I'm currently in the clinical portion of my nursing program and I have a question for the nurses. We're there to help them and learn and 90% of the time we get brushed off. I've had several experiences with this as have other students in my class. At a LTC facility we were told by the Nursing Manager that the staff loved having nurses and when we got on the floor they treated us like garbage. For example there was an aide that needed help getting a patient into bed and I offered because there was no one else around and she tells me that she doesn't want to break her back for me to get experience. Mind you I had worked in a hospital previously and had lift training so I know how to properly lift a patient. I tell her that I know how so she reluctantly lets me help her. Well when we lift the patient she does nothing so I'm strugling to keep the patient up as she tells me what to do. This patient weighed over 200 lbs. When I set the patient in the bed she grabs her legs an throws them up on the bed and says to me that's why I wanted someone who knew what they were doing. I thought to myself you let go and you're the one who didn't to break your back but I guess getting my back broke is ok because I'm just a student.
Right now we are currently in a hospital annd it's the same thing. The Nurse Manager comes in during orientation and tells us how the staff loves the students. We get on the floor and they won't let us do things that were allowed to even when we ask, if we tell them a patient needs something they look at us like we're from another planet, and we've asked them to let us do procedures that we need for check-offs and they do them anyways. We've been yelled at by the unit coordinator on several occasions for talking by her when we were getting our room assignments of the grease board and several nurses have told us not to bother the patients because we've gone to them to tell them that the patients need something. The only time they love us is when there short staffed and they need vital signs on their patients or someone needs to be cleaned up which we don't mind doing but if they have an accucheck or a IV d/c then they have no time for us. The floor we're currently on now has 4 out of 12 nurses that actually treat us like equals and are willing to show us things. It just seems to me that these nurses have forgotten what it's like to be in school and the things that are required of you in the clinical setting to pass. They also have forgotten that these nursing students that they are treating so badly could possibly be co-workers in a few months.
So the question is why do nurses treat students this way? We are there to help and I know that not every nurse is this way but it gives not only a bad impression of how the profession is but also how these facilities are representd.
Somehow this turned into a rant. If you read this far thanks.
