Ok Iam a new RN and dont want to sound like an evil person here, but I need to get over this animosity I have towards my former clinical instructor. I thought she was terrible instructor with very good reason and did tactfully say such during our end of semester teacher evals.
However, she currently has a batch of students in at the hospital I am now working at. So I must see her every Monday. We do not speak, I give a half hearted smirk of a smile and move on, she does not acknowledge my presence at all.
At my end of semester eval with her I let it be known I did not appreciate her gossiping or her leaving the floor for an hour long lunch and leaving her students on the floor. So needless to say, she is aware that I do not like her.
I know I need to get over it, I dont like thinking "Oh I hope she is not on the elevator" or "Ugh I dont want to go down to the cafeteria and bump into her"
I am assuming there are others out there who have disliked clinical instructors only to have to see them on a some what regular basis at their jobs. How do you handle it?
We had two in my LPN program that stand out. One delivered a 1 hrs lecture so laced in ignorance and bigotry that it made me furious and I openly contradicted her for which I paid dearly for through the rest of the program. The other one I referred to as "DRAGON LADY" she thought she was gods gift to nursing and would wait until she was at the nurses station and we were surrounded by hospital staff to tear us and new orifice. I fortunately work on the other side of the peninsula from their clinical sites, so I never have to deal with them. "DRAGON LADY" had me so terrified of making even the smallest mistakes that I now feel completely nurotic about even small errors in charting or care. Like one little mistake and I will be fired.
I think there should be support groups for new nurses to purge them of the poison some instructors dump into them. Makes me think of the STANFORD PRISION project psych / sociology study. I like the idea of tanking her guest appearance at your hospital for poor management of her students. Maybe telling her to go to would be therapeutic... I did tell that to DRAGON LADY but that's another story.
I had a nursing instructor who would stand there and question you until you cried. She was overheard telling another instructor that she liked being known as a ****** and we all avoided her.
Well it ends up that she is a close family member of one of our patients on my floor. She snatched the stethoscope off of her assigned nurse and started assessing her family member, wants to look at the chart, and quizzes the nurses about medications. For petes sake she asked a nurse who has been there for 30 years about Lovenox " Do you know what that is for?"
The lady is nuts. And yes- I still have negative feelings towards her.
When we would go to the hospital the night before clinical rotations to do pt care planning, I would always pick the MRSA pts. "DRAGON LADY" was terrified of MRSA, and never went into their rooms. I could hear her 2" heels clicking on the tile flooring of the quad, and would quickly duck into one of my MRSA rooms to avoid her... now that's bad!
Ok well now I am mad and I dont know exactly how I am going to proceed from here. The "horrible" instructor who is now at my facility who I have been avoiding. Well today she really ticked me off. Sorry for the long explanation I am about to give, but I would like your advice.
I am in my last week of orientation and my boss has me swamped, I am taking on 3 critical patients myself, I barely have time to pee, yet alone talk to any one.
There are 2 students in the unit. At 11am, I ask the one student "So do you have your classes picked out for next semester" She tells me she is hoping to get into a summer class, but today is the day to sign up and she asked her Grandma to do it online, but Grandma wasnt able to. So I tell her, well log on and do it from here and she says "Oh I didnt think I was allowed to get on the internet" I tell her "oh it only takes a second, dont worry about it" then the other staff nurse over hears and says "oh all the students do that, dont worry about it, log on". So the student logs on. I go about my work and after lunch I say to her, did you get your classes? and she says yes. End of all discussion period with the students.
Fast forward to 4pm my boss is getting ready to leave and calls me in her office and says "Hey I have one complaint about you, but it is not from a patient" I say oh ok what? she then tells me I am "too bossy" with the students!!!!. What students I ask and she tells me the students from today.
I tell her, "if this is coming from thier instructor,take it with a grain of salt, because I think she is a wretched hag, and I told her so last semester, and I gave her a terrible review and she knows I hate her, so if she is telling you this, keep that in mind". My boss then says "well I wondered because I didnt even see you with any students today.
So ........ I am thinking of having my boss call the school tomorrow. because if this woman, who is supposed to be educating her group is instead trying to get me in trouble...well how bad is that.
