Just began our 3rd Med/Surg clinical today and this woman is clueless. New hospital/charting system compared to what she's familiar with. We were to report on the floor at 0700 and she didn't show up until 0845. She claimed at 0730 that she was "in a meeting" when one of my classmates sent her a text.
I never thought I'd take a clinical instructor to pass Colace of all meds and end up NOT passing the med because she had my pt doing so many breaths he was getting ready to throw up so we then gave him a Zofran push. The nurses/techs on the floor were laughing at her. She told us to tell our nurses we're to pass meds with them, which isn't their job.
She can't keep up with 4 students with one patient and next week we're supposed to take 2 patients each for 8 students. There's not a single person in our group that thinks she should even get a 2nd chance. All of us are going to meet with our nursing coordinator after our exam Friday and see how much that helps.
They probably already have the number and have already complained. Some of the nurses on the floor may even know or may have worked with your instructor..
They've never worked with her until yesterday-new hospital and first day as in instructor. Someone from the staff did call the school and our coordinator did come out because she emwas a no-show. She had all of our phone numbers from orientation the week before. Has she called any of us or the charge and said the interstate was a parking lot from a wreck at 6:45 or 7:00 and would be late, that's forgiveable. Don't wait until a student sends a text at 7:30 to ask where you are and claim you're in a meeting.
i had one, and shes been a nurse for who knows long (went to NS right out of hs, and shes in her 60s)
shes so out of it she needs to retire. i didnt learn much of anything from her, had to take it upon myself to learn from the floor nurses..
1. she would literally fall asleep during post conference... in the middle of a sentence.. almost every day.
2. she left the floor for 2 hours once to "go to a doctors appt" and told us to just keep doing what wed normally do til she got back... then came back and had one of the nurses on the floor draw her blood for the lab.
3.she would attempt to pass meds with all 5-6 of us, each with 2 paitients, some of us with over 15 meds for one patient... some patients didnt get their 0900s until about 12p.
4. had a pt with an oral K+ supplement who couldnt swallow whole pills.. it wasnt a crushable med so i asked her what to do. she told me to soak it in hot water til it dissolved and let him drink it... i then said "but isnt the point of not crushing it to keep the enteric coating intact as to not irritate the pts stomach?" she was like "yes, just soak it in the water, thats just what we do." i soaked it.. it didnt disolve, so she made me poke it with a blunt needle?! i was like "isnt this the same as crushing it, but more dangerous? then she instructed me to put the soggy pill in the pill crusher and give it to him crushed.....
5. same pt had a colace pill... asked her what to do-- she handed me another blunt needle and had me poke a hole in it, i almost stuck my self, then told me to squeeze all the liquid out of the pill into a spoonful of applesauce. afterword i said "would it have been easier to maybe use a small syringe and aspirate the liquid out? her response: "great idea, ill use that way next time"
6. she did not have access to the accudose, so if we needed any narcotics, we had to stop our otherwise busy nurse to go get one pill out for us in the middle of his/her med pass. the nurses on the floor were not a fan of this.
the whole semester i was like whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat is going on?!?! one student reported her mid semester about the leaving the floor for 2 hours situation. nothing happened. i waited until the end of the semester to give her a very truthful clinical instructor evaluation (they are anonymous, and i wanted to make sure i passed before "bad motuhing" her.)
seems it doesnt matter because shes coming back this semester but not to teach the freshmen. shes following me! they are letting her teach part of pediatrics :smackingf:
i am in an lvn to bsn course. the instructor was a foreign born nurse. her accent was so strong i could only understand every other word she said. her written english was not spell checked or grammar checked, and her syntax was horrible. at the ltc facility we were assigned to do am med pass and nothing else. hello we're lvn's we know how to do med pass.
because our clinical's were on the weekends none of the rn's were around, less than 99 beds in the facility, which meant we were following around lvn's in the ltc center to get our rn licensed. plus to make matters worse the place was so bad, all the licensed staff takes their lunch together, leaving cna's in charge for the 30 minutes.
when i wrote that i found all the staff taking their lunch together i was told i needed to be quiet because that is their regular practice. so this places regular practice is to have no licensed staff on the floor for 30 minutes every day!
i turned in a letter of my clinical experience to the dean as soon as my grade posted, because there was no way i wanted to spend any more time in that hell hole.
Do what you can reasonably do to make sure the hospital knows what is going on. If an instructor behavied like that at my hospital, she would not be allowed to come anymore. I coordinate the scheduling of students at my hospital -- and I have called Deans on the phone more than once to inform them that certain instructors were no longer allowed to come to my hospital.
For example ... if your instructor is not there at the beginning of the shift, ask a staff nurse (or better yet, the Charge Nurse) a question and say something like ... "I'm not sure who to ask about this ... but my instructor is not here yet, and ..."
As the old saying goes, "Where there's a will ... there's a way."
So far so good over here, which is good, because I'm the type of person who will call somebody on their nonsense. Plus if somebody tells me to do something I think is unsafe I'll ask them why it should be done, or why should it be done that way. If I still think it is unsafe after listening to their explanation (if they have one) I'll tell them straight up I'm not doing it. I'll be damned if I'm going to do something I feel puts the patient at risk or jeopardizes their well being.
:banghead:
forgop
80 Posts
They've never worked with her until yesterday-new hospital and first day as in instructor. Someone from the staff did call the school and our coordinator did come out because she emwas a no-show. She had all of our phone numbers from orientation the week before. Has she called any of us or the charge and said the interstate was a parking lot from a wreck at 6:45 or 7:00 and would be late, that's forgiveable. Don't wait until a student sends a text at 7:30 to ask where you are and claim you're in a meeting.