Just want to Vent

midnight*sky · Mar 6, 2009

Oh yes, I hear you. Especially the last sentence: As a student I may have a question and we're here to learn. 90% of my instructors throughout are so impatient and expect you to know everything upon walking in the door or on the first attempt. If you fumble once, or even ask a questiom, they seem to like to blow up. At least in my experience! NS instructors are just notorious for this. Never could figure it out. It's like they are all high and mighty on themselves since they've been through NS and worked as a nurse.

Miller86 · Mar 6, 2009

Hey

All NS instructors expect students to have their A game ready at all times, they do not let anyone seep through without knowing you're capable of being a competent and professional nurse. However, they should understand that learning consists of making mistakes and learning from those errors, they should learn to be more supportive and apply the "caring" aspect always taught in theory classes.

northern_RN · Mar 11, 2009

I hear you. When I did PN program it was like the instructors were out to make you feel incompetent in hopes you would drop out and they wouldn't have to deal with teaching you. I found clinical instructors to be the worst.

I just want to give you one piece of advice and I will add a story at the end to help you understand it more. Try to stay off the bad instructor's radar. If possible have a nurse at your clinical sites help you, explain things to you, and only interact with the negative instructors when needed, like if they have to be by your side to do a procedure. Spend as much time as possible in the patient's room with them and not in the hallway where they can accuse you of slacking or catch you to drill you about a medication or procedure. Keep yourself busy even if it is assisting other students with cares. These types of nurses like to catch you and drill you and even if you know your patient and their medications they will know something you won't (due to their years of experience) and love to point out how much you don't know just to make you feel bad.

I have learned there are negative nurses and nursing instructors out there that just have a problem with students and new nurses and should never mentor anyone. Unfortunately these are the nurses that go into teaching thinking it will be easier than working as a nurse. I had two clinical instructors that were like that during PN program. They were older nurses looking for the easy buck of standing around clinical site, bsing with old co-workers, and annoyed with students. Also I live in a state where it was just changed so associate degree nurses can be RNs and many of these old school nurses feel an AD is inferior to BSN. I really don't understand that if they feel this way why teach in the ADN program except back to the easy buck in a college in the the small town where they live at the community college. They didn't need their masters in nursing just a BSN with experience. So they really were not even qualified to be teaching.

I got on the bad side of one of these instructors on one of my first clinicals and paid for it the rest of the year. I live up north where the weather get very cold and nasty. It was winter and -20 some degrees outside. My car would not start and I took the only vehicle that would start to clinical early that AM, my boyfriend's car. School buses were called off due to the cold but there was still school. It was midmorning and school was starting 2 hours late due to the weather. My friend and back up parent well going to school could not get her car started. My kids had no way to get to school. I had my am meds and cares done and another nursing student said she would watch my patient's if I did leave to get the kids to school. I asked my instructor if it would be ok to use my morning coffee break to run the kids to school. She went into a rant on me about how unprofessional it was to ask to leave even if it would be for 20 min or less. That as a nurse you need to be at work for your patients no matter what was going on in your personal life. That those of us with children were told to have a back up plans for our back up plans. I told her that due to weather I took my back up's vehicle and my other back up couldnt get her car started either. She belittled me until I was in tears in a main area in front of patients, other nursing students, and staff. My children missed school that day and the rest of my year was hell. Had I known this would be such an issue I would have just let the kids miss school without a second thought. I was trying to be a responsible parent and get them to school.

Anyway at the end of the school year with 6 weeks left in the PN program and spring semester over and just summer semester left this clinical instructor became the director of the program. The director, that had a masters in nursing, and that kept her in check left and the only decent clinical instructor, who also had her masters, and really liked helping students learn left for another job. She had the power to make our lives hell and did. She got one of her "old school nursing friends" hired as the new clinical instructor. She then decided to get all the students she thought were substandard kicked out of the program. She had the clinical instructor write up those she didn't like on almost a weekly basis. She wrote us up for anything she could think of. For example we were only allowed to miss two classes a semester. Well one day I had a sick kid and missed the day. At that point we were doing two classes back to back twice a week and clinical another full 2 days a week. In my mind missing that day was one. A few weeks later my kids got sick on a weekend thank god, but just in time for Monday class I get it and get very sick. It's a test that day so I get up and go take the test and go home to rest. My fellow student's said I looked so sick they are amazed I came in at all, but if you don't take the test when given it's an automatic deduction of 5%. Well next thing I know I am written up for missing 4 classes and she is trying to kick me out. She didn't succeed, but sure tried. Another write up was when I walked out of the door to the post clinical room, which was on an automatic close and lock and it always slammed, for unprofessional behavior for supposedly slamming that door. These two set out to ruin my career as a nurse before it even started.

At final evaluations she asked me what my future plans were and I told her I intended on getting my RN and working in a hospital setting. We went over all the bogus write ups and I took the constructive critism planning to have a much better year the next year. She smiled and wished me well.

Later that same day I am with fellow nursing students. I am told by a friend that the new clinical instructor said to the fellow students when I was away that I would regret not going through the graduation ceremony for PN because I would never make it through to RN. I had told some fellow students that I would accept the whole graduation ceremony thing when I reached my goal of RN and was done with school. The "board" was meeting the next week to determine which students from the graduating PN program would be getting into the RN program. I had the some of the highest grades in the class so I wasn't worried about getting in. Well the director and this new instructor were on the board. They succeed at getting me written up so many times that even with over a 3.5 GPA I didn't get into the ADN program at that school. I have a feeling that as director all she had to say to the board was not good canidate and it was over for me. Yet, I find out that a few students that barely passed PN were being allowed to go on for RN. Some she even met with privately to discuss their ability to pass RN when they barely made it through PN and they said they really want to try to do it and told them she would push for them at the board meeting. She didn't say anything to me in our meeting about not being a good idea to go on or that I might want to make other plans. She just smuggly smiled and said good luck knowing I would never get in. All my fellow students were getting their acceptance letters and mine didn't come. A week after all the acceptance letters are sent I get a rejection letter. My fellow students are shocked knowing I had some of the highest grades and that some students that barely passed were accepted.

My story does end good though. I applied to a better school and with my excellent grades was easily accepted. I got to do clinicals in a bigger hospital with a wonderful RN, MSN that was nothing but supportive of us. I got a much better education experience than if I would have stayed at that school and gone through another year of torture dealing with her. I have talked to some of my past classmates and she was a terror and got a few to just drop out and others she kicked out or failed out. Unfortunately she is still director at that program making NS lives hell.