Nursing Co-workers

[SERENAde]

Hi Everyone.

Well I am a pre-nursing student and have applied to be in the nursing program for the fall, I will find out in July...Anyway, I am very excited and prepared for the rigorous studying that I KNOW I will be doing...Now my question is: I was talking to some other pre-nursing students and they have really discouraged me about what nursing is going to be like. They have said that the fellow nurses are evil and will do anything to see you fail. Apparently, they are not very helpful to students that have questions and are outright NASTY. Am I really entering a profession where it's nurses are supposed to help the ailing ,yet, don't help one another out? and is this a dog eat dog profession.....????PLEASE SAY THEIR WRONG..... :stone :chair:

SERI

[Sleepyeyes]

I had exactly the opposite experience. We students teamed up and worked together; nurses who taught us on clinical rotation were very helpful and wanted us to do well. (Course, they sometimes had to leave us in the dust, because they were busy, but we didn't take it personal)

[ADN 2002]

I voted "sometimes"...

For the most part, the nurses are more than willing to help you out and will answer questions for you; they want you to do well in school. I had one nurse just the other day ask me how I did on my HESI exam and when I told her I did well, she was really happy about it.

However, there are a few nurses in the bunch that will go out of their way to make you miserable -- torture the students, right? They're here to learn, so let's give them all the dirty work! I asked one nurse for help the other day to turn a patient, and she told me no, to ask somebody else (and she was NOT busy at the time that I asked, either). A friend of mine had a run in with a nurse that went to her clinical instructor and started talking bad about my friend. Fortunately enough, the instructor knew better than to believe what the nurse was telling her.

As bad as the "bad" nurses are, I have found they're few and far between. I graduate from nursing school in a couple of weeks and I am SO excited to be entering the profession. Don't let a few bad nurses keep you from doing something you love -- keep your chin up and be nice as possible, and take good care of your patients and you'll be fine.

[ageless]

I like having students in my unit. They challenge my knowledge base and many have inspired me by their enthusiasm.

Unfortunately, we have had some rather strange experiences lately. For example, disappearing with the chart, disappearing with the patient, contradicting accurate nurse/patient teaching after the nurse has left the bedside and the student remained, getting calls the day or night before from students (who we have yet to meet) wanting help with a care plan or wanting most recent lab values, actually copying pages of the chart, tugging on nurses's arms during an emergency situation begging to know "what's happening!", adjusting machines without informing the primary nurse, congregating in loud groups around the station oblivious to the traffic flow, not following through on assignments and not informing the primary nurse, checking off tasks that had not been preformed...etc. It is getting to the point that our more "high strung" docs are calling an end to student visits!