I am not sure if it is true or not, but I heard that RNs get a little extra pay when they work on a day where nursing students are present. If the charge RN assigned a student to an RN, then they get the extra pay.
I am talking about college nursing students not training a new employee.
It just came on top of my head because I have been assigned to lousy RNs during my clinical rotations and it feels like they should be more engaged with students
I've been in healthcare for 10 years and an RN for 4 months. The tone of your recent post was honest and not hostile. The posts of the first 7 or 9 pages were hostile towards students. The idea of having to teach was "not my job." Are there other factors at play? Of course...BUT...It seemed that there was cheering on to the mantra of ALL students are "entitled" "snowflakes" and screw the bastards for thinking that they can tap into my knowledge base.
My criticism is that we could do better than that. During our orientations as students and new employees, they ENCOURAGE us to ask questions; they encourage us to tap into the knowledge base around us. I was taught by my CI in most cases and by my nurse some of the time. Yes, it would be great if the CIs didn't disappear and were always there to teach. During my schooling, most CIs were around and attentive. Some were not around; for those days, I was grateful that I had amazing nurses that taught me.
But that's just it, and something you are refusing to acknowledge; it ISN'T the floor nurse's job to teach you. It's your CI's.
You also put students and new employees on the same level. They are not. As I said in a previous post, students are assigned patients, NOT nurses. The nurse is not beholden to you for anything. Period. If there is something it would be beneficial for you to observe, your CI had better be coordinating with the nurse to see if you can attend.
A new orientee, on the other hand, is assigned to a preceptor, who will help the fledgling nurse learn all the things that you just don't have the opportunity to accomplish in school.
You've been an RN for 4 months. Not nearly long enough to be an authority on most anything, actually. Even your 10 years experience in healthcare means bupkis in relation to being an RN. Get at least some years under your belt as a bedside RN, then pick up this thread again. You might be surprised.
Specializes in burn ICU, SICU, ER, Trauma Rapid Response.
Sounds ideal for everyone.
It really is. We have nurses who HATE to have students assigned to them and the way we do it they never do have a student. We have nurses who enjoy students and they can have one pretty much every / any shift they want one. We also have nurses who don't necessarily enjoy having students, but hate to float, and we ALL hate getting laid off for low census.
Best of all it didn't come from management. This was proposed by one of our nurses who got tired of seeing nursing students being treated like they were a huge burden, and often not learning anything (bites us in the rear end later since almost all of our new hires come from these students). When proposed, management's reply was they didn't really care how the unit handled students, as long as it didn't cost the unit anything extra, and the students got a decent learning experience.
The RN wrote a proposal for a new policy and all the nurses on the unit got a chance to vote on it. It wasn't unanimous, but passed overwhelmingly. This unit policy has now been copied but all the acute care units in the hospital, and most of the sub acute care units.
I very much enjoy teaching and this gives me the opportunity to do it. An even bigger advantage for me personally is that I am usually first, second or third to pick my patient assignment (depending on if there are any orientees on that shift, they get priority in patient assignments). This means that I almost never have more than one patient. Either one who is VERY sick and one to one, or an easy/stable patient but being open for the trauma/ crash admit (so much fun!). Being open with a stable also means I carry the code blue, RRT, and trauma team response pagers. My students often get to see and do some amazing things, while at the same time learning basic nursing skills like ADLs, med passes, etc with out stable patient. Yes I will guide my student through placing an IO in the trauma bay, assisting the surgeon to insert a chest tube, assisting the CRNA to intubate, starting vaso active drips, or setting up and running the rapid infuser, but they are also going to give our stable patient a complete bed bath and manage all the meds and drips (obviously under my close supervision). No such thing as "too posh to wash" on this unit.
I should add that in this hospital, teaching orientees and students IS in our basic job description.
Specializes in Oncology, Rehab, Public Health, Med Surg.
***I am a student nurse, so this is coming from MY perspective given all of the feedback going on in previous comments.***
Here is the tl;dr version of how I think things should be:
-Students should be responsible for completing tasks that they are allowed to, and should be responsible for knowing what they can and cannot complete on the floor during clinicals.
-I believe that instructors should do the bulk of the teaching, but there are some things that can only be "shown" and so I think that is where nurses come in to their "teaching" role, if you would even call it that. However, students should be responsible for stepping up to the plate and asking to watch, not waiting around for a nurse to usher them in.
-As a professional, you should conduct yourself with an appropriate attitude when students are present. We know we're in the way, we don't need your eye rolls, your condescending comments, or your huffs. Think about it- you were once us. How would it make you feel? Even more in the way, unappreciated, dumb? Yeah.
-The laissez-faire attitude that you simply don't give a damn about student nurses is why this profession is deemed catty (well, that and the patriarchy, but that's for another time). Please give us the time of day (when you have the chance)- most of us really appreciate it.
-I understand that it may not be your choice to be my "parent" for the day, but it is not our problem. It is the administration's problem, or the school's problem. Please don't take it out on us.
(Alright, let's see how much hate I'll get.)
, Goodness-- thank you for clarifying for me how I should act as a nursing professional. And my, youve already figured out this professions problem? ** headslap** if only we had thought of that. ---
if you don't want responses like this- don't have the clueless audacity to take to task the very ones you're asking for help
Sarcasm aside, you have no idea- not even an inkling-what this profession is like.
You remind me of my dtr years ago ---anytime an unanswerable question came up at work, i'd volunteer to give my dtr a call. Cause she had all the answers. at 16
(No hate here- takes way too much energy to hate. i'm tired after a full day's work including taking a nursing student into a code with me and coaching another thru her first pt teaching experience)
Specializes in Cath/EP lab, CCU, Cardiac stepdown.
