I am a first year nursing student and had my very first day of clinicals this past Sunday (I am doing a weekend/evening program). I was very disappointed with my experience as we were there from 6:45AM until 1PM and spent 80% of the time standing around not really doing anything. I thought we were going to get 1 patient a piece. Instead, I had to share a patient with three other classmates. Out of the 6 hours we were at the clinical site, we only spent about 1 hour with our patient. The other 5 hours were spent meandering around, trying to figure out what to do with ourselves. The nurse we were working under was busy with her other duties and said she would "grab us" if she was doing anything interesting or needed our help. She didn't end up coming to us for anything. The most interesting things I got to do were to fetch supplies out of clean utility and take a classmate's blood pressure. Our clinical instructor is very nice, but she is vague in her instructions and isn't very forthcoming with what she expects from us. Obviously they cannot assign us too much, because we are first year students, but I thought they would have assigned a lower ratio of students per patient, had all of us complete vitals on an actual patient, taught us how to use acu-chek, given us the hospital policy to read over, etc...
What I am wondering is this: was my experience pretty typical? Should I be worried? What can I do to make the best of my clinical rotation? Any information or advice will be greatly appreciated.
