Give me a day in the life at clinicals!

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I'm wondering...when you go to clinicals for 8 or 10 hours one day a week at the hospital...what is it that you DO all day? There's only so much a student can do I would imagine...You can't be busy the whole time? Do the nurses use you as a sort of "slave"? If your patient has an accident, do they expect the student to clean it? Do you feel like you are in the way a lot of times? What in the world do you do for all that time? Seems like a long day to me.:confused:

Specializes in 5th Semester - Graduation Dec '09!.
1200 or 1230: second set of vitals and head-to-toe assessment

dude.. 1 assessment is hard enough when you have full-care! but 2???:sstrs:

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Yeah, I know. Our school is crazy! But it must be done, so we do it. Thankfully it doesn't have to be as in-depth as the first one. Basically just vitals and see if anything has changed since the morning assessment. It's not that bad. I've found that the further along in nursing school I go, the faster I become. By the end of clincals each semester we are assigned more than one patient because we actually get bored!

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OB/Peds was the worst for the guys because there wasn't a single patient who would allow them in their room.

Gosh, that's something I hadn't thought about! How are those guys supposed to get OB experience?

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I assume you have to introduce yourself as a student nurse. Have any of you ever had a patient insist that they only wanted to be taken care of by a "real" nurse?

And how do you stop your hands from SHAKING the first few times you do even the most mundane things, like BP? :uhoh3:

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Specializes in DOU.
I assume you have to introduce yourself as a student nurse. Have any of you ever had a patient insist that they only wanted to be taken care of by a "real" nurse?

And how do you stop your hands from SHAKING the first few times you do even the most mundane things, like BP? :uhoh3:

I have never had anyone refuse me. I tell those who have expressed any hesitation that I have more time to attend to them than the licensed nurse, and because I am a student, everyone watches me like a hawk to ensure I don't make a mistake.

As for being terrified about the first patient, my first was a patient who was just short of comatose, so the poor woman was probably not even aware of what I was doing. :)

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Specializes in Acute Care Psych, DNP Student.
I assume you have to introduce yourself as a student nurse. Have any of you ever had a patient insist that they only wanted to be taken care of by a "real" nurse?

I never had a patient express to me any desire to NOT have a student nurse. I did see it happen to a classmate, though. After that, I started introducing myself as a student nurse, and I'd say, "I'll be helping to take care of you in addition to your registered nurse."

I figured parsing it that way would preempt any objection due to them thinking they were getting short-changed by having a student. I think the way some of my classmates introduced themselves, the patient might think the student was taking care of them and no regular RN.

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Specializes in 5th Semester - Graduation Dec '09!.
Gosh, that's something I hadn't thought about! How are those guys supposed to get OB experience?

In my experience, all the L&D and Postpartum patients where fine with me. Since I am a guy, I thought there might be a problem, but not at all. I have never had a patient refuse my care, and neither has anyone I have had clinicals with.

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Specializes in Critical Care: Cardiac, VAD, Transplant.

I never had a patient refuse a student. In fact, when another student was originally refused, I spoke with the patient to find out what her fears were and she changed her mind. Once they realize that they are likely to get one-on-one care and attention, they tend to be all for it!

I usually request the neediest patients to prevent any boredom. I also bug the nurses for any extra work so they realize that I am competent and willing-that's when they start inviting me in to see/help with new procedures. If we are studying a certain area in class (cardio, pulmonary, etc.) I will request patients that may exhibit s/s that we are studying. This way I am enhancing my learning. Overall, you get out of clinicals only what you put into it!

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Ok well what if your patient doesn't want to answer all of the questions you have to ask them? I had a student nurse when I had my one child and I really just wanted to be left alone and didn't want the fifth degree. So I can totally relate to being on the other side, but what do you do then?

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Specializes in DOU.
Ok well what if your patient doesn't want to answer all of the questions you have to ask them? I had a student nurse when I had my one child and I really just wanted to be left alone and didn't want the fifth degree. So I can totally relate to being on the other side, but what do you do then?

The questions we ask during assessment are health-related, not conversational. If I had a patient who was non-cooperative, I would ask them if they'd rather I came back after they had a chance to rest, or if they wanted to get it over with quickly (assuming it was something I could actually put off).

I had a psych patient who didn't want to cooperate with an interview. I just told her the sooner she did, the sooner I could leave her alone.

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I assume you have to introduce yourself as a student nurse. Have any of you ever had a patient insist that they only wanted to be taken care of by a "real" nurse?

And how do you stop your hands from SHAKING the first few times you do even the most mundane things, like BP? :uhoh3:

The first time I went to the hospital to "pick" a patient, the patient refused to have me take care of him because I was a student. So I picked another patient and didn't go near that other guy's room all day.

I guess I just stopped asking if I could take care of them, especially towards the end of the semester when I had a limited number of patients to choose from and had to take care of 3 patients. It just got easier for me to say "Hi, I'm So-and-So, I'm a student nurse that's here on the floor today and I'll be helping to take care of you." And then I'd dive right in to my assessment. If the patient didn't refuse me then, I'd take that as an "okay, you're a student and you may take care of me".

As far as OB/peds, a couple of the guys in the class got asked to leave the room, but like me, they found that if they stopped asking the patient if they were okay with a male student nurse and just said that they were going to take care of them, the women didn't throw them out.

The shakes will go away, especially the more you do it. It's just nerves, but you'll get used to clinicals and will grow more confident in yourself. I used to shake all the time. It was horrible!

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