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I think the question asks it all.
You show up at the hospital or whichever setting with your handful of stuff. Then what? Grab charts and go at it? Shadow someone around the whole time? Shadow at first then do on your own? I'm curious.
Most schools involve only class work in which you can really only be tested with tests. I don't see how a gathering of documents is really a test, but oh well. What do I know?
Most schools aren't doing practical training, they're concentrating on theoretical. Nursing schools need to concentrate on both.
Also consider that no amount of class time can prepare you for the myriad medical situations in a hospital/clinic/warzone, and individual assigments are critical to exposing you to different experiences.
I think there's also a not-small aspect of weeding built into these assignments. There are people who will quit school over having to "gather documents", and frankly, I don't want a nurse who isn't willing to put the time into understanding why I'm on their floor and what my care involves. But to each his own.
I'm all about understanding pathophysiology, pharmacology, etc.
If you're going into a hospital as a student after only being in those classes for 6 weeks, you're not going to know what every drug does to every part of the body just yet. You might get a patient with a disease you've never even heard of in class. So how would you be able to provide care? A pharm and patho class aren't going to teach you about every condition and every drug you'll come in contact with or the class wouldn't just be one or two semesters long.
If you're going into a hospital as a student after only being in those classes for 6 weeks, you're not going to know what every drug does to every part of the body just yet. You might get a patient with a disease you've never even heard of in class. So how would you be able to provide care? A pharm and patho class aren't going to teach you about every condition and every drug you'll come in contact with or the class wouldn't just be one or two semesters long.
Yeah, I kind of wonder why clinicals occur while didactics do. It seems like you'd finish the didactics first before progressing into a clinical setting. Having the curricula of patho and pharm horizontally aligned sounds reasonable with clinicals after completion, but once again I'm only a layman. What do I know? Oh well. Moving onto another thread. Thanks for the replies!
Do clinicals usually take the place of the skills lab? Like, if I had lab from 7 - 1, would I instead be at my clinical location for that time frame? Are clinicals 12 hour shifts?
In my school, we did skills first before we were assigned to our units. Skills took up half the semester and the other half was spent in clinicals. My school has 8-hour shifts, morning and evening.
Do clinicals usually take the place of the skills lab? Like, if I had lab from 7 - 1, would I instead be at my clinical location for that time frame? Are clinicals 12 hour shifts?
Depends on the school. Mine has skills lab all through the 1st semester as well as clinicals. It made some days very long.
ImThatGuy, BSN, RN
2,139 Posts
I know. That's why I made that crack about EM (emergency medicine) or the emergency department rather. They're only there for a few hours (usually).