First Clinical Day

[NurseGirl525, ASN, RN]

Last week was my very first clinical day. We went in and got our patients. We have to preform a head to toe assessment. I went first and was very nervous. I was interacting with a real person.

I messed some things up and forgot simple things at first. I was intimidated by my patient. My instructor was great. The more time that passed, the more I felt comfortable. By the end, I felt like I was learning about my patient. I felt a little protective of her.

I'm looking forward to going back next week. We will have a new patient to assess but I want to check back in on the one I assessed this week for various reasons. I'm grateful for this experience.

[nlitened]

Thanks for sharing your experience. You are new at this and still learning...sounds like you did great. Nurse on!

[akulahawkRN, ADN, RN, EMT-P]

While you feel like going back and checking on your patient, be care about this... you don't want to inadvertently cause an issue later. It sounds like you had a normal start of your clinical experiences. The vast majority of us were nervous on our 1st clinical day in Nursing School. Although I had quite a bit of experience going into NS, I was also nervous, but not about meeting patients.

As much as people like me (Paramedic in this case) are advised to put their EMS "self" on the shelf and let it stay there for a while, it was obvious early on that I'd had extensive experience doing patient assessments. I was pretty rusty at it, so doing a full assessment as we were told to still took quite a while.

My advice for you is simple: Keep it up and keep learning. In time you'll find that a lot of this stuff becomes easier to do as you learn to check several things at once. Then one day you'll look back and remember fondly taking care of only one patient at a time.

[AlwaysLearning247, BSN]

That's awesome you had a good experience! It takes a little while to get used to interacting with patients because its a little different than interaction at other jobs. You'll catch on quick and in no time be super comfortable during patient care. Good luck!

[NurseGirl525, ASN, RN]

While you feel like going back and checking on your patient, be care about this... you don't want to inadvertently cause an issue later. It sounds like you had a normal start of your clinical experiences. The vast majority of us were nervous on our 1st clinical day in Nursing School. Although I had quite a bit of experience going into NS, I was also nervous, but not about meeting patients.

As much as people like me (Paramedic in this case) are advised to put their EMS "self" on the shelf and let it stay there for a while, it was obvious early on that I'd had extensive experience doing patient assessments. I was pretty rusty at it, so doing a full assessment as we were told to still took quite a while.

My advice for you is simple: Keep it up and keep learning. In time you'll find that a lot of this stuff becomes easier to do as you learn to check several things at once. Then one day you'll look back and remember fondly taking care of only one patient at a time.

There reasons to check back on this patient Peru instructor. There are several differing things going on and she thinks it will be a good learning experience. But I will have a different patient next week too.

[akulahawkRN, ADN, RN, EMT-P]

There reasons to check back on this patient Peru instructor. There are several differing things going on and she thinks it will be a good learning experience. But I will have a different patient next week too.

Then it sounds like you're good to go with checking back on that patient. If your instructor thinks that patient will be a good learning experience, it should be! If you have an idea about what's going on, I would suggest looking up those things. It might make the visit next week that much more meaningful and useful to you.

[RunBabyRN]

I've asked about what happened with patients. I had an ICU patient who died the weekend after I'd cared for him Thursday and Friday, or had patients who were there for a long time then left, so even without the educational aspect to it, I think there's a normal curiosity, especially with some patients.