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'm a nursing student and I just finished my first clinicals. I had just made it out of my fundamentals. I didn't know **** about passing meds, pathophys(except from common knowledge and previous schooling), patient priority, etc. So I didn't go in with the attitude of "please teach me, teach me". I didn't know **** so I went in with the attitude of, how can I be helpful in some way to my nurse and how can I ask the right questions, at the right time, so that I can get something out of it. It went pretty well. However I was more attracted to procedures like brain mris and bone marrow transplants so I kinda hunted those down hehe :)
I can't beleive how different school and lab was from the actual real world of nursing. It was a complete 180. I'd rather be in a clinial than a classroom any day of the week.
I'm suprised some nurses get paid for having students. It some cases, I was making my nurse's life easier. She was actually delegating some small tasks to me. We were helping the CNAs as well. Maybe the students should get paid! ;p
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
OP, I like your creative username. However, it seems you are laboring under some misconceptions.
Firstly, most RNs do not get paid extra for students. Floor nurses who are saddled with a student for a day definitely don't get any extra money. Sometimes the RNs who agree to be a preceptor for a student in their last semester of school get paid a little extra, maybe 50¢ or $1 an hour. Which pays for about 10-20 minutes per 12 hour shift, to put it into perspective.
Secondly, your last sentence is highly offensive. Really? "Lousy RNs?" How would you know? Are they dangerous to the patient? Are they bad at their job? You have no framework from which to judge, so this is plainly just an insult.
Did you get your feelings hurt because their attention wasn't focused on you?
It isn't supposed to be. Staff RNs should be focused on doing THEIR job, which is taking care of patients.
Staff RNs are not your teacher. You are not part of an apprentice system.
You are attending a SCHOOL. It is the SCHOOL's responsibility to teach you. It is not the responsibility of the nurse. It is a courtesy that you are even allowed to be in the building. Your clinical instructor should be the one teaching you.
Thirdly, unless you are shadowing specific RN specialties, you should be assigned a patient, not a nurse.
If your CI is not doing the job, you should take that up with your Dean, not lambast the "lousy RNs" who got stuck with you.
"It feels like they should be more engaged with students" and not hiding the fact that she didn't want to be with you does not make someone a lousy nurse.
Please read the other thread other posters have referenced.
See below and read what I wrote there. I hope it will help you understand just how asinine your post was.
I like teaching students.
I just don't have time for you.
It's like having an extra, high-acuity patient. Nothing you do benefits me. You actually put me behind. You can say "but... but... I take patients to the BATHROOM! But... I can do an assessment! But... I can pass MEDS!"
Well, the bathroom thing only benefits the CNA. And I have to do my own assessment anyway. Looking over yours and fixing/deleting it takes extra time I do not have.
Then I have to double check that you actually did the meds, then do the paperwork because they are inevitably late, because no student ever tries to get their instructor to give 0900s early. Nope. They start looking for the CI at 0900. And if you are 1:1 with me, we have to go over the meds so I can make sure you know what you are doing and aren't about to give our patient with a 2.8 K and a BP of 90/50 some Lasix. Which triples the time it takes to do meds.
And I don't get any extra time or extra money to deal with the extra work. The charge nurse doesn't take a patient away from my assignment to give me time to deal with you. So my already strenuous assignment becomes even worse.
And this is assuming you're a good student. If you're a bad student and clinically unsafe, then the workload doubles.
While I would love to be able to teach you, that's not my job. It's actually detrimental to my job. That is a reality that you need to get used to.
One hospital where I work part time an RN who agrees to take a student does not get paid extra but gets some perks. Like first choice in patient assignment, a smaller patient load, no floating and no low census lay offs. As a result we have nurses clamoring to take students.
I'm suprised some nurses get paid for having students. It some cases, I was making my nurse's life easier. She was actually delegating some small tasks to me. We were helping the CNAs as well. Maybe the students should get paid! ;p
Worst post I've ever read here on AN. I guarantee that someday when you are ACTUALLY a nurse and know what the typical day is like, you will shake your head, totally embarrassed by your words here.
Not only do we not get extra pay for having a student, we dont get extra pay for precepting , and we don't get extra pay for being charge. Latrely charge has had a full assignment also.
So, I dont mean to offend any students( as I was once one myself) but the suits have made it darn impossible to even do our regular job,much less tell a student what we are doing.
I would hope someone as a student sees how much the job sucks in my setting, and makes sure they don 't go into that field.
I'm a nursing student and I just finished my first clinicals. I had just made it out of my fundamentals. I didn't know **** about passing meds, pathophys(except from common knowledge and previous schooling), patient priority, etc. So I didn't go in with the attitude of "please teach me, teach me". I didn't know **** so I went in with the attitude of, how can I be helpful in some way to my nurse and how can I ask the right questions, at the right time, so that I can get something out of it. It went pretty well. However I was more attracted to procedures like brain mris and bone marrow transplants so I kinda hunted those down hehe :)
I can't beleive [sic, believe] how different school and lab was from the actual real world of nursing. It was a complete 180. I'd rather be in a clinial [sic, clinical] than a classroom any day of the week.
