anyone just started NS?

Fireman767 · May 10, 2013

Clinicals for me were very hands on. THe first clinical you see the facility and they teach you about the policies. The first hands on they threw us into it, said to get the patient up, get them prepared, etc. If your first semester is anything like mine, get prepared to wake patients up, get their food, change their diapers ( or pullups or wings), bath them, dress them, spend hours talking to them, assess them, and then if your lucky enough to give them medications, injections or procedures (catheters, wound cleaning, etc). Thats just a basics to it. you should be learning all the skills as you progress through the program, so it wont be new. and be prepared for people to leave, we lost a few people just because they didn't like the field or stuff they do, and lost others because the instructors told them they weren't prepared for nursing or patients had issues with them (weren't nice, weren't prepared for clinicals and cost the patient time or money for equipment, or they werent demonstrating the level of competency for clinicals at the end of the semester (they are warned about it at midterm and told to do better or fear of dismissal).

But that is not every clinical program, just mine in particular.

meg2014 · May 11, 2013

Wow that sounds like a lot! Makes me nervous but also excited! I'm ready to get in there and be with patients. Thank you for sharing your experience :)

NorCalKid · May 12, 2013

I am in my first semester right now. It's not too tough. I didn't think it was any harder than the prereqs. The thing is there is way more of it. So as far as workload and time management there is a lot more. But I'm not sure it was any harder material than the prereqs. Everybody is in your boat. We were all just as nervous. There really isn't a lot you can do about that. From what I am seeing the hardest thing for people seems to be balancing life and school. Time management is everything. My advice, go get a dry erase board, then every week look at your syllabuses and write everything due for that week on it(+ maybe papers you should be thinking about). I did some homework basically every day and work 2 days a week(study those days too).

Clinical is all hands on. First day they partnered us up(that was after a little hospital orientation scavenger hunt, 2hrs or so), after that we were on our own. The better nurses(more student friendly) will go out of their way to find cool stuff for you to do. We had 8 weeks of lab to prepare us for the floor before we ever got there. We do all the stuff mentioned above. I would suggest planning a little time each week to pull your teacher aside just to chat about what skills you feel weak on and where they think you can improve. Our teachers take our requests or concerns seriously. If there is a skill we feel weak on they will go out of their way to find us an opportunity to practice. But that only happens if you are honest with them and tell them what you need help with.