Pediatric Nursing Instructor Needs Help !!!!!

angelaADSN · Jul 14, 2000

Hi Casey! I start peds next semester! The only thing we have done in peds is regular assessment on new born! We rotated through peds once and we did the gestational age assessment, which was really interesting! The night before we had to look up a bunch of terms and have them ready and on us at clinical. That's all I can really tell you what we have done, we get down and dirty in it next semester so I will be keeping you in mind when I have a problem. So hope you put your email down. Good luck! www.geocities.com/ajax_clean/StudentNurse.html

tblumer · Jul 14, 2000

I finished my peds rotation this last semester. We each had three clinical days for Pediatrics. I spent one day on the floor caring for kids. Another of my days I spent watching in the Neonatal intensive care. The other day I shadowed a pediatric nurse practiioner and was able to help give vaccine to well newborns. Other people in my class did other things. Some of them went a clinic where children with multiple problems are served. I think it was neural tube defects. The children see all there different specialists in one day. There were other things too but I can't remember them.

Is there anything like this that you could offer as options for the students. It is a reality in today's health care that most times there isn't kids in our hospitals. IF they are they are extremely sick and in a special hospital somewhere.

Just ot let you know this was not connected with our OB stuff. We had seperate days for them and spent them in L&D and taking care of postpartum mom baby couplets.

Hope this helps

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Trish

Betsey · Jul 15, 2000

I did my pediatric clinicals in a rural hospital and the peds. pts. were sometimes few and far in between. My clinical instructor rotated us to the er and informed the staff that we were to put special emphasis on ped. cases. By doing this we could see a variety of different ages and situations and in down time we also saw adult pts. Of course, we could only do things that the nurses in the er felt comfortable precepting, but it was better than nothing. I have also heard of clinical instructors sending students to OB in order to do newborn assessments. Just some thoughts.

NICUrn · Jul 16, 2000

During our peds clinical, we got several different experiences. On the peds hospital floor, peds clinic, and also going to a day camp. Have you also thought about maybe spending time in a daycare facility observing the interactions with children and facility? We did observations on any child from a distance focusing on basic needs and coming up with a care plan. With the focus on children, nowadays, being treated outpatient mainly, it's worthwhile to observe them outside the hospital. Hope this gives you some insight!

JillR · Jul 17, 2000

When I first read this post I thought that I had nothing to offer because I never took care of a child the whole time I was in school. Because the peds cases in the hospitals in my area were rare and most very sick children went to specialty hospitals, there wasn't much opportunity to take care of peds, but they did have us do something a little different. We all went to head start and spent the day with the children. We used the Denver Developmental Test to assess some of the children. It sure was a learning experience and the children just loved having us there. It allowed for some of them to get some one on one attention they despirtatly needed. It was alot of fun, and a good learing experience.

Genista, BSN, RN · Jul 28, 2000

On low census days at the hospital, I would sometimes "share" a Peds patient or two w/ another student (which turned out to be a learning experience since you have an extra person to bounce ideas off of). We did the Denver Developmental test on pts in the Peds unit & also on kids at a local preschool. We did some rotations at day schools for the developmentally disabled (developed care plans & did case studies on selected children). Those are the few ideas that come to mind.

USA987, MSN, RN, NP · Jul 28, 2000

During our peds rotation we spent two days at a daycare with different age groups. We also spent the day with a school nurse. When we were in the hospital, if it was a slow day, we went to the hospital library and watched peds movies or wrote an article from a nursing journal relating to pediatrics.

Best wishes!

firegirl_27 · Sep 10, 2000

I had my PEDs clinical at lebonheur, a childrens hospital in Memphis, TN. My instructer had it easy I guess because we always had plenty of patients for everyone. But to give us more experience she would let one student go to the ICU or the ER everyday. Also we could go to different play rooms that they had help out the people there. I hope that helps