As hypothetically speaking, say for instance the DON is not too sure about me the new nurse and maybe she is having her doubts and here comes a clinical instructor from a well known collage come to her and say "hey your new peds nurse-she is really rude and bossy to my students" well what is that DON to think???
So what do you think? Do I want to be this cry baby to my new boss and have her call the school? Should I just call the school or should I just let it drop? Or do I confront the instructor next time I see her--which I really only think would add fuel to her fire???
I had the misfortune of finding out after I had administered a vaccination to a woman at a public immunization clinic that I worked, that she was the shrew who told me on the phone that she was going to see that I did not graduate (I didn't graduate). Happened to look at the name she signed on the roster and my heart jumped in my chest. A good thing I didn't find out until afterward. I didn't recognize her and she certainly didn't recognize me. A very, very good thing. There is another former instructor, if I were to meet her in the right circumstances, my religious beliefs would be strained beyond my endurance. The grief some people cause to satisfy their sick agendas goes way beyond just hurting one individual. My family would also never like to meet these people at all. I'm not talking about instructors that gave constructive criticism, but sick, sick, sick individuals that have no business in the teaching profession.
i think what you did for that student was a nice gesture, but your former instructor is obviously more concerned with drama than molding new nurses. i would stay clear of her, you're a nurse now, you don't need her approval. you have way too much to concentrate on to be distracted by a teacher who never had the time for you.
This woman has nothing to do with you, your career, or the rest of your life. Whatever perceived drama occurred between the two of you is in the past, and that is where it needs to stay.
If you are going through your day actively anticipating encounters with her in the elevator, in the cafeteria, etc. ... this needs to stop.
One of you (or both of you) may be fixated on the other in an extremely unhealthy way.
There will be coworkers or others who are just a royal PITA wherever you go. Someone out there at some point has considered you to be a PITA. It's unavoidable in human interactions.
You can't control the actions of others. But you are responsible for your own words, actions and reactions.
Let this go. Focus on your career. If you truly can't stomach the possibility of crossing paths with her at your workplace, you might have to consider working elsewhere.
I just want to add, give it time. I despised one of my instructors, but the years have passed and I never think of her any more. If you are fresh out of school, it's still a raw wound. It'll heal, don't worry.
You guys are all so great, I am so glad I found this site, it is nice to hear others thoughts and opinions, your right, I just need to drop it, I have no control over her what so ever. I will encounter others who for some reason wont like me and that is OK. That is just part of life.
last night I was laying in bed thinking of 101 ways to make her life miserable. It was fun and creative and did make me feel better.
I am not going to pursue calling the school and trying to get her in trouble, as that wouldnt add anything to my life.
I may keep working on my fantasy list though of horrible things that could happen to her.
# 87 MRSA of the eyeballs and genital area.
# 88 A mass infestation of chemical resistant bed bugs
Specializes in Community Health, Med-Surg, Home Health.
I had professors I didn't care for; I was fortunate not to have any clinical instructors to make my life miserable. But, I never see any of them, the favorites or the beasts. If I did, however, and they were not in a position to screw me, I would probably give them the finger and keep walking.
crazdmomof4
74 Posts
We had two in my LPN program that stand out. One delivered a 1 hrs lecture so laced in ignorance and bigotry that it made me furious and I openly contradicted her for which I paid dearly for through the rest of the program. The other one I referred to as "DRAGON LADY" she thought she was gods gift to nursing and would wait until she was at the nurses station and we were surrounded by hospital staff to tear us and new orifice. I fortunately work on the other side of the peninsula from their clinical sites, so I never have to deal with them. "DRAGON LADY" had me so terrified of making even the smallest mistakes that I now feel completely nurotic about even small errors in charting or care. Like one little mistake and I will be fired.
I think there should be support groups for new nurses to purge them of the poison some instructors dump into them. Makes me think of the STANFORD PRISION project psych / sociology study. I like the idea of tanking her guest appearance at your hospital for poor management of her students. Maybe telling her to go to would be therapeutic... I did tell that to DRAGON LADY but that's another story.