How Can You Be A Nurse With No Clinical Background?

Nurses Professionalism

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I find that odd. The foundation of nursing skill and ''critical thinking'' is having some experience with bedside care.

I understand alot of new grads are running away from the bedside faster than ever, and alot of nurses are moving up and branching out into other areas of nursing with less than 5 years of clinical experience.

I know it maybe insulting to nurses who choose to do this but I just don't think it's wise.

I previously worked with a nurse who had been a nurse for 5 years and never worked in a hospital, only clinics and the operating room very briefly but had went to school for his masters of nursing in management and education. How are you going to teach or manage anything or anyone if you barely have any experience yourself. No offense but working in a clinic is a joke compared to the other areas of nursing, and you also limit and lock yourself out of alot of areas of nursing and branches of nursing (advance practice nursing for example)

He said that med-surg just wasn't his thing. I've never met a nurse who didn't atleast have some clinical experience.

Even as I was working in a clinic with him, He didn't even seem interested in learning certain things (for example using heart monitor or getting good at drawing blood) He frequently asked other to take care of it. Even the Assistant Director expressed concern about his lack of clinical experience even though it was a clinic (because of some of the daily procedures done in the clinic)

Being someone who loves all that nursing is, invested alot into nursing school, and wants to go everywhere that nursing can take me it just seems a bit odd to how removed some nurses are to the thought of being at the bedside. Sure bedside nursing isn't everyone's thing and no it's not really something you want to do for a long time, I understand. Trust me I'm burned out of it right now but to not even try?

I even dislike to see RN's who stay at the bedside for a year and think they're good to become NP's.

Specializes in Urology, ENT.

I talked about this with my friend who wants to go into law -- we got onto the topic because she wanted me to be her nurse consultant. Our teacher was telling us it's possible for someone to go into nursing, and with how the law is written, yeah, they can have little to no clinical experience if there's a good reason (I think the example she used was if they couldn't move/lift a certain amount, they couldn't be expected to pull up a patient...this conversation was a while ago) because the school had to be able to accomodate. Their options then would be to go into nurse consulting, be a nurse rep, or do telenursing.

That said, while I agree with you (it does bother me a little that some people are moving up the ranks with what seems like little to no experience), some people are really good managers and/or leaders. The person you described could've been delegating (as someone else said), or possibly just lazy, but it's not like he's representative of an entire group of people.

Regardless, at the end of the day, I'd rather someone who can actually manage people and lead them to something good rather than someone who has 30+ years experience, but can't get a group of people to cooperate.

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I don't get why it's a problem that this guy "won't even try". As you know and stated, being a "nurse" can mean so many different things--some people go into nursing because they want to do those other things. I'm sure it doesn't bother you that people who go through a teacher training program because they want to teach high school chemistry never even TRY to teach kindergarten... even though some of their education was focused on that kind of teaching. I had a nursing school classmate who had zero interest in hospital nursing and planned to get his degree and go back to the foreign missions work he and his wife had been doing previously. Now, he ended up hating the hospital so much that he couldn't even make it through clinicals and dropped out, but some people with other career goals do stick through and then their degree is theirs to do what they want with. To suggest that it's not right for an RN to not even try one specific aspect of nursing doesn't make much more sense than asking why the average non-nurse doesn't even try to become a nurse.

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Specializes in Emergency Nursing.

A lot of people are just not cut out for bedside nursing. I am an older new nurse currently working at the bedside. I anticipate doing this for a couple years then moving on to something else, probably not management, possibly PACU and then on to the OR, or Psych APN, maybe PA school. I enjoy bedside nursing for the most part, but am not interested in doing it for the next twenty years.

My hospital offers an OR internship that I didn't even bother applying for because I wanted to get a foundation in medical nursing, which I enjoy. That said, one classmate did apply and was accepted and I say, good for her. She doesn't want to be a bedside nurse, her endgame is as a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner. That's what she wants to do. I have some idea what that entails, but I don't know how working in the OR will help her...anyway, she doesn't want to do traditional floor nursing. More power to her.

Most of us were "sold" nursing as a career choice with the upside that there were a great number of things you could do, so many different options.

I like that. And I don't think you have to "pay your dues" if by that we mean to spend years in MedSurg or something similar.

As for people going to NP school after a year of practice? Who cares? I know a lot of fine mid-level providers with little or no clinical experience beyond what they got in school.

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Specializes in burn ICU, SICU, ER, Trauma Rapid Response.

