Advice For a New Instructor Please!

[New-Instructor]

I am a brand new instructor. My students congregate around the nursing station at times, there are a lot of them and they have one patient each and not many places to go. For the record these students are doing excellent on their clinical paperwork and assessments, and get accolades from patients and family. There is no conference room to go into and they aren't wanted in the break room. The energy is kind of bad on the unit towards the students.

The unit manager's solution is to pair each student with a nurse. My students literally cried about it because they feel so unwelcome already and do not want to be paired with a nurse that rolls their eyes at them all day.

Do y'all have other suggestions for how to get them to congregate less? Should I move forward with pairing them with a nurse? 

This unit manager is also asking for manual blood pressures from the students. And she wants them in the chart. Is that normal? I felt like I should be the one telling them if I want them to do manuals. I know they will be asking me to double check all their manual pressures. They were checked off on those last semester and I would rather move on to higher level skills before they go to the next course. 

TLDR- should I let a unit manager make my nursing students' assignments instead of me? And pair them with a nurse? And demand manual blood pressures?! Help!

[PositiveEnergy, MSN, PhD, RN, APN]

Well said.

[londonflo]

JBMmom said:

two of my instructors had us stock the carts every shift- it's a great way to learn where things are and the nurses appreciate it)

Thank you for your reply. I got a lot of grief that they were not getting paid for the actions at the hospital.  I said" you will learn where these medication supplies are where you work as an RN for you but will learn what to ask for" or ask for the location when you don't have med carts/in room supplies/pyxis supplies.  

[2BS Nurse, BSN]

"The students should not have a place to escape to".

Meeting for pre and post clinical conference is not an "escape". It's a way to prepare and debrief for the day.

"I've been in emergent situations where nurses in a hospital couldn't even take a manual BP reading".

Emergency situations are loud. It's very difficult to auscultate in that volume level. The Dynamap is a necessary tool. If they are all sitting somewhere waiting to be repaired, that is a failure of the health care system. I know nurses who can't start IVs in emergent situations either. 

I can remember fighting over one pill crusher in my LTC clinical. Seriously?? These patients are paying a sh$% ton of money to reside there! Let's not make excuses for the lack of equipment!

 

[londonflo]

2BS Nurse said:

"The students should not have a place to escape to".

Meeting for pre and post clinical conference is not an "escape". It's a way to prepare and debrief for the day.

I never said that a "pre and post conference room" was not an appropriate use and necessary room for the clinical education meetings. Yes it is required to prepare for their assignments and receive a debriefing for the day. 

But It should never be an escape for students to hang there intermittently during the clinical shift (after preclinical and before post clinical), Evading the call lights of their patients, evading the other departments the patient needs to go to for testing

.'Let's have the "transporter take them'.  I have spent many hours assisting the student to take the patient to an x-ray study, radiation treatment etc..

Students should be responsible for learning/acting on the needs of their patient. 

[londonflo]

2BS Nurse said:

Emergency situations are loud. It's very difficult to auscultate in that volume level. The Dynamap is a necessary tool.

I began my practice without a Dynamap, we had stethoscopes that we used to practice BPs until we could hear it without amplification (no Dynomaps then). We got along fine with  providing accurate blood pressures. . Actually I learned to really discern accurate blood pressures with a stethoscope by taking them with this in the background: 

 

[Hoosier_RN, MSN]

2BS Nurse said:

Emergency situations are loud. It's very difficult to auscultate in that volume level

I think the response was in relation to a nurse/student not know how, not anything to do with noise levels. In ICU,  I've had MDs specify manual

I know nurses who can't start IVs in emergent situations either. 

Because it's a skill that they haven't worked on or gained a lot of practice. Like anything, it takes repeated practice to know

 

[2BS Nurse, BSN]

Yes, we routinely auscultate BPs in the clinic, but the automatic cuff goes on during an emergency and is set to run every x minutes. I have too much to do and there aren't enough of us to take vitals, apply EKG, call 911, start IV, apply O2 and administer meds. Sending your students to auscultate in would provide them with many opportunities to practice.