evening clinicals

I taught evening clinicals in acute care and LOVED them. There weren't as many interruptions during the shift and, while the pace was busy, the whole attitude was different. I think the students got to focus better on the patients rather than get distracted by everything going on during the day shift.

The biggest issue we dealt with in evening clinicals was that the students had to double back the next day. They'd finish around 9:30 and then have to be back by 7 the next morning. It was exhausting, especially for the night owl instructor.

Also, the nurses at the hospital worked 12 hour shifts (7 to 7) and they'd have their change of shift during the evening clinical hours. One downside, of course, was that the students never really knew who the nurse was after 7:30 PM and, while they could listen to report, they missed out on report at the beginning of their shift.

My latest clinical was an evening one and it was by far my favorite one. You aren't fighting for time with your patient between MD/therapies/appointments and you aren't thrown into the day right away. We usually got there around 2 pm and had until 3 pm to get our patient information and then start everything. It was very relaxed (although we were lucky enough to have two computers per patient so we always had the computer chart handy). I was also lucky enough to get fresh post-op patients, because most come back to their rooms around 2/3pm. Such a great learning experience. Plus, most of the students prefer the AM clinical and therefore there is usually less students. We split into groups and at one point it was two students to one teacher. AWESOME learning ratio.

First semester I did morning clinicals (7am, yuck). I just finished 2nd semester and did the evenings (3-11pm). Didn't want to be there that late but first half was maternity and I didn't want to be there when they did the member mutilations. Plus I'm not a morning person and it sucked waking up so early 1st semester. So having done both, I'm sticking with evenings. Good luck!!

i loved doing night clinicals for my EMS program. i dont want to say its easier at night..but u def. have a chance to catch your breath a bit between patients and all thats going on.

remember the nurses are teh ones up all night, the pts or most of them are sleeping :)

I did evening clinicals for Med/Surge and my Maternity and Peds. I am SO NOT A MORNING PERSON. Day clinicals in LTC (didn't have evenings) and getting up at 4:30 AM sucked so bad for me.

Anyway I LOVED my evening clinicals. We were there from 2-11:30 didn't get on the floor until 3, we did a pre conference.

I had a make up day during the day and what I noticed was we didn't really do many bed baths on evening or bed changes. Those were usually done in the AM.

I found the environment and the whole experience great. I hope I can continue to get evening clinicals for my last year.

I did an evening clinical for psych in a VA hospital. We usually got on the floor just as a group therapy session was going on, and then sat with patients during dinner, and helped with evening activities. For two weeks we were in charge of planning and implementing the evening activities. I will say that the pace of the floor was pretty relaxed, though I don't know if it was always that way, or just because it was later in the day when we got there.

My final semester of my nursing program I did 7am-7:30pm shifts for 15 weeks on a unit for my RN immersion clinical, and I can say from that experience that it was not necessarily any calmer in the evening. We usually had a lull around 3-4, but soon after that all the post-ops would start appearing, and things would get crazy again with admissions. We had students on the floor 3-10 for a few weeks, so they still got to see a lot because of the usual surge around this time.

Thank you for all the feedback. I'm glad to hear that evening clinicals aren't bad at all.