Choosing a Preceptorship

[sharpiechic]

I am a Senior nursing student, and we just received our forms for choosing for apreceptorship. I am so lost as to what to do. I love children and pediatrics; and since I am small, it is easy to handle and care for them. I also enjoy the intensity of ICU; I feel like I learn a lot more in ICU rotations compared to Med-Surge. I also love oncology because I can relate to and show compassion to the family and patients because my dad died from cancer.

[Buyer beware, BSN]

OP:

Your job right now is to learn the basics of the entire process of taking care of a patient.

Look at this in perspective. The pupose of a clinical is not to make you a master of the craft. It's just to expose you to the milieu of the clinical setting.

Don't sweat this stuff. No one hits the groung running. Decide what area you like the best and jump in.

Become as well rounded as possible but with the basics of care. Then you can work anywhere.

As for me as it may relate to you I would do the ICU thing. It's a contained enviroment that usually exposes you to a set routine of admitting a patient and working your way through all the things involved in squaring the patient away.

For instance, taking off orders, ordering drugs, hanging fluids, starting IVs drawing blood, giving respiratory treatments, managing vents, giving blood, titrating drips, managing swan lines with hemodynamic readings , cental line management, skin and foley care, tube feedings, charting, gossiping, wondering why you're taking care of your coworkers patients because they've disappeared and jumping on the chests of unstable ED patients when they come through the ICU doors coding.

So don't be a worry wort.

Do the ICU. It's A to Z to get you where you want to be.

[kataraang, BSN]

I agree with the above poster. ICU! You won't get many other chances to work in this setting as a student. And most ICUs don't even take new grads. I wish my school let me do internship there.