clinicals, why are the nurses such *******.

I don't think it has anything to do with their lives or work. Some nurses simply don't like having to "babysit" nursing students. Forgetting that they were once in our position a few years ago.

I have to say.... ALL of the nurses we have worked with in our clinicals have been lovely and wonderful! They answer questions without attitude and offer suggestions and advice.

They are great!

Take it as a learning experience. They say the skin needs to be thick if you are a nurse. You have to deal w/ mean patients, mean family members, mean nurses and some really nasty physicians. Better to get tough now, then when you are all on your own. But, also take it as a learning experience of how not to treat others.

I'm not sure about floor nurses during clinicals, but I have heard of instructors w/ a cold shoulder for the benefit of their student nurses.

Take it as a learning experience. They say the skin needs to be thick if you are a nurse. You have to deal w/ mean patients, mean family members, mean nurses and some really nasty physicians. Better to get tough now, then when you are all on your own. But, also take it as a learning experience of how not to treat others.

I'm not sure about floor nurses during clinicals, but I have heard of instructors w/ a cold shoulder for the benefit of their student nurses.

The only problem I have with this is that patients, families and even physicians are there to teach us. The nurses are. I have been treated like crap by some of my nurses, but I think it has more to do with their personality than anything cultural. I think accepting it and presuming it is for your own good can be okay, but can go too far.

Overall I think the old adage is "Nurses eat their young". I know we are supposed to ignore that phrase and pretend it doesn't exist, but in some cases it is true.

Try to remember that these nurses are trying to care for their patients, do reports and paperwork, answer to doctors and patients and families and the lab and cna's and....., then they are given students to train for no extra pay or considerations. might make you kinda cranky too.

I didn't know that it wasn't an expected part of their duties at most hospitals. At our clinical site, teaching is considered a part of the nurses duties as much as patient care is.

We are not talking about all nurses. Please don't assume that every student nurse has their head so far up themselves that they cannot recognize that the world doesn't revolve around them. On a given ward one nurse is as busy as another. Cranky is not the same as hostile or downright undermining. As a tech I have heard nurses gloat over how they "stuck it" to a student. There are few industries that do give extra money when you train or mentor someone. Where I work it is part of an RNs job description to work "collaboratively" with nursing students.

Students are an easy target for a nurse who is a bully.

I agree with this last statement. As nursing students, we are supposed to smile and be okay with whatever treatment we receive. We should be grateful even when being treated like a piece of crap. Maybe these nurses are justifying their behavior by saying to themselves that they are actually helping us become accustomed to being treated this way b/c that is how pts/family/mngmnt/md's/etc are going to treat us once we are RN's.

I think it's true that miserable people like to make other people miserable. So the thankfully few times I've had to deal with nurses like this, I do in fact feel sorry for them and I don't take it one bit personally. I will NEVER treat a student like an ignorant piece of crap when I am working with them one day. Even if I am being treated badly in my work environment it does not excuse my own inappropriate behavior.

In the clinical I'm in right now, the hospital has us evaluate each of the nurses we work with and our evaluations are included in their periodic job evals...we are told may help them get better raises. I cut my nurses a LOT of slack and give them the highest ratings unless they were awful. I know that they are under a lot of stress and it's not easy to add a nursing student to that stress.

No, we are not there to teach you. We are there to take care of pts. And everything else that goes along with it.

Student nurses NEVER make things better. It's an extra task to take on, extra work, more things to worry about and then you have to hope that you don't get the student who "knows the right way to do it" or who thinks she "can do it better than you" or will "never in a million years be like you".

So please, spare the criticisms. I completely and distinctly remember how painful it was to be a nursing student. I remember what it felt like to beg for the nurses attention, or to pass on pill and feeling like I had to wait all day to do it.

It doesnt' even remotely compare to the stress of being a nurse. Not in the least!! You have no idea of what it's like (and we do have an idea of what it's like to be a student)

A lot of SN's might want to take a quick check at their own attitudes too. Or are we going to pretend that it's 100% completely one-sided?

I'm just trying to get by, and maybe I can squeeze a pee break or an apple in my day. A student nurse does not make everything better.

Signed by someone who actually loves to teach, and doesnt' bully students-because I DO remember how it feels.