Gifts for clinical instructors?

Published

My school splits our semesters in half. We just finished our first half and three of the instructors are moving on to different courses for the second half. I'm in one of the groups with an instructor that is moving on. Another group purchased a $150 gift certificate for their instructor. We went to lunch with our instructor yesterday but did not give her a gift. I wrote her out a thank you card but it turns out I was the only one that did. Now my group wants to get her a gift. Most of the group thinks it a good idea but a few of us don't. It seems inappropriate to spend that much on a gift for an instructor knowing we will have that instructor again in a year. I purposely waited to give her my thank you card until after my evaluation so it didn't look like I was trying to kiss butt or influence my eval. I understand giving a gift to say we appreciate the your time and support but I think $150 is too much for a 9 week class. What do guys think?

Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.

Taking an instructor out to lunch is fine. Thank you cards are fine too. I wouldn't give a gift until you won't ever be having that instructor again. We made little nurses caps out of paper and put stripes on them for all of us at one of the lunches we took one of our clinical instructors to. A group of the students took "The Night Before Christmas" and made a funny parody of it to recite at the lunch. It was the best lunch we ever had. It's the thought that's most important, not the physical gift.

This business about gift giving is going to come up time and again when you start working as well. After awhile most people, generally, come up with their own personal rules as to what they are going to be willing to contribute to collections of money for gifts. Just to give you a heads up, here are some of the situations that will come up: birthdays, Christmas, a person leaving employment, wedding showers, weddings, baby showers, death in someone's family. Let's also not forget the coffee fund at a lot of places where the employees have to pay for their own coffee. You are going to find that in some places some people won't even bother to give gifts or take collections. Other places want to party and gift people for the least little thing.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in OB, ortho/neuro, home care, office.

Heres what we did, a bit on the extravigant side I know, but she was a special instructor.

We each gave about $20. I know this is a bit much, but the instructor was very special to all of us. She took us out to lunch on our last clinical day, and handed each of us a small "willow tree angel" and a personalized card for each of us. This is NOT the norm. Instructors aren't expected to give out gifts to their students, and it is rarely done, but this instructor was very special. Anyway - we pooled our money together and gave her an hour long massage at a local high esteemed massage place. She had been fighting a very harsh illness throughout our class (no, the class didn't know this - me and this instructor were pretty close friends outside of class, so I did know this).

In another post I mentioned the 'instructor I dreaded because of the rumors' this was her. She pinned me at graduation, and we still talk from time to time.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Ortho/Neuro.

Our first semester, we had the same instructor the whole semester and we went in and got her a Willow Tree angel that was called "Wisdom" and a thank you card. All together, I think we spend $12.00. I think $150 is a little excessive. The past 3 rotations we have only had the clinical instructors for about 8 weeks each, so we didn't get them anything. We are poor, poor, poor nursing students!

Up Vote Up Vote ×
+ Join the Discussion