Amount of Clinicals in Nursing School?

guest042302019, BSN, RN · Feb 5, 2011

1. USA

2. BlackHawk College-ADN program

3. Second Semester nursing student

The amount of clinical experience really depends on the school's structure, its' relationship with area hospitals, patient availability, one's own ability to "seek" experience, and sometimes getting lucky. Lucky, how? Because the patient population is so variable, you never really know what you're going to come acrossed. One night you could have a few so called "boring" patients while you're begging anyone to give you something to do, you're so bored you'd clip toe-nails just for a semblence of something remotely interesting and another night could have patients with drainage tubes, large surgical sutures/repairs, interesting disorders/diseases but the floor is packed and you don't have time to really "delve" into their chart. However, the floor or area of the hospital you have your rotation on will generally give you an idea of what you might see, do, or experience. For instance, I was on the medical/telemetry unit the first semester. I saw great deal of cardiovascular, renal, and respiratory disorders and failures. However, some other students during the first semester in my same class were on the medical-surgical floor. As you can imagine, their experience was geared towards post-operative care, complication prevention, and discharge teaching. So you can see "experience" is so subjective and is really determined by a variety of factors.

4. As far as being prepared for the real world, that too is subjective. I forget the nursing theorist that said this, but when we graduate, according to her we have a novice/superficial view and understanding of nursing. The intuition to see situations before they occur, to tie a subtle symptom to the patient history to a lab result to a family member's comment the day before will come with time, or do the thousands of different tasks a nurse might do comes with time. Like anything, we haven't had enough practice...yet. Is it really practical to feel 100% prepared for the real world directly out of school, especially with the ever changing-complex medical world, probably not. This is true even outside of the medical field. Any field could apply. So, soak up all the knowledge you can. At the end of the day from hours of clinicals, studying, and general malaise I feel, I feel truly enlightened by the knowledge I have attained about myself and the mind, spirit, body of human beings. Good luck and Have a ton of fun!

Sugar-Phosphate · Feb 6, 2011

Thank you FloridaTrail2006 for commenting on my post. I was just curious how different nurses felt about the about of clinical experience they got in school. I understand how subjective it is, and the subjective point is what I am mostly aiming for.

I know UFV gets a fair amount of clinical experience, but other universities in the area practice more in theory rather then practical experience.