Tips for Making Your Clinical Day Better

These are great suggestions. I want to be a clinical instructor, but not until I get some experience and know what the heck I'm talking about!

The Clinical Evaluation Process- Are your students “At Risk for Failure?”

The clinical evaluation process for nursing faculty faces many difficult challenges today. Student performances are often viewed subjectively by faculty members, as the grading criteria and evaluation tools may not sufficiently assist them in accurate findings. In addition, students today face an array of barriers that may indeed place them “at risk for failure” within the clinical setting.

Students face many barriers that faculty may not recognize as problems in clinical today. Whether the student is traditional or non-traditional in age, the student may exhibit one or more of the following barriers which impact their ability to succeed clinically, including: role strain, stress and anxiety, employment during school, family issues, low self-esteem, and lack of support systems. Faculty members need to recognize that students exhibiting one or more of these characteristics are at risk for clinical failure....
http://emarketing.delmarlearning.com...eature_art.asp

Research on Teaching in the Clinical Setting - Scroll to page 91. Excellent article!

http://books.google.com/books?id=GNT...VC9hY#PPA91,M1

Hi, I am new to education, I am a CNM that has been given the assignment to teach the MCH including PEDs. I am a little lost, though just starting to bring the curriculum together, I need to develop tools for the PED's rotation.
Any suggestions? I am very very nervous, and this is a small program with less then a handful of faculty, and some beginning like me. I am excited about this opportunity to build it myself, but lacking some direction. Any thing will help. any tools I need?

Meme,
Have you tried "googling" other programs? Asking other schools in your area if yuo could borrow their syllabus to work on yours. Do you have a mentor, even if it is in another program? We have been "tweaking" our curriculum for about a year and have looked at other programs to see if ours matches up.

Sally-I'm interested in what is included in your daily clinical evaluations. Although I've been teaching in clinic as well as in the classroom for several years now, I sometimes go home after clinic with the feeling I could be doing a better job for my students. If you, or anyone else would share some examples of daily clinical objectives- it would be greatly appreciated.

HI Conniemarie, We have a form that my boss created on the computor and it includes: appearance, punctuality, professional growth, attitude, communication skills with instuctor etc, applies theory to practice, works well with others, completes procedures in a timely manner, safety, handwashing, documents pertinent info. There are others but they are eluding me right now. Its a great tool and it covers everything we are looking at in clinical. Every time we go to clinical we have the form dated and the name of the facility and in that date slot we give a either an S=satisfactory E= excellent I= improvement needed, F= failure for each catagory,and there is an area where we can document any pertinent inforamtion on their skills. We also inform the student in private immediately if something is right or wrong, I am a believer in letting them know quickly plus its not a shock at the end of the day or clinical rotation. At the end of the complete rotation ex: we go to one hospital for 3 months where they not only get several med/serg days but they do speciality rotations to the wound center, OR, ER, SPU, OB and others. Its an incredible learning experience, we give the form to the students for them to review and talk with them if they have issues and I must say we never have to because we address immediately that day. They sign it and we make a copy for them and one for their permanet file. Its a great tool. If you want to give me your e-mail address I can send you a copy of it. We also made up a clinical competiency form that has all of the procedures on it that LPN's are allowed to do. We have a section for assessments ex: GI, skin, respiratory, IV site etc and foley cath insertion tube feedings etc, vital signs, meds. There are procedures they will never do without an instructor but we note when they did the procedure. This assures that the student is staying with the rest of the group and if someone else has done something like a foley insertion we have the rest of the group get a chance before we let that person do a second one.

I also want to thank VickyRN for the info on the site on research on teaching in the clinical setting. I felt very good after I read it because an instructor can make or break a student. I remember when I was in the LPN program (the same one I am teaching now) many years ago, my one instructor was so mean, nasty and rude. She would do exactly what that article says not to do. She would question you in front of everyone and ask questions that were above our heads for that time in our classes then belittle you, if I asked her a question about a disease process when we first started she would turn beet red and say LOOK IT UP! DON'T ASK ME! She never encouraged us and I really needed that since I was an adult returning to school. I think I was going to quit 60 times but I am glad I didn't because I do the total opposite and have great respect for my students and they return it to me! Sally

Thanks so much for this great information. Absolutely please email the form(s) to me. Please send me a private message (PM) to request my email address to send them to me directly. Thank you.

Hi Meme2, I was in the same boat as you are. I started as a brand new nursing educator and I had to teach OB and Peds. We live in a small rural area so we don't have a lot of exposure to peds sites so we get limited clinical. The floor at the hospital we go to only has a three bed ped unit and the other hospital doesn't have one at all. So if there is a ped patient that is appropriate for our student to take then I will assign them and then my boss has made arrangement with four doctors offices and clinics so that each student gets more clinical time doing vitals and observing the staff. So they do get exposure. I make sure we talk alot about vaccines etc. and play alot of OB/PEDS jeopardy games. The OB rotation is great because everyone of my students for the the past three years have all seen a birth. This is an LPN class and we have 21 students this year. Any time I see an important peds article I share it with the students. I have learned to be creative and find out where their weakness's are and focus on that area. It has been working out. Good Luck, Sally

Conniemarie do you have a fax machine?? If so I can fax them today, if not I will do it Wednesday when we go back to the classroom, its on my bosses computor. Sally