They are not locking themselves out of advanced practice. No experience required for NP or CNS. CRNA and CNMW do require certain clinical experience. There are lots of direct entry NP programs where non nurses go directly from the RN portion of the program to NP program. I personaly think it's a really bad idea. We have some of these students doing clinicals in my hospital and their total lack of experience is obvious.

Nurse managers are a different story. A nurse at my hospital was recently promoted to nurse manager of a medical floor. As a bedside nurse he was scarey incompetant. However he is doing a great job as manager. His unit is well staffed and well run and he takes care of his nurses too.

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Specializes in OB-Gyn/Primary Care/Ambulatory Leadership.
No offense but working in a clinic is a joke compared to the other areas of nursing,.

Putting "no offense, but..." in front of an offensive statement really doesn't make the statement any less offensive. Just saying.

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Specializes in Med-Surg, NICU.

I'm either going to directly go to NP school (part-time) while working at the bed side fulltime or work for one year fulltime then drop to part-time while going to school full-time for two years. By the time I'm get my NP license, I will have two-three years of bedside experience.

I want to finish school before I have children. It is taking me longer to get my BSN than expected, and I really don't want to be in school, working AND raising kids at once. If I go straight through, I will be 26/27 years old by the time I'm finished (23 after graduating with a BSN). I don't want to be in my thirties and JUST starting a family (I would like three to five children) and I would like to be finished with having children by 35, leaving me with very little time to have those three, four (MAYBE five) children.

I really have no choice BUT to go straight through, and I shouldn't be judged for it. Yes, if I were younger and didn't want as many children, I would take my time, but I'm not going to have children AND go to school AND work. It is too much for me.

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Specializes in burn ICU, SICU, ER, Trauma Rapid Response.

There IS a midlevel option for those who do not wish to aquire the critical bedside nursing experience. It's called PA school. There is a reason NP programs have a lot fewer clinical hours than PA programs. NP students are expected to be experienced bedside RNs and the NP training reflects that. PAs are not expected to have heath care experience at the same level as RNs thus they are trained differently.

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It is taking me longer to get my BSN than expected, and I really don't want to be in school, working AND raising kids at once. If I go straight through, I will be 26/27 years old by the time I'm finished (23 after graduating with a BSN).

Not to criticize your plans, but doesn't graduating at 23 with a BSN only put you a year behind other grads who would have gone straight to a traditional BSN program from high school? I get a sense that you already feel behind on life, but finishing a college degree by 23 isn't that bad.

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Specializes in Med-Surg, NICU.

I will be twenty-three going on twenty-four so that puts me two years behind. I am in my fourth year of college. I went directly from high school. I switched majors which put me a year behind. Then I got a horrible clinical instructor who bullied me and failed me three weeks before finishing my first year even though I had an A average...which put me behind another year.So even though I did everything right I was still screwed over. Thankfully, I received a better instructor who I clicked with.

Not to criticize your plans, but doesn't graduating at 23 with a BSN only put you a year behind other grads who would have gone straight to a traditional BSN program from high school? I get a sense that you already feel behind on life, but finishing a college degree by 23 isn't that bad.
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Specializes in Peds OR as RN, Peds ENT as NP.
I'm either going to directly go to NP school (part-time) while working at the bed side fulltime or work for one year fulltime then drop to part-time while going to school full-time for two years. By the time I'm get my NP license, I will have two-three years of bedside experience.

I want to finish school before I have children. It is taking me longer to get my BSN than expected, and I really don't want to be in school, working AND raising kids at once. If I go straight through, I will be 26/27 years old by the time I'm finished (23 after graduating with a BSN). I don't want to be in my thirties and JUST starting a family (I would like three to five children) and I would like to be finished with having children by 35, leaving me with very little time to have those three, four (MAYBE five) children.

I really have no choice BUT to go straight through, and I shouldn't be judged for it. Yes, if I were younger and didn't want as many children, I would take my time, but I'm not going to have children AND go to school AND work. It is too much for me.

Wow, you have the kid thing all planned out ;). Life does not always work out the way we "plan" (literally for you) but I hope you have those five babies!

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Specializes in Med-Surg, NICU.
Wow, you have the kid thing all planned out ;). Life does not always work out the way we "plan" (literally for you) but I hope you have those five babies!

You don't think I already know this? Of course I do. I didn't expect to be in undergrad for so long, but life had other plans for me.

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When you're mumblemumble years old, like me, and probably even sooner, those two years in your twenties will shrink into the insignificance they deserve. Move on and try not to think about it so much.

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