Dear nursing student - Page 3
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Mar 18, '10 by dudette10Quote from marty6001liked the letter, and i laughed at this part (not in a bad way).remove your piercings and cover your tattoo's....imagine your grandmother in the hospital and the nurse comes in with a nose ring or a tattoo. .... would you want that person caring for your family?
there will come a day when all the patients are tattooed and have the tell-tale pinprick scars of youthful piercings. just you wait and see....
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Mar 19, '10 by studentmomof2I just want to say that this is a great letter to students. You sound like the kind of instructor I would love to have. And as for the care plan taking 8 hours... right now in my clinical rotation we have 2 patients, we do research on Monday's as long as the patients are there and we can do it... so far I have only been able to research for one patient on Monday's and the other is left for Tuesday and Wednesday while we are caring for our patients. Then we have to do the pathophysiology, analyze labs, medication research, 4-6 nursing diagnoses with 5 interventions for each and this is all due by Wednesday at the end of clinical. Then we have a journal that is usually between 4-6 pages due Sunday night. I don't got to bed till after 1-2:00 am Monday's and Tuesdays and up by 5 Tuesdays and Wednesdays. If I had a week to hand this stuff in I would be in heaven. Thanks for the inspiration! - Mar 19, '10 by lauranceI enjoyed you post greatly, It has touched my past and will impact my future. I am a recent graduate of methodist college of nursing, with your permission i would like to forward this to all my past intstuctors. I think it would be a nice addition to any sylabus at any nursing school. I have had wonderful instructors: and in your writing i can tell that you are a wonderful nurse and instructor, my regret is that i didn't get to take one of your classes or clinicals.
Laurance - RN/BSNtiredstudentmom likes this. -
Mar 19, '10 by marty6001I'm sure Laurance that there are lots of dedicated nursing faculty and professors who have written much more touching and thoughtful stories than mine.. I put this on here for everyone to have, flame, like, hate, print, burn, etc... I'm just suprised that folks actually enjoyed reading it, makes me want to write a few more sharonp30 likes this. - Mar 19, '10 by totally_nutsI like the post!
As a student about to go on clinical placement, it's interesting to know what instructors are looking for.
Being in a different country though I'm confused about something - do your students have 12 weeks of classes or twelve weeks of clinical placement? And what sort of nurse is that?
In Australia we have 2 basic levels - an enrolled nurse and a registered nurse. The enrolled nurse completes 14 months class training and nine weeks in clinical placement. The registered nurse completes three years class training and I think it's 16 weeks clinical placement. They can both do further training after completing the original lot.
Nursing in the USA certainly sounds complicated!
Cheers
Chris - Mar 20, '10 by HJS27:smackingf Seriously? Eight to twelve hours on a single care plan is just too much.
There is no particular merit in time lost to mindless busy work.
There are excellent resources available that allow a fabulous care plan to be put together in much less time. This, in turn, allows time to actually think critically about the information. Yes, putting the care plan together does get the juices flowing, but looking up each factoid and handwriting them simply wastes your precious time. It is just as effective to read a completely pre-prepared care plan document for each NANDA and choose & adapt each part to fit your particular patient's needs. The process is still an exercise in critical thinking. I particularly like an Evolve resource, the online care plan constructor that comes with “Nursing Diagnosis Handbook: An Evidence-Based Guide to Planning Care”, by Ackley & Ladwig, from Elsevier. 
For medication information, the Drugs section of Epocrates Online in an exceptional resource. The basic application is free, the medication information is broken out into categories making it a simple task to pull the information for your care plan, and the Diseases section is excellent as well...concise, complete, and also broken out into sections.
Being a well-rested nursing student/nurse is a good thing, and is not to be under estimated. Do a little research on sleep deprivation if you don't believe me. :zzzzz -
Mar 21, '10 by A New StartQuote from dudette10There's no doubt. You're right. There WILL BE tattoos on the aged patients of the future. There's also no doubt they too will have their own socially acceptable and unacceptable opinions. But, the question is will there be young nurses scaring and provoking those (tattooed, but old and frail) patients? Or will there be humble young people willing to lay down their pride and their rights of expression for 8-12 hours and care for those that have lost much of the control in their lives?Liked the letter, and I laughed at this part (not in a bad way).
