I think this might be more than the clinical experience -- it might be my entire experience at this particular school that lingers in my head, and I think it's keeping me from really moving forward and doing better than I am now at the program I'm in.
The first program I was in was a start up nursing program. It branched out from another university that had an established nursing program that wanted to expand into surrounding communities. I did okay over the summer semester, but when the fall semester started, everything was decent until clinical in the middle of that semester. My first clinical went without incident, but every clinical afterwards, I cried at all of them. It got to the point where I don't think any of the nurses wanted to even work with me, particularly two nurses on the floor. It started with the second clinical where I "couldn't get my story straight," and the nurse essentially blamed me for not giving my patient his medications. I also got in trouble for not doing a lung assessment properly when my teacher saw me do the "head to toe" on my patient.
I had a small recovery the next day, but the subsequent clinical days after just worsened. I was sent home after my third clinical. Our teachers picked our patients, and had I known who this patient was, I think I would have asked for another patient (he was the father in law of the DON. Yeah, um, when you forget his brief/diaper, it doesn't look good on you at all and any confidence you had/recovered evaporates and there's no recovering). I found out he died a few days later, which my teacher mentioned in front of my then clinical group. It wasn't related to anything I had done, or so my teacher led me to believe. I don't know, and I don't think I can find out. My fourth clinical, while it wasn't terrible, it's not a day you'd like to remember when your medication privileges are taken away because you had trouble unlocking the IV line and the nurse's claim that you "fumbled" with SCDs. We hadn't gone over how to apply SCDs, and I asked for help because I didn't think I was doing it right (it didn't look right). Yes, I know all you do is fasten one side to the other, but I really thought I was missing something. I had a chance at redeeming myself this last semester when I put them on someone during clinical.
I will readily admit I wasn't safe, and me failing was the culmination of my incompetence but not from lack of trying plus a not so helping hand from one nurse and her friend. When this nurse said I told her two different things, I was trying to follow the rules: the rules of the school stated that faculty must be present when you administer medications. I told this to my nurse, but I also mentioned if she couldn't wait, I could give the next scheduled meds. I called my teacher, she came down, nurse was already annoyed I had to call her. My teacher got the meds, but then said I could go with my nurse and left. I told said nurse what my teacher said, but then nurse took the meds and just gave them to the patient. She then turns to my teacher and says I told her two different things and I couldn't get my story straight.
The head to toe assessments? It was my understanding that we were suppose to them on our patients, that our nurses weren't suppose to do them. The nurses still did their assessments, and one of my classmates said there was no point in us doing the assessments if they would do them. I got in trouble for that too -- I shouldn't have listened to my classmate. When I attempted at doing my own assessment, I went to look for a thermometer. I figured a classmate had one, ran into her nurse, and her nurse said, "I'm using it right now." She later told my teacher I asked to use a thermometer that was from an isolation room, which wasn't true. When my teacher asked, I felt like I was pressured into saying "Yeah, I did." I said I did because I had gotten into so much trouble, she wouldn't have believed me. I should mention also about the thermometer, I wasn't asking my classmate's nurse for HER thermometer, I said I was going to ask my classmate if SHE had a thermometer.
When midterms came, my teacher had me feeling slightly better about clinical and ready to care for DON's father in law. I was sent home the next day over the brief and told basically to write a paper over my incompetence. I had stayed up later the night before (like until 11 pm) working on a list in addition to my careplan so I wouldn't "freeze" again. I think that sent my self-esteem to an even lower point.
I should've stood up for myself more, and I should've been a lot more organized than I was then. I tried, rather stringently, to follow the rules, only to have them bite me later. The rules were set by the main campus that was in another city, and while they may have worked very well for the hospitals were they've done clinical, they didn't really work at the hospital where we did clinical. When people ask what happened, I tell them, "I followed the rules and got in trouble." It's only now that I understand flexibility and where to keep your mouth shut and when to speak up more.
I didn't get passed the fundamentals class at the first school. After a semester away from nursing school and then getting into another one closer to home, I've done better with considerable improvement in clinical since the first time, and I just passed MedSurg and Pharm. Despite that and beginning my third semester in the fall, there's that lingering thought that I'll fail terribly and it'll be a repeat of the first program. I've made sure not to make the same mistakes (but I've made other mistakes which I corrected or still correcting), every time there's an opportunity to learn now, I run after the chance, but failure is always in the back of my head (the only "exception" was catheterizing a female. Those models make it look easy until you have to find the hole! I wanted to see someone do it first before I tried on a real person).
Does it get better? Am I dwelling too much on the bad experience? My teachers have talked to me about what I need to work on, I've gotten better at assessing people, I haven't killed anyone, I haven't given anyone an air embolus. I mean, really, how do you build yourself up after the nurse eats you and spits you back out?
