Going to hospitals for clinical?

[prime11214]

I'm extremely new to this clinical thing. I've read a few posts about people going to the hospital to get work done before they attend lab. I don't get how this works. Do they tell us which hospitals we are going to and what do we do then? I know it depends on the assignment but an example would clarify things :)

[CuriousMe]

Folks don't go to the hospital the night before lab....they go to the hospital the night before they'll be at clinicals in the hospital caring for a patient.

It's not uncommon for a nursing student to be required to go to the hospital the night before their clinical day and choose the patient they'll be caring for the next day. They generally have to research and write up something about the patient (could be a care plan or some other mechanism for documenting information about the patient's condition and treatments).

Have no fear, you'll be told where and when to go if you are expected to.

[turnforthenurse, MSN, NP]

We did prep work the day/night before clinical. Our clinical instructor would post a list of the patients we would have (some instructors would let us choose) and then we would have clinical prep sheets...we had to flip through their charts and find out why they were there along with their PMH and co-morbidities. we had to do a pathophysiology diagram on their admitting diagnosis, look up medications with ADRs and nursing implications and look up lab values and interpret them (why they are abnormal). we also had to come up with a care plan, usually 2 nursing diagnoses with goals, outcomes and interventions.

We did not do this for every rotation, though. We did not do clinical prep work for OB (because the patient could go into labor and have the baby by the next morning which would change everything) and same for mental health, because in that rotation we focused on communication. We also did not do any prep work for any of our senior-level clinicals (critical care, peds, public health and preceptorship).

sometimes the prep work would take me hours to complete and other times only a couple of hours. it depends on the patient.

[ImThatGuy, BSN, RN]

We don't really have lab. We probably had four days of that last semester and one day of it this semester although I think another day is approaching in April for some reason.

Clincals last semester were cake. Everything was provided for us prior to patient contact.

This semester we were instructed to go to the hospital the night before to obtain patient information about the person we'll be treating the next day. I think this is insanely stupid, and I've voiced that to faculty. Fortunately, I insighted enough discussion and near mutiny that we no longer have to do that. I don't have the time nor care to drive to a third town during the day to look at a damn chart.

Now, only on our scheduled medication days (50% of clinical days) do we have to go before the clinical time. We don't do meds everyday because the teacher thinks there are too many of us to control in that regards. On my medicine days I go about 20 minutes before the clinical starts, jot all the meds down, look up the one or so I don't know about with ePocrates on my ever handy Motorola Droid, and I go sit out in my truck in the parking lot relaxing until it's time to start. Everybody else in my group has started doing that also and things are great.