Clinical stress and worries

[JoannaLeigh8790, ADN, RN]

I see this is a fairly common topic on these boards, but I would really like some reassurance anyway. I am a first semester RN student coming up on what will be my third clinical tomorrow. We have one patient each for 8 hours, after which we have 2 hours of post conference. I don't mind all of the prep work or the post conference. It is the patient care time that stresses me out.

I have worked as a scribe in the ED for several years, so the hospital environment itself does not bother me. But I am worried if I am doing the right thing by going into nursing just because I get so bored during clinical. I understand that there is very little I can do at this point with only limited skills. But I feel like I spend most of my clinical stalking the halls trying to find busy work. Last week my patient was very very simple and discharged midway through, so there was not much for me to do with him. But my clinical instructor doesn't want us standing idle for a single second while we're on the floor, and since we are the second clinical group on that floor that week, both nurses and patients are sick of seeing nursing students (which I completely understand). Is there something I can be doing that I am missing?

It doesn't help that I am terrified when talking to patients. I have a pretty hefty fear of public speaking, although I have never had problems with this in my scribing job. I feel like the patients are annoyed any time I come to talk to them, take vitals, ask questions, etc. Does this go away with time, or am I doing something wrong?

All in all, every clinical so far I have felt stressed out and nervous almost to the point of throwing up, as well as exceedingly bored. Does anyone have words of wisdom, advice, ideas of boredom relief? Any help is greatly appreciated! (Sorry about all of this whining.)

[Scottishtape]

If you feel like your current load is too light, speak to your CI about it and see if you can increase by 1.

I did that on my last clinical rotation. We only had to have 2, but I was bored, so I talked to my CI. She reviewed my work and agreed to let me go up to 3. Once I was comfortable with 3, I talked to her again, she reviewed me again, and let me go up to 4.

When I started my practicum, I realized that pushing myself and getting more comfortable with more patients helped me a great deal.

Another thing I did to keep myself busy was not sticking just with the nurse assigned to my patients. If I had finished my work and my patients were good, I would offer to help out other nurses on the unit. This was awesome because a lot of them welcomed me and taught me a lot of things I wouldn't have learned otherwise.

One day, I approached a nurse asking if I could help, and it turned out he was a nursing instructor part time. He asked what my next test was over, and spent the rest of the shift quizzing me and helping me master material for my upcoming test.

Be proactive and you'll be fine. And, have fun with it, it makes it bearable!