I'm suprised some nurses get paid for having students. It [sic, in] some cases, I was making my nurse's life easier. She was actually delegating some small tasks to me. We were helping the CNAs as well. Maybe the students should get paid! ;p
Specializes in Oncology; medical specialty website.
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!
Yes, I was a student once. The difference was that when I was a student, we weren't foisted on overburdened staff nurses. We had clinical instructors who were there to guide us.
Since you aren't a nurse, you have no idea what it's like to have a student nipping at your heels. Students are not as much help as they imagine themselves to be. Until you know what that kind of responsibility feels like, it would be best to spare us the lecture.
It takes a huge effort to explain what I'm doing when I'm doing it. Having a student around adds HOURS of explanation if the student is not familiar with the process/equipment.
Let's take a very much every day thing for my unit like responding to a ventilator alarm. Let's also say this is the nursing student's first time encountering a ventilator.
Do you know what the causes of the low pressure alarm are?
Do you know what the causes of a high pressure alarm are?
How do you troubleshoot those?
What is the waveform supposed to look like when it's a machine-triggered breath vs. a patient-triggered breath? Which is the patient doing right now?
What is breath stacking? How do you fix it?
What is a normal tidal volume? A normal minute ventilation? If the vent is not set for normal values - why are the values different for this patient?
What is the mode the patient's on, anyway? What's the difference between CPAP, PRVC, and APRV?
If you can't answer all of those questions, explaining to you why I'm suctioning a patient vs. pushing extra sedation vs. calling RT and asking if they want to come look at the vent settings and make adjustments when an alarm sounds is going to take half an hour. In real life, I look at the alarm, I look at the patient, and I do whatever needs to be done. A student increases the amount of work I have to do for even a basic task thirty fold, easily.
Not for anything, a nursing student doesn't need to know all that about ventilators. They aren't in a respiratory therapy program (knowing that is a different story after you're working as an RN in the ICU).
Specializes in Oncology; medical specialty website.
I'm suprised some nurses get paid for having students. It some cases, I was making my nurse's life easier. She was actually delegating some small tasks to me. We were helping the CNAs as well. Maybe the students should get paid!
It hasn't been that long since doing some clinical, I also have some ADN classes under my belt. At my school, our clinicals were under the instruction of the CI. We received report with the nurses and we reported off to them. The nurse also knew that our CI would be with us doing treatments, meds, etc. I was fortunate enough to attend schools where there were usually 5 or 6 in our clinical nurse and we were all on the same unit, so if our CI disappeared, she was in with another student.
What some students don't realize is that the floor nurse also does a complete assessment on the patients. She also has to make sure that we are getting our meds passed and our treatments done. When we charted, it was our CI who checked it and in most instances was able to sign off on it.
The floor nurse was still making the phone calls, receiving the orders etc. on our patients. Anything new, she would find our CI to let her know of changes. Our CI also made sure the floor nurses knew what what types of cares we would be doing for our patients that day. If anyone had less work because of us, it would have been the CNA's or techs because they didn't have to shower or bath and change linens on those patients that day.
Nope. We do not get paid extra for having students. If I did, I would get paid extra almost every day. I teach nursing students, surgical tech students, medical students, radiology tech students, new hires of any variety (tech, nurses, etc), residents, and sometimes I even have wisdom that attendings I work with have never heard (far and above it goes the other way where the attendings are concerned).
I don't mind learners - and I strive to be one always. But having some truly new and/or clueless folks with you can complicate your day, especially in emergency situations).
I didn't read the whole thread, I'll own that - but how were nurses you've been with in clinical "lousy"?
Spurse32
45 Posts
I'm a nursing student and I just finished my first clinicals. I had just made it out of my fundamentals. I didn't know **** about passing meds, pathophys(except from common knowledge and previous schooling), patient priority, etc. So I didn't go in with the attitude of "please teach me, teach me". I didn't know **** so I went in with the attitude of, how can I be helpful in some way to my nurse and how can I ask the right questions, at the right time, so that I can get something out of it. It went pretty well. However I was more attracted to procedures like brain mris and bone marrow transplants so I kinda hunted those down hehe :)
I can't beleive how different school and lab was from the actual real world of nursing. It was a complete 180. I'd rather be in a clinial than a classroom any day of the week.
I'm suprised some nurses get paid for having students. It some cases, I was making my nurse's life easier. She was actually delegating some small tasks to me. We were helping the CNAs as well. Maybe the students should get paid! ;p