Intimidation Tactics as Teaching Tools?

allnurses Guide · Jan 13, 2005

I also have quite a bit of college experience behind me but I never had an instructor who tried to go out of her way to intimidate until nursing school.

Maybe it is just some kind of "boot camp" mentality. I completely disagree with it as a teaching method outside of soldiers.

Come to think of it though, there are some teachers in our local high school who are screamers and fit-throwers.

Maybe they are everywhere.

I used to think the same as you "cooperate and graduate". But now I think I'd have a hard time not getting right back in their face - especially since I'm older than most of them are.

Looking forward to other comments.

steph

Edited to add . . . "of course, I've graduated; easy to say now" :rolleyes:

lil' girl, LPN · Jan 14, 2005

Ya know today our instructor (at clinicals) jumped on one of the students because she wasn't sure how to do the PEG tube. He showed us a total of 1 time how to do it, we got no practice time and were not checked off on it. He even threatned to send her home because she wasn't prepared! I don't know what I would have done had it been me, but I thought it was uncalled for, I mean aren't they there to HELP us???

hypnotic_nurse · Jan 14, 2005

I had one instructor like that, fortunately in my last semester. Truly awful. Made me so anxious I could barely make myself go to clinical. She was a new instructor that semester, and she was not rehired after I complained.

peaceful · Jan 14, 2005

Nursing school is out dated in the approach to teaching clinical skills. The method of teaching clinical skills used currently do not work well, not enough real practice and time, students are expected to somehow know everything through osmosis. I learned to be a big faker, act confident no matter what, once they smell insecurity, instead of trying to show positive support, some instructors use intimidation and fury. I saw many of good students fail because unable to figure out the system of faking your way through. It was horrible experience & i am sooooo glad to be out of that insane mentality. Very old school system the way they teach clinicals, has not been updated in ions. All i can say there has got to be a better way...........

Why do some nursing instructors resort to intimidation and humiliation when teaching? I have been taking college classes for years and have never before had an instructor purposefully go out of his way to make you feel like an idiot when you're learning something new. Why nursing? And why is it that they drill into you that as a nurse you are supposed to respect the psycho-social needs of your client and then they do the exact opposite... they are NURSING EDUCATORS, aren't we after all... their clients??
And hurt feelings aside, what about the patient safety issue? How likely am I to ask a question of an instructor that goes out of his way to humiliate me for not already being born complete with the entire scope of nursing knowledge?
I keep repeating to myself... cooperate and graduate, cooperate and graduate but I just can't believe what we're being forced to endure here.

dustydog · Jan 14, 2005

Very strange to think that students will actually learn something when their fight or flight mechanism is engaged all the time. :uhoh3: I've never seen anything like it before in all my years. Sort of reminds me of hazing incidents you hear about for college freshmens except it just doesn't seem to end. Most students I know think it is just part of something you have to endure. The first time it happened to me I was caught off guard. The second time I wrote the incident up and elevated it and demanded the unprofessional behavior stop. It did. Yes, they are adept at smelling fear. They are also quite good at sniffing out potential troublemakers that can make their lives equally and potentially more miserable. If there is a third time then I will go to the Dean and the Board of Trustees. I don't think that their dirty little secrets of abusing students want to get that far. For starters, practice in your mind for the next time (and it will be soon) that you will have to stand up for yourself. Look the instructor in the eye and tell them calmly that you have a greater capacity to learn things when not feeling harrassed and belittled. This may be very hard to do at first but you must know and believe that you have every right to be treated with dignity and respect.

MandyInMS · Jan 14, 2005

Some of my 'meanest' instructors helped me the most..although @ the time grrrrrrrr I wanted to choke them..lol...the boot camp type of teaching ,crazy as it may sound, prepared me for the reality of all the mean, nasty, back biting,arrogant attitudes of the MDs,staff, and pts I deal with now. And it's so true..they can smelllllllllll the fear and attack accordingly...is it right? no...but it sure seems to be reality.

