How do you do in skill lab check offs?

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Specializes in LTC/Behavioral/ Hospice.

We had our first competencies today. I was doing transferring a patient from bed to chair. I was a total bundle of nerves. I was talking out loud, thinking it through, but I had a very hard time staying focussed on my patient and not my nerves with my instructor standing over me. Does anyone else get really nervous? What kind of things do you to calm yourself and make it through. I kept talking and deep breathing. I almost forgot to lock the wheelchair. That would have been an automatic failure. :eek:

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Specializes in Critical Care, Cardiac Cath Lab.

I got really nervous for my first check-off (it was today--I passed! ), and I'm sure that I'll be a little nervous for the rest of them, too. I think the best way for us to feel confident and to do well is PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE! Good luck! :)

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Specializes in CICu, ICU, med-surg.

It'll get easier! I remember my first check off. We were doing transfers and my teacher kept throwing new scenarios at me. I got totally flustered. By the end of the semester I was doing check-offs on IV starts, foleys, and trach care without any problems. I had come a long way since that first check off on transfers!

Just practice your skills and you'll do fine. When you think you've got a skill down, practice it again!

Good luck with school. :D

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Ummm well we had injection check offs today and I stuck myself with the needle. :imbar It was an IM and I was doing the z track thing and the plastic leg was slippery from cleaning it with alcohol...so my hand slid off right into the needle. And it started bleeding a little!! The instructor said "oh, don't stick yourself *giggle." I think I told her it came close, but I didn't get stuck. It was pass/fail and I passed, so that's what matters but OMG that would only happen to me. I'm sure everyone will get a kick out of it tomorrow in class.

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Specializes in Cardiology.

Check-off for the first time was extremely difficult for me. I was so nervous I could barely think. And it was just washing hands, lol. My heart rate and BP must have been soaring. Come the next check off, it got a little better, but I was still quite nervous. Now six check-offs later, I feel a million times better. I'm still a tad bit nervous (who isn't) but I feel more confident. I've found that the key is to have confidence in yourself and your abilities. It gets better, I promise it does. Good luck to you.

...Jennifer...

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I'm with you and everyone else who has posted. I hate them but I also take comfort in knowing so does 99% of everyone else. Kind of a right of passage...we all will go through it as those before us have and we ultimately will succeed. Hang in there...:coollook:

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Specializes in 2nd Year RN Student.

I hope you're not saying by "pass/fail" that if you fail your IM or transfer checkoff that you're booted out of the program. That would just be ridiculous. I don't care who you are or how much experience you've got... if it comes down to getting kicked out of a program you've been working your butt off to get into, you're going to be way too nervous.

At any rate, the more you practice, the better you get at the routine... and more importantly, the more confidence you'll get with checkoffs in general... so by this time next year a checkoff will be just another day in the lab.

Good luck!

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Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.

volunteer to do the check-off first before anyone else. gives your body less time to build up adrenaline and all the signs and symptoms of it. kind of like slapping yourself in the face. then, you can sit back and watch others while you are chilling. you either should know the skill or you don't it by the time check-off comes.

make sure you practice any skill over and over and over. have another person stand next to you with the 1 to 10 steps reading them off first if necessary until you can do it as if you were an actor in a play. if you've never acted in a play let me inform you that every word, every step and every motion an actor makes is pre-reheorificed and worked out ahead of time. they repetitively do these things so many times in rehearsal before an actual performance that it is often as effortless as not even paying attention as what keys you hit on a keyboard when you type or stepping on the gas pedal or the brake when you drive (hand-eye coordination). come to think of it, that's exactly the way you should treat these skills at first. have you ever taken any kind of music lessons? first, you practice, practice, practice to get all the notes exactly right (that would be the same as getting all the steps of a procedure correct). then, once you have that mastered, you can concentrate on the quality of performing (that's all the special little things you do with this finger or that other hand or where you place the discarded whatever). that "quality" part of doing the skill takes a lot longer to develop than learning the 1, 2, 3 steps of it because it is unique to each of us.

i must tell you that in the clinical area you will still have someone looking on at what you are doing--the patient. your nervousness will go away as you develop confidence and have repeated successes in performing a procedure. after awhile an audience won't even bother you and it will be an opportunity for you to show off what you can do. you'll look back at these skills lab experiences and laugh your butt off about them. i promise.

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Hospice.

I have found practicing in the lab with classmates to be helpful. I can memorize the steps at home, but using the actual equipment with another person there to critique really makes me more comfortable with the skill. We can catch each other's mistakes and share our tips for remembering all of the steps.

We also are allowed to verbally correct our mistakes during check off. So if I contaminated my gloves, for example, I could say, "I would change gloves and start over". As long as we caught our mistake before we finished the skill, we wouldn't fail.

My first check off was putting on sterile gloves, and my hands shook so hard I could barely get them on. My last check-off of this semester was a breeze. Don't worry, it does get easier with time.

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Specializes in Ortho, Neuro, Detox, Tele.

Don't be one of the last few to do them, because by then, everyone else will have done them and gotten them out of the way, and no one will understand why you waited so long.

Also, just remember that sterile "patient" torsos, arms/legs/etc, usually come with a regular patient attached to them, not the appendage less torso for finding lung sounds, etc....

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Specializes in Med/Surg <1; Epic Certified <1.

The last post before yesterday's reply was 2004....dare I say that most of these folks have either graduated or moved on by now? lol....

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Specializes in Ortho, Neuro, Detox, Tele.

Ok, I'm placing all the blame on dakkon, cause I'm WAYYY to tired to pay attention to dates....LOL

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