How My Instructor Affected My Life

"Personally I am almost finished with school and csn't wait I am so sick of thier attitudes and crappy rules, I have witnessed and been on the recieving end of too much crap for the past 3 years to ever advise anyone to go to nursing school, I love the work but the professors are for the most part horrible humans, most of them have borderline personality disorders"


As the old song says, "And We've Only Just Begun". Nurses DO "eat their young" no matter what anybody says. You either get over it, work agency so you can move on after 13 weeks, or go to truck driving school. And, from my experience, the nurses that say that they are "not that way" are the very nurses that you need to watch out for the most. The cliques that nurses get into are worse than any you witnessed in junior high and high school.

I too had an instructor like this in my last semester. I graduated in May of 2008. The instructor I had kept me with her for 15 weeks. She would not let me go to my community rotation for the last third of the semester. I cried at least 7 times in front of her. I ganied 20 pounds in those 15 weeks and my confidence was completely shot. I am still getting over the effects of this instructor. She would say things like, "would you like a nurse like you taking care of your family members". I can still cry about it now. Two weeks before graduation I broke and told her I was withdrawing and would come back next year. If it were not for my other instructors sticking up for me I would never have made it. This instructor called me up and told me to come back to class. To this day I can not go past the hospital I had clinical at. I had nightmares for months afterwards. It was absolutely the worst experience of my life.

Wow! These are some awful stories. Y'all need to come to the nursing school I teach for. We have a great time. I do not believe in humiliation and belittling people as a way to teach. I believe in leading by example, sharing my experiences and helping my students when they need it! I have seen instructors that are like that-and I have to wonder how they think they are "helping" students. I believe in having fun and making clinical interesting.

This is good to hear - that there is at least 1 normal instructor in the world.

I must say, while there are definitely some terrible teachers, there are also some students who seem to do everything in their power to give instructors a hard time. When I was teaching, I had students who habitually arrived late, came unprepared, hid out during clinicals, and viewed me as their enemy no matter how much I tried to be fair with them, tried to teach them what they needed to know, and bent the rules to try to help them. I knew they had children to care for, jobs to work to stay alive, and many responsibilities besides school.

I tried to balance their needs with the fact that I was supposed to be preparing them to care for human lives and preparing them to be able to be employed. I felt responsible to teach them to be punctual, reliable, & time-conscious, among other things. It is very hard to teach responsibility to some students.

Some students tried to befriend me. I kept my distance and probably seemed unfriendly but felt it was necessary, for their benefit, mine, and the benefit of their future patients. I tried hard to pass everyone but let the students decide, by their efforts and by their successes or failures, what became of their attempts to become nurses.

I'm not implying that anyone here on this board was or is a problem student, only presenting a glimpse into the head of an Instructor, for whatever it's worth.