babs_rn · Jan 14, 2005

I went through nursing school in the days of whites and caps and when you'd better not have a single hair touching your collar and your whites had better be pristine and not a speck on them nor on your shoes. The instructors smelled weakness and pushed any student who had one until they either quit or stood up and showed that the weakness could be overcome. Humiliation should never be involved but intimidation is not about intimidation - it's about making you see what you're made of. It's actually going by the wayside around here - I've worked with nursing students who THINK they have it rough but they've got an easy ride compared to what we had to do and deal with. It's gotten soft. I hated it then, would never want to go through it again, but I gotta tell ya...that was when I first began to learn what I CAN do. Fact is, nursing school has got to prepare the student for the rough and tough and rugged jungle that the world of nursing and healthcare is. It is not for the weak-hearted nor for the weak-stomached and if you want someone to hold your hand, you're in the wrong field. You won't get that preparation if you're not challenged on ALL levels - not just on clinical and book levels. If students can pass by learning to "fake" their way through then the instructors indeed have it all wrong. You shouldn't be able to fake a thing. These are peoples' LIVES in your hands (and you're working in clinicals under your instructor's license too - you screw up, her license is in jeopardy) and you HAVE to have appropriate critical thinking and judgment skills - some are learned, some are not and so not everyone is going to make the cut. You're not just learning to do a job and make a paycheck. This is serious stuff and I have seen a number of students and new grads who seem to believe that it's all just lip-service to learn it for long enough to pass the boards and get that license so they can work. Got rid of one of those myself not too long ago after I had to quickly intervene before she killed a patient, and she still didn't learn to pay attention to what she was doing. We bent over backwards to help her and to ease her patient load, etc etc etc but bottom line is if you can't do your job safely and carry your own weight the supervisor neither needs nor wants you there. I've known of nurses who HAVE killed patients due to having missed some really important points. As to being shown something once and expected to know it, get used to that. That's what you'll get in a hospital whenever anything new is introduced. One inservice and you're signed off and responsible for the information. No, you're not expected to know everything by osmosis but you are expected to study your syllabus and your lessons (I remember counting some 20 chapters of reading per exam and we had 2-3 exams per week, you could NOT work outside of nursing school...it wasn't possible if you were to pass) and utilize resources available to you, even if it meant using other textbooks not on your syllabus. It's making you think. That's what your career will entail too if you are to be a good and strong and solid and SAFE nurse.

mariedoreen · Jan 15, 2005

Fact is, nursing school has got to prepare the student for the rough and tough and rugged jungle that the world of nursing and healthcare is. It is not for the weak-hearted nor for the weak-stomached and if you want someone to hold your hand, you're in the wrong field.
You won't get that preparation if you're not challenged on ALL levels - not just on clinical and book levels. . One inservice and you're signed off and responsible for the information.
No, you're not expected to know everything by osmosis but you are expected to study your syllabus and your lessons (I remember counting some 20 chapters of reading per exam and we had 2-3 exams per week, you could NOT work outside of nursing school...it wasn't possible if you were to pass) and utilize resources available to you, even if it meant using other textbooks not on your syllabus.

I've been in healthcare for 15 years and it's my experience that you will get far more out of an employee by treating them with respect than you will denigration. Intimidation is all about superiority, let's not try to make it into something it's not. A student can be challenged by an instructor without being made to feel like an idiot.

And as far as the one inservice and you're signed off... well you're talking about experienced members of the health care team that have the rest of their job figured out fairly well. You're asking them to add a new skill to their solid base of experience and knowledge... not 20 things that are new (in a short time span to be followed by another 20 and another and another) to a shaky base of experience and knowledge. Students are trying to juggle a lot of information and new skills, this in no way compares to what you're talking about.

And as far as you having 20 chapters to read per exam and 2-3 exams per week... you're seriously saying that you had 40-60 chapters to cover every week? Did you walk up hill both ways in the snow to get to and from clinical too?

NorthER,RN · Jan 15, 2005

This thread brings back some interesting and sad memories of Nursing School - I was a "mature student" - already had a BS in marine biology - had worked and travelled before finally doing what I really wanted to do. Nursing school seemed to be a selection of many hoops through which we all jumped.

I had one instructor who obviously used intimidation to cover up her own feelings of inadequacy. She harassed a number of us; guess she figured that I was a know it all and she spent a lot of her time playing games during clinicals, making comments to patients during my dressing changes, etc. I finally lost it and told her that my job was to learn, that I was paying a lot for the pleasure, that I did all of my readings, that I was prepared for class and that I attended labs on my own time - and her job was to teach and that she needed to think about what it was that she was teaching us. Guess it gave her something to think about and we were all relieved when she gave up teaching part way through the semester (encouraged by the Dean).

It can't ever hurt to remind instructors that their jobs are to teach, not to bully or harass or to put themselves on a pedestal but to share and instill knowledge in their students.

medpsychRN · Jan 15, 2005

I went through nursing school in the days of whites and caps and when you'd better not have a single hair touching your collar and your whites had better be pristine and not a speck on them nor on your shoes
The instructors smelled weakness and pushed any student who had one until they either quit or stood up and showed that the weakness could be overcome.
I remember those days... Scared to give a wrong answer or worse make a mistake in clinicals. Intimidation didn't sharpen my reasoning or decision making skills.
" As to being shown something once and expected to know it, get used to that. That's what you'll get in a hospital whenever anything new is introduced. One inservice and you're signed off and responsible for the information."
While part of this may be true, my supervisor never expects staff to see something once and never forget. It's nearly impossible. I have so much to remember in a shift (after shift etc.) I'm not necessarily going to remember an inservice I had a month ago.
Thank God nursing is not like nursing school! I work in a wonderful supportive environment. Essential given the difficult complex medical/psychiatic patients I deal with on a daily basis. Let's face it, if we had to put up with intimidation and shaming on a daily basis we'd quit.

babs_rn · Jan 15, 2005

I've been in healthcare for 15 years and it's my experience that you will get far more out of an employee by treating them with respect than you will denigration. Intimidation is all about superiority, let's not try to make it into something it's not. A student can be challenged by an instructor without being made to feel like an idiot.
And as far as the one inservice and you're signed off... well you're talking about experienced members of the health care team that have the rest of their job figured out fairly well. You're asking them to add a new skill to their solid base of experience and knowledge... not 20 things that are new (in a short time span to be followed by another 20 and another and another) to a shaky base of experience and knowledge. Students are trying to juggle a lot of information and new skills, this in no way compares to what you're talking about.
And as far as you having 20 chapters to read per exam and 2-3 exams per week... you're seriously saying that you had 40-60 chapters to cover every week? Did you walk up hill both ways in the snow to get to and from clinical too?

