I am NOT enjoying my geriatric clinical

klone, MSN, RN · Oct 15, 2005

My entire first year of clinicals was at the local VA hospital on their med/surg floor. The patients were almost exclusively 80 year old men with COPD or CHF.

I really did not like it, and I was very glad when my clinicals there were done. I'm LOVING my clinicals now (different hospital). So don't feel bad, or as if you're a horrible person or shouldn't go into nursing because you're not happy where you're at.

annlee1318 · Oct 15, 2005

Do not feel horrible. I felt the same way about my LTC rotation. It just didn't fit, unfortunately. That's the beauty of nursing, you try out different areas and find out what works. Keep your head up, and remember that it's a learning process.

Tweety, BSN, RN · Oct 15, 2005

I hated peds, I hated OB and I hate pysch. LTC was o.k. but didn't love it as much as ICU, ER and med-surg.

It's o.k. not to like all of your clinicals. It's not a requirement. Just do what you gotta do and it will be over soon.

Good luck!

Gompers, BSN, RN · Oct 15, 2005

Don't worry, you're normal, not a bad person at all. I don't think anyone goes through their nursing program loving or even liking all of their clinicals. Different strokes for different folks, as they say!

I, for one, only liked TWO out of nine clinicals!!! One was psych, and the other was my senior preceptorship in the NICU, which I got to choose. The rest, I dreaded almost every single day. I mean, DREADED. I also hated the year I worked as a CNA on various med-surg floors. But I did it all, because I needed that experience.

Don't get me wrong - I always enjoyed learning now things, meeting people, and helping the patients. It was just that I had absolutely no interest in working with that population with those diagnoses. I went into nursing specifically to work in the NICU, and while clinicals were supposed to open my eyes to other wonderful words...they just didn't. Except, for some reason, psych of all things!

You are normal. Hopefully you will find your niche and when you do, your passion for nursing will resurface. Promise!

speedykicks · Oct 15, 2005

thanks for the encouragement. next semester we have three short clinicals - OB, peds and med-surg. I am looking forward to them - espicially peds.

nursingismydream · Oct 15, 2005

Don't feel bad. I have three weeks left of LTC. It isn't that I don't like my patients. In fact, I love them to death. I just would like more variety I think. I don't know, we'll see. Can't wait to start something new.

KatieBell · Oct 16, 2005

Well, it's not a crime to dislike a clinical area. Like one of the other posters, I really didn't enjoy my clinical time. Partly because I had done a lot of work as a CNA, and so doing basic patient care was not exactly very interesting to me... I finally had a blast doing Med Surg and my Senior preceptorship in the ICU....

It probably feels bad because you don't dislike the patients in LTC, but you don't like that type of nursing. It's OK. Just don't take a job there in the future!!!

EmmyBP · Oct 16, 2005

Well I'm glad that I'm not the only one... I am starting clinicals on monday at a LTC facility and am NOT looking foreword to it!!! We had a tour - looked through our 'patient's' chart ect. on wed and by the afternoon I was in tears talking with my clinical instructor. :crying2: Side note - I have issues with death. there I said it. I had such a hard time with even the tour because some of the patients were obviously so close to death... The teacher is very understanding and is willing to help me through this, but I also feel a bit silly. Here I am going to school to be a nurse (LPN) and I'm scared of the patients. How good is that. I know that I just need to get over this 'block' that I seem to have but don't know how. The teacher is going to be bringing me on a 'field trip' to the morgue (aaahhhhhhhh) when we are at the hospital to try and get me over this. I am also expecting to be counting the days left there - because I already know that I DO NOT want to work with geriatrics. Well thanks for letting me vent - I hope you don't think I am silly. :uhoh21:

Long Term Care Columnist / Guide · Oct 16, 2005

LTC can be terribly, terribly depressing........but it's a good place to learn basic bedside nursing care, that's why it's so often chosen as the first clinical setting. Caring for the frail elderly benefits not only the students but the residents, many of whom literally blossom when they are given the attention and extra care students offer.

Before I started nursing school back in the mid-'90s, I couldn't stand the idea of even walking into a nursing home, let alone bathing and feeding old, broken-down bodies and trying to keep a conversation going with the demented; everything changed once I actually got in there and started working with the residents, and to this day I still love elderly patients the most. I don't work LTC anymore because the conditions in many facilities make me angry and sad; I don't think residents receive the kind of care they deserve, and the system they paid into for their entire working lives is not serving them well now that they need it. But that's another whole thread unto itself; suffice it to say that, if you really don't like LTC, you certainly don't ever have to work there once you graduate; all you have to do is get through it, learn as much as you can, and keep an open mind.:)