There will come a day when all the patients are tattooed and have the tell-tale pinprick scars of youthful piercings. Just you wait and see....
I could be wrong. Marty correct me if I am, but what the instructors like him are saying to us is "It's about the patient." We can express our individuality in a hundred ways when we're off duty. I'm from the hippie generation, I understand and speak rebel very well. But when I chose to become a nurse, I gave up some of my rights in the interests of frail and injured strangers.
Think of your favorite old person in the whole world. Do you want anyone scaring or provoking them just so they can express themselves? No, you wouldn't do that. I'm sure you're going to make a great nurse and you'll do the right thing. Whatever that is.
Good Luck! A New StartLast edit by A New Start on Mar 21, '10 : Reason: spell correctiontiredstudentmom likes this. - Mar 21, '10 by A New StartQuote from HJS27I like the thinking here as long as it doesn't result in cookie cutter treatment, bad assessment skills, and thoughtless evaluation. I'll try it and see how it helps my thinking. Thank you. I used Excel in business for the same reasons. I'd rather work with the data than be fussing with the method all the time.:smackingf Seriously? Eight to twelve hours on a single care plan is just too much. There is no particular merit in time lost to mindless busy work.
There are excellent resources available that allow a fabulous care plan to be put together in much less time. This, in turn, allows time to actually think critically about the information. Yes, putting the care plan together does get the juices flowing, but looking up each factoid and handwriting them simply wastes your precious time. It is just as effective to read a completely pre-prepared care plan document for each NANDA and choose & adapt each part to fit your particular patient's needs. The process is still an exercise in critical thinking. I particularly like an Evolve resource, the online care plan constructor that comes with “Nursing Diagnosis Handbook: An Evidence-Based Guide to Planning Care”, by Ackley & Ladwig, from Elsevier.
For medication information, the Drugs section of Epocrates Online in an exceptional resource. The basic application is free, the medication information is broken out into categories making it a simple task to pull the information for your care plan, and the Diseases section is excellent as well...concise, complete, and also broken out into sections.
Being a well-rested nursing student/nurse is a good thing, and is not to be under estimated. Do a little research on sleep deprivation if you don't believe me. :zzzzz
Congratulations on some good creative thinking. But let's all beware of going to sleep with our eyes open!
A New StartLast edit by A New Start on Mar 21, '10 : Reason: Need an English class - Mar 21, '10 by marty6001I guess my thinking is old fashioned when it comes to piercings, tattoo's etc in that if we are attempting to advance ourselves as a profession, we have to uphold ourselves to the highest level of professionalism to our patients... That being said, we all have the right to be individuals, and to exercise that in anyway we wish. I myself have tattoo's, but when I am in clinical, either working or teaching I wear a shirt that covers them in respect to my patients, my institution, and most importantly my profession...
As to the care plans, I still stick to the belief that as a student, researching the patient, gathering the data, and writing the plan should take 8 hours. Yes, I do add in the researching part. Doing a complete chart and online review, then going home and defining the terms and writing the plan should take a mininum of 8 hours... That's just me, but I will say that I've never received a bad score from a student and I expect this level of work from them all.vegas2009 likes this. - Mar 22, '10 by angel_bear_4670I am an EEN (Endorsed Enrolled Nurse) in Australia, and have just undertaken to upgrade to do my Registered Nursing through University. I'm an oldie too .. 48yo. My first placement is nothing short of a nightmare. I'M LUCKY .. I've got an ex-colleague I get to work with, but one of my fellow students is a naive 19yo, who has NO floor experience and doesn't know how do *decode* a taped handover and missed the hourly urine measures. She had a patient load dumped on her as her RN found students to be "a nuisance" and then got screamed at (yes, I heard this woman screaming at the students) for missing the measures.
Necessary? No. No amount of screaming is going to teach this young thing how to decode a taped handover (god bless bedside handovers). Thank the Lord I have an advantage in that way.
Then again, where some see me as a "useful student" cause I have floor experience, others see me as 'painful' because I've got experience and assume I'm a know-it-all (I'm not .. I do realise RN's are significantly more trained than EEN's on so many levels it's frightening).
so .. to my preceptor .. THANK YOU for knowing me, trusting me and teaching me the finer points .. to my fellow students preceptor .. retire or refuse. Making somebody cry on their first day is NOT the way to encourage somebody.NRSKarenRN likes this.