Students, I just want you to understand this:
Nurses don't resent the students, they resent the sense of entitlement SOME students are displaying. We are NOT there for YOU.
And don't play that nurses are saints and supposed to be giving and altruistic crap. No, we're humans, and we are caring and compassionate, only just to our patients, and even then we get paid for that. We don't have a duty to be that way towards anyone else unless we want to.
And another point is this: nurses aren't saying that they're not going to teach you, they're just saying they will try to if they're not too busy. They don't have to, but they will try if time permits.
And yes, having a student can suck for the nurse when their patient load is crappy. And we are allowed to say this? Yes, because it's the truth. Don't say it's not that bad or it's not that hard, why can't you teach still? Are you a nurse yet? No, so you don't know. We are saying the situation sucks, not you as a student suck, so for crying out loud stop taking it so damn personally and crying NETY.
Many of the nurses here would love to teach if conditions were better. In fact if you read anything from this forum, you will learn a ton from the nurses here, why? They have the time to post and teach at their leisure. Do we have that at work with our patient loads? Not always. Which is why WE WILL TEACH YOU WHEN WE HAVE TIME, SO STOP ACTING LIKE YOURE ENTITLED TO IT.
I will roll my eyes and huff at students when they: ignore all learning opportunities offered. Act like I should bow down at their feet. Publicly argue with me. Argue with a patient. Take a computer and surf the internet. Randomly vanish for hours. Invade my sterile field. Stick a patient more than twice in attempting to start an IV. Spend the entire shift on their phone. Act like they know everything and that they're only in my department because they have to be. Take over my entire work area with textbooks that have nothing to do with being in my department.
And yes, all this has happened before.
Oh - I'm not ignoring you. I don't know you, and I want to know how my coworker's date went. So yes, you'll hear conversations that don't make sense. Again, they aren't about you. I glance at you out of the corner of my eye? I'm making sure that you're still awake/there/alive. And guess what? Once you leave the unit, you are essentially forgotten.
Most of our initial sighs and reactions come not from the fact that we're getting a student, but from the school that student is from and the average student that we see from that school.
Also, it's easy to say "check your baggage at the door." But it can be amazingly hard to put into practice some days, and I'm going to save my happy thoughts for the patients.
Find some other way to disagree that you think working nurses should be thrilled to have the additional responsibility of picking up the slack lazy, (and apparently overpaid) clinical instructors dump on the staff nurse caring for their student nurse's patient.
How do you think things can overused and become stereotypes? Maybe because there's actually something to it. The ironic thing is, I didn't get the NETY sense at all at the hospital during clnicals. It was only after reading posts like yours on this site.
Hmm..guess how it became a bit of a stereotype/generalization that students often seem entitled?
I just think you guys might be generalizing a little. You're taking your perspective and YOUR experience and applying to every situation. If you're an introvert and get irratated by having to teach, that's fine, I get it. It's totally understandable. But don't discourage other students by telling them that we're a burden all the time.
Years ago, I was paid an extra four dollars per hour to do a preceptorship with a student, but those days are long gone. That was in a university-affiliated teaching hospital. I have never rec'd extra pay for this anywhere else.
I don't know how the nurses here can say it any more plainly:
1)They don't hate teaching when they have time. In fact, many nurses LOVE teaching.
2)Unfortunately, when they've been given too many patients or patients who are too sick, having a student becomes yet another burden on an already burdened individual. This is STRESSFUL.
3)They are stressed out, overburdened, feeling bad that they may not be able to give attention to the student no one asked them if they could take on, and now the student's CI has dumped them off and disappeared.
4)Nurse is now REALLY stressed out. She may internalize this (ulcers) or she may display her frustration in front of the student, who may or may not understand it's not about HER but about the situation.
OR:
5)Student understands, feels bad, and makes the best of it. Both nurse and student feel bad for the other.
OR
6)Student talks about the "lousy nurse" within hearing distance, or gives attitude on nursing message boards and doesn't get why the nurse doesn't appreciate how the student has made her day SOO much easier! Student thinks nothing about the fact that her CI has abandoned her responsibility and foisted it on the nurse, who has NO RELATIONSHIP WHATSOEVER with the school.
and Finally:
7)You really need to believe us when we say that having a student adds to our responsibilities. It in no way is a "HELP" if we are actually teaching.
If in doubt about how most nurses feel about students, just read points #1 and *7 over and over.
Were you too not a nursing student once? Who taught you? Yes you are busy we as students get that. I'm so tired of hearing about how terrible it is to have to have us nursing students on your shift! We are there to learn and we are eager to learn just like you were when you were a student! Every day nurses are complaining about being short handed. Quit acting like having an extra person there to teach is such a big deal. It does not take that much effort to explain what your doing whe your doing it!
Um...actually it is a big deal. I love you guys but teaching takes time.
Jensmom7, BSN, RN
1,907 Posts
But that's just it, and something you are refusing to acknowledge; it ISN'T the floor nurse's job to teach you. It's your CI's.
You also put students and new employees on the same level. They are not. As I said in a previous post, students are assigned patients, NOT nurses. The nurse is not beholden to you for anything. Period. If there is something it would be beneficial for you to observe, your CI had better be coordinating with the nurse to see if you can attend.
A new orientee, on the other hand, is assigned to a preceptor, who will help the fledgling nurse learn all the things that you just don't have the opportunity to accomplish in school.
You've been an RN for 4 months. Not nearly long enough to be an authority on most anything, actually. Even your 10 years experience in healthcare means bupkis in relation to being an RN. Get at least some years under your belt as a bedside RN, then pick up this thread again. You might be surprised.