Limitations on Nursing Student Experiences

[nurseethel]

Hello! I am new to this forum and on-line community. I have a general question for nursing students and nursing school faculty. Are any of you experiencing more limitations as far as what nursing students are allowed to perform and practice? Where I currently teach a particular floor has placed a severe restriction on the type of patients students are allowed to have. The current rules are NO solid organ transplants, NO complex cardiac, NO ventricular drains, NO patients on Milrinone, Dobutamine, Flolan or Remodulin. This is a pediatric facility. Has any one else expereinced these limitations?

[llg, PhD, RN]

I work for a children's hospital that places significant restrictions on what students are allowed to do. We have found that the care requirments for many of our patients exceeds the ability of the instructors to handle it safely. The instructors do not work for our hospital full time, are not 100% familiar with all the special procedures and nuances of policy, etc. The care of the patient and complexity of the psycho-social aspects are just beyond that which we can entust to someone who does not work on that unit full time on a regular basis. Patient safety comes first and foremost.

In addition, since most students are not going to work in in-patient peds settings, they don't really need some of those possible experiences. It's not the best use of our resources, and the risks seem not worth taking to us. We'd rather spend a little more time orienting the few people who will choose to work for us after graduation than take the risks and try to provide a more indepth experience to EVERY student, most of whom have no intention of working peds.

I just thought I would give our side of the story.

[Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN]

Yes and I agree it has to do with the instructors ability/experience/comfort level/knowledge base to deal with this critical level in this fragile patient population where the is NO room for ANY error.

[applewhitern, BSN, RN]

I am not an instructor, but I worked in Pediatric ICU at a major teaching facility for many years. And no, our students were not allowed to touch the children in the ICU. They could only take some of the stable kids on the "floor," and only then if the parents agreed. They don't do rounds in the ICU at all. But also, I must add that the lab personnel couldn't "stick" the kids, either. Only the RN could stick them, including blood gases.

[OCRN3]

The students on our floor are not allowed to do accuchecks or get the patients up with out assistance of another employee of the hospital. They said it was because there was an issue with someone falling.

Sent from my iPhone using allnurses.com

[lub dub]

The current rules are NO solid organ transplants, NO complex cardiac, NO ventricular drains, NO patients on Milrinone, Dobutamine, Flolan or Remodulin.

These restrictions sound perfectly reasonable. The safety of the patient is of utmost importance.