she already has enough homework as it is. However, in nursing school I was expected to be familiar with the meds I have and I think all nurses should be. If I try and teach her about all of the meds on the unit I fear we'll be giving 10am meds at 3pm, but I want to be able to involve her. What do you think?

[lemur00, BSN, RN]

In my practicums we were instructed on our first meeting with our preceptor to ask for the 10 most common medications and the most common procedures done on the unit. Then we had to research them and send the med research to our faculty advisor, along with a set of goals tailored to the work done on the unit. So this is de rigueur. I ended up with 10 pages of med research because there were so many different meds given on the unit I preceptored on.

[Marshall1]

What is a "BMT" unit?

[joanna73, BSN, RN]

When I was a student, our preceptor emailed homework assignments and we had regular discussions during off hours. The expectation was that we show up prepared or go home, and all of our clinical instructors made it clear that much of the learning would occur on our own time.

Better to lay the foundation early because there is no time to look up all the medications while you're on the unit trying to absorb procedures and practise communication skills.

[flyersfan88]

I'd be stoked to be paired up with a nurse that actually cared if I learned.

[Beautiful Mind RN]

This is great! I would love to have a preceptor like you that is fully involved and goes above and beyond with my clinicals! Who cares if it's a 'small' homework assignment on top of my other homework I may have, I would rather come prepared, knowing the familiar meds, than having to work on that while we're doing rounds. Good job!

[neverbethesame]

As long as the school doesn't have a problem with it, I think it's a great idea!

[blondy2061h, MSN, RN]

What is a "BMT" unit?

Bone Marrow Transplant, or Blood and Marrow Transplant.

[Nguyenchester]

To be honest I could either see my classmates either being irritated or happy that their preceptor was going above and beyond in terms of learning experiences. While I was in my high acuity clinicals, my preceptor actually made me do a care plan for her on a patient and look up every drug on the medication reference manual that I was not familiar with before administering them. My peers were lambasting her choice in teaching methods, mainly towards the care plan, but it did give me a better idea of what exactly I should be looking for from an outside perspective.

[JoJo626]

I'd love to have a preceptor like you! I will be in preceptorship next month before graduating in May with an ADN. Facilities for preceptorship are extremely limited here, and I fear being put in a facility where the entire staff with the exception of 1 or 2 RNs are downright rude to students.

[danceyrun]

I will be doing an externship on a BMT unit in a few months and I can tell you she was probably thankful and excited that you did this. At least in my program, we spent maybe an hour total talking about BMT so there's not much exposure in school yet so much to know.