First day of clinicals

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Hi!

I am having my first day of in hospital clinicals on Saturday. I am so nervous. What kinds of things did you do on your first day of clinicals?

Thanks

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Specializes in Med/Surg < 1yr.

Currently I am finishing my 16 week Nursing 102 clinical. I am in a full-time diploma RN program. We have 2 16wk semesters and after this last one there will be all 8 wk semesters. This semester is our first time in clinical. We learn about physical assessment, health history forms, and careplans. We started with HEENT and then as we learned the different systems in lecture we would do more and more detailed exams. We learned to listen to heart sounds and then we incorporated that into our exam, we learned the different lung sounds and then that was add, we learned neuro and so on....... The first thing we are taught is always go in and check on your patient to make sure they are alive and breathing and having no reported pain, bleeding or any other complication. Then we get their chart and fill out our health history form with a list of their meds, and we have to tell what their current med diagnosis are and provide definitions with references. We have to know their PMH, their allergies and we have to describe lung, heart and bowel sounds that will be recorded after we do our assessment . There are a lot of other things we have to complete on the health history form after we finish our assessment. Once we're done going through the chart, or Karedex if chart is not available, then we wait to see if the pt is finished with their breakfast and we take vital signs and do our Head-to-toe assessment. We record all of our findings on our health history form. After our assessment is finished, we go back to the conference room and we discuss what was going on with our patient. We will also do 1 of 2 things... either we will do verbal careplans right there where we go around the room and we discuss the assessment, diagnosis and and 1 short term and 1 long term goal. Because we are not in the hospital too long we don't do interventions or evaluations. If we do verbal careplan we don't have to submit paper ones. However, if we don't do verbals, then we will have to fill out the entire health history form with definitions and all and we have to do a careplan and submit all of this by Friday noon being that our clinicals are on Wednesday. This is in addition to the huge studying we have to do for lecture and for Pharm. Some people also have A&PII and Nutrition on top of all of this!

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Congrats on your first clinical! You will be excited and nervous but we all were! Your instructor should give you an overview of the floor and introduce you to the staff. (it always helps to befriend a CNA or tech-- they can be a great resource when you need to find something!) On our first day we mainly paired with a tech to help them with their duties to get an idea of the schedule and flow of the day. We didn't pick up patients the night before until our second week.

GOOD LUCK! You are on your way to becoming a nurse!

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My first day we were each assigned to a nurse, and just shadowed him/her. We could take vitals if the techs hadn't beaten us to it, and assist with bathing, bedmaking, other really basic skills. It was helpful to get an idea of how real nurses organize their days.

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Thanks for your input. Do you do anything special the night before to prepare yourself?

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My first day of clinical went very well. I had 4 patients to care for (vitals, bed making, bathing, etc.) I also took out a foley and did a fleet enema. I also observed the insertion of a NG tube. The day went by fast and was not as bad as I thought it was going to be. Good Luck!

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Specializes in Med/Surg, ICU, ER, Peds ER-CPEN.

for our program the instructors asign you a pt the day before, you go in and get all the important info on your patient the night before and fill out a preclinical data form which is a mini care plan of sorts, after the 1st day of contact with that pt you fill out the back side with 3 actual nursing (once in a while they allow a potential if it reallyyyyy good lol) we're finally getting to where we can actually do things for our pts, my next 3 days of clinicals are back to mostly observing and basic pt care as we are going to a much larger hospital that's about 2hrs away, then it's back to another local for the last 5 weeks of clinical semester (only 2 days a week tho) Look forward to hearing how your first day went! Hope it was a great one!

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LOL we did nothing our first day of clinicals. Just an orientation. It was a lot of nerves for nothing. Next week I'll be nervous again. We're going to get assigned one patient, and have to do vitals, assessments, and I guess whatever else the patient needs that we've learned, which would just be bed baths, I guess! Then we can offer to help the RN with anything she/he needs.

Kelly

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I had my first clinical today. We just followed a CNA around and did vitals and bedmaking. We have an afternoon clinical so didn't do any baths. We also had a charting assignment to get to know the charts. Next week we get our own patient. I am hoping for a post op.

I loved today. I learned things and look forward to all I will learn this semester.

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Haha... My first clinical I had the nursing instructor that everyone said was hardcore (EVEN THE TEACHERS)... Needless to say it was traumatic.

Just try to relax... even though that's probably impossible. It's so easy to get tunnel vision at first... It's like your brain shuts off and you can't think logically. It's disorienting to boot, so you don't know where stuff is and they expect you to know it.

-Don't let nurses push you around too much

-Don't let them make you feel stupid for not knowing something you've never been taught... What are we... psychic?

-Don't let them make you feel stupid for not knowing where something is... You've never worked on this floor before

-Do read and pre-clinical materials they give you so you are dressed appropriately and prepared

-Don't freak out! Your patient will NOT die. It is not the end of the world even if you screw up.

If at all possible, work as a PCT, CNA, or whatever the heck your local hospital calls it next summer/winter break. It helped huge. Just being in a clinical setting and being around RNs all the time helped me realize how POINTLESS some of the stuff they have us do in clinicals is!

So now, after working last summer, I can do all of these over-the-top things to please my instructers, but I have the peace of knowing that it will not always be like this, whereas before I thought the world would end if I didn't make the frickin' corners on the bed perfect (psychotic foundations bed-making lady).

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Hi!

I am having my first day of in hospital clinicals on Saturday. I am so nervous. What kinds of things did you do on your first day of clinicals?

Thanks

So Tracy Saturday came and went, what was your first day like? what did you do? I am dying for an update.

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Your patient will NOT die. It is not the end of the world even if you screw up.

This is very true. I haven't started hands on yet but I keep thinking, really, how badly can I mess up a bed bath, for goodness' sake. We aren't even allowed to pass oral meds yet. So I'm trying to relax. I'm more nervous about what are my instructors expectations and getting a "satisfactory" for the day.

Kelly

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