Nope but i did walk to clinical cause i was 18 yrs old on scholarship at a small junior college, lived in the dorm and had no car. You were starched and pressed and pristinely white, no nail polish (a fellow student got sent home for having clear polish on) and no jewelry but a watch and maybe a plain gold wedding band and you carried your cap in its little plastic carry case and you carried your shoes lest they get a smudge on them on the way. And yes you bet that was easily tons of reading, easily that many chapters per week (and no, there was no time for partying or dating or a job. You ate, drank, walked, talked, slept, dreamed, and breathed nursing. It took DEDICATION - it took DRIVE - it took PROVING something to yourself to graduate. It took HARD WORK - and most years the state board pass rate was 100% too) ....we had a number of textbooks to pull from for every single disease process...pharmacotherapeutics, nutrition and diet therapy, Brunner's Med/Surg, Lippincott's Med/Surg, and so on and so forth.....yes ma'am. It was brutal. After graduation it took me two years to be able to stand to even open a magazine to read for pleasure. But the program graduated nurses who knew what they were doing too, and who knew their limitations. If you didn't make it, you weren't supposed to make it. They weeded you OUT. Which still needs to happen. Nursing schools around here are under pressure from their administrations to pass everyone for the tuition and to ease the nursing shortage - and we're getting inundated with nurses who are dangerous and who don't take it seriously enough. I'm all about supporting the student nurse in clinical in my area (but in dialysis they dont get to touch ANYTHING - just watch and listen and learn) though in hospitals their clinical instructors can't be found and they don't do anything there either - our clinical instructors STAYED on our backs, I got an unsatisfactory in clinical one day after an MVA with 11 stitches in my knee and a brace on it because I was too slow and I left a siderail down. One siderail. Only "U" I ever got. Course I was also pending a closed reduction of the nasal fx I sustained in the same MVA - my nose was flattened and to the right but I postponed the surgery because I couldn't miss clinical as I had already missed one day since I was on my way to clinical in another town (last quarter of school and I had JUST bought a car on the "college graduate program", had had it all of 1 month to the DAY) when I wrecked. We were assigned 2-3 patients and we did total bedside care for those patients, their nurses didn't have to do anything at all for them because we did it all and our instructors were RIGHT there checking up on every little thing. First clinical day right after morning report we had to turn in the paperwork on our assigned patients (we received the assignments the day before - this is before the advent of managed care - we had to write down EVERY lab value on each patient's chart, each dx, each med, each test performed, then go back and write down the significance of each lab value in relationship to the patient's dx and why it was appropriate for that test to be ordered for that patient, make handwritten drug cards on each med, and write out long and detailed care plans for each patient (minimum 3 nursing dx per patient, no care plan books allowed, and document the rationale for each planned intervention (minimum 3 per nursing dx) citing book, page, and paragraph number for each one. (most of us got started on it around 4pm (at the hospital on our own) and finished up around 1-2am, and had to be in report at 0630). And our care plans always came back bleeding red ink to be corrected and try, try again. And God help you if one of your patients got sent home, then you had it all to do again on another patient, all to be completed and turned in at the end of the second clinical day. It was HELL. You had to really want it to finish. That was the point. I'm not talking about temper fits and humiliation but nursing requires so much dedication and sacrifice that the student (and the medical/nursing community, not to mention the patients) is done no favors by being coddled and spoon-fed - the student has to show drive, initiative, and resourcefulness - and a certain strength of character that will not be shown nor come through if the student isn't challenged to become that - if they fail, then another field is perhaps better suited for them.

And by the way, as tough as we had it in our ADN program, the rules were even more stringent in the area tech schools for the LPN students. I know a couple of girls who got sent home because they got stuck in the elevator and thus were late for clinical (a BIG no-no). Reason? Nurses weren't supposed to take the elevators. Those were for the patients. Nurses took the STAIRS. They broke that cardinal rule and they flunked the day because of it.

And nope, sorry - the student is NOT the instructor's "client". They are not there to serve you. You are there to learn and you have the responsibility to learn. They present you with the information but the onus is on you to take it in and internalize it and utilize it appropriately - NOT fake your way through, and NOT to just memorize it long enough to pass a test. Because in the long run, we are ALL here to serve the patient and the community, and to do it safely and to do it well. Remember - as the nurse, you are even responsible for knowing when the DOCTOR is wrong - if you carry out an order that is inappropriate and you don't know it's inappropriate, if you don't question it (and even tell the doc if they really want that done they'll have to do it themselves and then enjoy the heat from taking THAT stand)... ignorance is not a defense in a malpractice suit.