clinicals

Purple_roses · Jul 13, 2015

It's very possible that the "students can't go anywhere or do anything without the CI's direct supervision" has nothing to do with you, your classmates, CI, or even your school. In addition, your CI may be forbidden to discuss the reason for the strict rules.
There are at least a dozen PN, ASN, and BSN programs within a 25-mile radius of my community. There are several community hospitals, so there were numerous placement options for Med/Surg rotations. However, there were only a few places for all area programs to go for pedi, OB, and psych clinicals. As a result, students ran into the same over-saturated clinical situations that you are describing. When it was time for my clinical group's psych rotation, we were extremely fortunate to have the extremely rare opportunity to work on a locked unit at a VA hospital. We were the only students at the site, which had never happened before. Then, things got weird...
When we arrived, we had to wait outside the building until our CI arrived, and then all of us entered the building together. Not the ward. The building. We received report as a group, took breaks as a group, ate lunch as a group, and left as a group; picture a duck with a single file of fluffy ducklings waddling along behind her. That was us. On top of that, we were forbidden to share any information with the patients, including the name of our school or even our full names. We had to put tape over our school name pins and could only refer to ourselves and each other as Mr. A, Ms. M, Mrs. C, etc. We were not allowed to pass any meds, and while we could read the chart, we were not allowed to write anything in them. We did write care plans and SOAP notes, but they were for classroom use only. The nursing staff barely gave us anything more than a glance, and we were instructed to consult our CI with any questions. It was not a comfy situation, and really turned me off to psych nursing altogether.
Several years after graduation, I bumped into a classmate who was now working at that particular VA hospital. He said, "Oh, you didn't know about the student from X University who got everyone kicked out because she had an affair with her patient?" Yep, that's what happened. The hospital refused to allow any nursing students to do clinical rotations there because of one student's incredibly poor judgment. Several years later, I was part of the small "test group" of heavily-supervised nursing students who were permitted to do our psych rotation there, but only if we followed the hospital's super-strict rules. We were never told the rationale for all of the weird rules or glares from the unit staff. Really, as students, it wasn't something we needed to know, anyway.

Wow!!! Major lapse in judgement there!

NYC4738 · Jul 13, 2015

When you are a nursing student you are functioning under your clinical instructor's RN/NP license. A license he/she has worked many years to obtain. While his/her rules might seem silly I understand not wanting to risk students wandering into an OR (or really, one of the many places in a hospital a nursing student should not be).

Think of it as your clinical instructor respecting his/her own profession and wanting to ensure your safety as well as the status of his/her own employment.

Good luck!

psu_213, BSN, RN · Jul 13, 2015

How many physicians do you know that are made to stay in-hospital for meals?

In my ED, none...then again, none of them have any time to leave and are never able to take a lunch regardless. Yet I have never head them complain about it. :sarcastic:

psu_213, BSN, RN · Jul 13, 2015

In other words, how in the world could they be held liable for a decision I made as an adult ?

Because if you did something inappropriate during a lunch break (and I am not saying you would), and the news reports that "futurepsychrn, a nursing student at State School of Nursing, did [insert offense here] while on his/her lunch break from clinical," you have now done harm (perhaps irreparable harm) to the school.

JustBeachyNurse, LPN · Jul 13, 2015

I understand the way they could be held responsible for a decision I make about patient care.

When you are in clinical you are the responsibility of the school. Leave the premises in uniform and cause a fatal car accident the school can hold liability. An employer can be held liable for an employee on the clock who leaves the premises and causes an accident or other situation.

optimis · Jul 13, 2015

My first clinical experience sounds a lot like yours. I understand how it can feel uncomfortable to feel like you have to look for tasks. I had a great clinical instructor who told us, "Clinicals are what YOU make of it". I spent a lot of time just talking to patients and their families. It helped me be able to anticipate a patient's needs. I also spent a lot of time reading through paper charts (we didn't have computer access either). It helped me understand the common abbreviations that are used and what kinds of interventions are done in the real world.

As for lunch, there was only one place that we could eat so we all stayed together. We liked that though, and definitely bonded through it. Our clinical instructor would tell us her nursing stories or we would just chat or quiz each other. It was also a great time to pick her brain about things we didn't understand in class. I am just suggesting that if you could turn this negative into a positive, then clinical would probably be much more enjoyable.

noelly10 · Jul 13, 2015

My first clinical experience sounds a lot like yours. I understand how it can feel uncomfortable to feel like you have to look for tasks. I had a great clinical instructor who told us, "Clinicals are what YOU make of it". I spent a lot of time just talking to patients and their families. It helped me be able to anticipate a patient's needs. I also spent a lot of time reading through paper charts (we didn't have computer access either). It helped me understand the common abbreviations that are used and what kinds of interventions are done in the real world.
As for lunch, there was only one place that we could eat so we all stayed together. We liked that though, and definitely bonded through it. Our clinical instructor would tell us her nursing stories or we would just chat or quiz each other. It was also a great time to pick her brain about things we didn't understand in class. I am just suggesting that if you could turn this negative into a positive, then clinical would probably be much more enjoyable.

Do you know bumblebee?

optimis · Jul 13, 2015

Do you know bumblebee?

No, I don't believe so.

jojo489 · Jul 13, 2015

Where I'm from, there are like six nursing schools in the area. So it's pretty competitive for clinical placements as they each have a running LPN and RN program in the same semesters.

Whichever floor we got placed on was where we were stuck because there were only so many approved units to work on and they all had assigned students.

I got lucky though, during my one rotation each student got to spend one day in the OR, and got to see some really cool stuff. But that was mostly because my CI had been teaching at that hospital for a very long time and she was well respected.

I had fellow students who, at their clinical site, were really bored. Then there were others who had too much to do. It all depends where you land.

Most of my instructors were pretty lax during lunch but they did not allow us to leave premises. They'd let us go outside or whatever but they definitely didn't let us leave because we were there on the schools time.

noelly10 · Jul 13, 2015

No, I don't believe so.

I look stupid. I don't think you got my joke -.-

Purple_roses · Jul 13, 2015

No, I don't believe so.

From Transformers? Bumble Bee and Optimus Prime?

noelly10 · Jul 13, 2015

From Transformers? Bumble Bee and Optimus Prime?

Okay, now I don't look as stupid