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Nursing Students General Students

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all you nurses who are in clinicals - and have never had any patient contact EXCEPT what you experienced in class, where you prepared?

my fear is that i will go thru all this training and get out there in the hospital and be like - ummmmm oh my GOD!!!! did you feel prepared? comfortable?(relatively, at least)?

in short does nursing school prepare you for the real world?

if you would please add where you are currently attending that would be great!

tia!;)

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As a nurse of less than a year's experience, no, you will not be prepared. And don't worry. You aren't expected to be.

Just don't take a job in a LTC that expects to give you three days' orientation and then turn you loose.

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Specializes in PCU/Hospice/Oncology.

Three day orientation? *shudder*

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Oh no don't even expect to be prepared!

Last summer when I was doing the hiring for a home health agancy we had a new grad RN come in insisting on doing aide work or homemaker stuff and scared to death to practice as a nurse. I thought it was HER but now I am finding she had reason to be! She was from a ADN RN course and not much clinical really.

Coming out of my first year and being officially a GPN and can sit for my LPN boards, I too am scared that I am not nearly ready for the real world of nursing.

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Specializes in OB, ortho/neuro, home care, office.

As it's been said numerous times, nursing school simply teaches you how NOT to kill a patient. You do all of your real learning AFTER nursing school. At a job. It's totally baptism by fire.

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Specializes in Ortho, Neuro, Detox, Tele.

I tell you, after my first semester of LTC clinicals...and then going to the hospital to work as a CNA...I got 6 shifts of days....3 of nights...and then BAM on my own.....so go figure...I've learned most of what I know from patient care....hypoglycemic treatment, IVs, how to pacify patients/families/and people who don't seem to understand that a broken bone hurts.......It takes a village to raise a child, but only one person to handle that village when they are all sick....

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Specializes in Med Surg, Specialty.
As it's been said numerous times, nursing school simply teaches you how NOT to kill a patient. You do all of your real learning AFTER nursing school. At a job. It's totally baptism by fire.

yup, that's how it is

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i will tell you , my first nursing job was in a large teaching facility, i learned more there it was amazing.,i am so glad that i started there....32 years later and several different areas of nursing i am still learning...keeps those brain cells going!!

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I was totally unprepared for clinicals--but that's okay, that's why we have clinicals!

I have to say, though, that I haven't learned too much in clinicals, either, but I still have a ways to go. As part of my program we have to do co-op in the summer, doing CNA-type work. I started working as a PCA a couple weeks ago in an amazing facility, and have learned SOOO much! It's given me a lot more confidence and I think I'll be better prepared for cilnicals in the fall.

Good luck!

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I am not sure if you are talking about clinicals preparing for real life nursing or classroom time preparing you for clinicals.

for the former, i have heard no. But I cannot comment as I am still in school

to the latter, no. I woud say my first two quarters were scary for me. I felt like a deer in the headlights. But what helped me the most is acting confident (not to the extent that you pretend to know answers that you don't). When you present yourself as confident, the patient feel more comfortable around you and interactions are much easier.

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Specializes in LTC.

I have been having anxiety attacks over this question as I get closer to graduation..I thought I was the only one... I'm really ready to get out of school and start working but I'm so scared at the same time that I will be pushed out on my own and not know what I'm doing...I just pray and hope to find a place to work that will teach and not just set me loose...glad I'm not the only one with this fear. :thankya:

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I am about to graduate now, and I remember being very petrified to enter into a patient's room. Now that I'm through it, I love to go into their rooms and meet them, to find out about their condition, etc. It's sort of like a big puzzle that challenges you to find out all of the missing pieces. Patients can be awful, and they can be really wonderful people, too that LOVE to talk to you, converse, ask you about your backgrounds, etc. They are just real poeple who are in the hospital. Be genuinely interested in them and you will do fine.

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