Hostile nursing staff at clinical

C_perugiae · Sep 29, 2010

Unfortunately, this has happened to me a couple of times in the course of my clinical experiences. Each time, I personally dealt with snippy nurses by being firm but polite in my communication with them. I also took a moment to collect my thoughts before I went to speak to the offending nurse, making sure that my statement or question had a specific purpose, was concise, and very polite. It gave them little room to be nasty back at me.

It is up to your instructor to help diffuse individual disagreements and get the entire staff to accept the presence of students. If this doesn't happen, and the relationships continue to be strained, at the very least you can take solace in the fact that you won't be in the facility for long. It's too bad that staff can be this way, but sometimes riding it out is the only option.

Hope things get better for you. Learning isn't nearly as fun and easy when you have a bunch of nasty nurses snipping at you all day!

caliotter3 · Sep 29, 2010

Be thankful you have been given this free glimpse of what kind of place this is to work at and keep that in mind when you start to look for work after graduation.

~Mi Vida Loca~RN, ASN, RN · Sep 29, 2010

Hi,
I'm a junior nursing student in a traditional BSN program. This is my first semester of nursing coursework and first clinical semester as well. Our clinical site is a 60-bed rehab facility. Today was my second clinical shift of the semester. My clinical instructor is great, but the staff at the site are very hostile toward my instructor and us students as well. They are quite rude toward us (and towards each other), and the nurses aren't really letting us do anything to help our patients. The clinical instructor is 100% aware of this and has told us she is going to try and figure out how we can work better with the staff, but I'm just wondering if any other students have experienced a hostile clinical environment, and if so, how did you deal with it?

Sometimes you get crappy nurses. Hopefully not all the times. When you do you just do your best to stay respectful and kind (not like overly cheesy fake kind of kind) and stay out of their way. If you see something you can do to make their shift a little easier than do it. Tell them, Hey I got those I&O's for you and charted them, or whatever it is you are allowed to do. I have found by doing this, even the nurses that seemed to be having the worse day (or maybe they are that crabby in general) have softened into the shift or turned a little kind by the end of the shift at least. Try to remember the politics at their work could just be bad, they could be over worked and than they come onto shift and find out they have students to "babysit" and they usually have no say in it. It can be very stressful to have a lot on your plate and than have to watch after someone else also.

coast2coast · Sep 29, 2010

I will be play devil's advocate :devil:

It might be that these staff are hostile, buuuuuut...

They are also busy. And you need a pretty thick skin to survive in nursing. So what you perceive as hostility might be a busy, straightforward RN who simply doesn't have oodles of time or a particular interest in teaching students.

The other possibility is that your clinical instructor isn't guiding students on proper behaviour/etiquette. If there are 10 nursing students running around bothering different nurses every 30 seconds, they're going to get pretty testy.

criticalRN10 · Sep 29, 2010

My best advice is, take charge of your own experience and just do everything you can autonomously. Go in and take vitals and do your assessment, write it all down and hand it to her just say "Do you want me to chart these for you?" then go about your business. Sometimes when I have a rude nurse I try to just do everything that I can on my own without bothering her and as long as she sees you busy and that you're there to actually do stuff they start to want to help you a little more. Try to take some work off her load maybe that will help. Also, if there are CNA's on the floor that ARE nice, go help them out instead. For first semester that's all you really know how to do anyway is the skills that the CNA's perform. You do need to practice assessments and such but you can do that on your own time to make sure you are grasping it. Hope that helps.

2ndyearstudent, CNA · Sep 29, 2010

I'm just wondering if any other students have experienced a hostile clinical environment, and if so, how did you deal with it?

I have seen this, especially in the very beginning of clinical. I completely ignore the attitude and focus on what I am there for. Sometimes the nurses appear rude because they are worried that an incompetent student is going to do something stupid and screw up their shift. So I give the nursing staff time to get to know me and they almost always come around and tell me how much they liked having me around. And if they don't - screw 'em. There is always the next clinical.

I also try to do my best to anticipate what my nurse or our patient may need and work to get it. From things like having all the assessments done and documented on or ahead of time or positioning required equipment in the room before it is needed. I also try to tell the nurse what my plan is for the shift and the rules as far as students getting meds from the Pyxis or administering IV meds. They may not show it right away and they certainly aren't going to express thanks to any snot nosed students right away, but they like it.

I also try to help out on the floor as much as I can when I am not attending to my patient. If another patient is high need for some reason I ask if I can help. Boy do they love this. It is nice having students around to help a guy with urinary urgency ambulate to the bathroom 3-4 times in an hour or help babysit someone who keeps pulling their sat monitor off or setting off their tab and bed alarms.

Last clinical an overwhelmed nurse (who had no students assigned to her) asked if a couple of students could help her. We did and she was thrilled. It was a pain - another student and I began handing off her patients to each other as we attended to our own - but it was worth it. The other nurses told our instructor how much they liked having us around that night - and this was the same floor where we were greeted quite frigidly on our first visit.

Remember you can only control your own feelings, not anyone else's. So do the best job you can and if some sourpuss still doesn't like you they can sit on it.

dudette10, MSN, RN · Sep 29, 2010

If you've just started clinicals on this floor, give them time. They see new groups of students every semester or more often, and they need to have time to check y'all out.

A couple of my rotations included snippy nurses who ended up being quite nice after a couple of weeks. We had to prove ourselves to them so that they could be comfortable with us taking care of patients they were responsible for. I can understand that now, but I can also see how a new-to-clinical student might see it differently. :)

anonymousstudent · Sep 29, 2010

Who knows what's happened with your clinical instructor and them in the past. Or other clinical instructors and them. There's always history, and sadly you get painted with the same brush when you wear the scrubs of your school.

You got some great advice. Don't take it personally and do exactly what your clinical instructor tells you to do and let her deal with it. She's the one getting paid.