Abusive Nursing Instructors-LPN

Nursing Students LPN/LVN Students

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Hi,

I am going out on a limb here as I am not a nurse but I have 2 daughters in LPN school. Their grades are good and they are on their third clinical rotation. One daughter is 24 and the other is 17. My 17 year old was given very high grades for her first two rotations. But then while in a patients room one day the patient asked my daughter how old she was. She told him 17. The nursing instructor who is notorious for making fun of girls, degrading them, insulting them and making them cry asked my daughter how she got in an adult program at 17. She explained she graduated a year early, passed the entrance test and would be 18 by the time she graduated. She just shook her head. My daughter(the 17 yr old) got the same instructor for the 3rd rotation and this time it was a different ball game. She verbally tears her up, told her she should have worked a year before she entered the program. She said she is never prepared enough. This is the same instructor that gave her very high grades on her last rotation. My daughter is not the only one she targets, there is an 18 year old she tears up verbally too. I feel bad as my daughter is getting discouraged. She works hard. My older daughter will get this same instructor next hospital rotation. This instructor seems to target the younger girls. She told one girl that she had no business trying to be a nurse. I checked all of the education credentials of all the instructors and they all have extensive education. But I noticed this particular instructor has her R.N. but not her Bachelors. She is an older instrcuctor. One of the other nursing instructors that has the highest degree in nursing told my 17 yr old that she was going to make a fantastic nurse and she could see her going all the way. But yet you have another instructor that says she should not be there ???? I am really confused by all of this. Its hard for me to give my daughter advice when I have no nursing knowledge. What could I say to her ? She is half way through the program and since this instructor she has come home crying twice. I feel so bad. She did say she makes lots of girls cry. Is this the norm of some kind of teaching method ? I would think it would violate a persons rights to insult them. It really ticks me off that we are paying A LOT of money for her education to have just one instructor tear her to bits. She has her two more weeks and then moves on. The rest of the instructors are decent. She has even worked with the head instructor and been told what a great job she did. Any Help ?????

it seems like everyone here agrees that hazing/abuse/training - whatever you want to call it is the case in the majority of schools and in the majority of work places.

this does not make it right!!!

so, now what? what are we as professional nurses in the work place, instructors in nursing schools and preceptors going to do about it??

i personally really try to go out of my way to look for students that need/want a preceptor - although most don't want to work on the night shift.:smilecoffeecup: i also try to remember to convey a positive attitude when students are coming to the floor - and hope it is contageous. i do often remind my colleagues that we were all students/new nurses once.

any other ideas about how we can remedy this situation.

op, tell your daughter to hang in there. we need good nurses and i'm so sorry she is going through this - there is simply no excuse for it.

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I know there are awesome nurses and its sad that a few bad nurses give good nurses a bad name. My daughter wants to work in a hospital and it maybe very different. The particular hospital she is in fired all of their LPN'S so there is an attitude on that. My daughter would love to do the night shift. I just hope that one day a blanket of protection could be put up to protect future nurses. I was reading this TERRIBLE ARTICLE about a male nursing student was treated very badly by his instrcutors, I believe he was asian and he had a breakdown and went back and shot 3 of the instructors...my goodness that is HORRIBLE!!! Did any of you hear about this ?

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Didn't hear about it. School type shootings are often unbalanced people who were picked on or bullied. They feel powerless, and a few people crack. I actually can identify with those feelings, even though I would never act on them

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Specializes in Case mgmt., rehab, (CRRN), LTC & psych.

Abusive instructors are quite common in nursing school. However, your daughter is deserving of more professional treatment.

Unfortunately, nursing instructors are more inclined to bully some students while they leave the others alone. The common denominator is personality type. If your daughter tears up, appears shaky, or doesn't stand up for herself when being bullied by the instructor, she will continue to be targeted for the bullying and verbal abuse. Nursing instructors pick on students that are deemed 'easy targets' because they won't resist the abuse. Your daughter needs to stand up to this person in a tactful manner right now, or it will continue during her nursing career when she deals with older nurses who have biases against young nurses. Believe me, the abuse and bullying won't stop once this instructor is out of her life. There will be older nurses and male doctors who will bully your daughter relentlessly if she permits it to occur without any resistance.

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Specializes in LTC.

I am in the last semester of my nursing program. We have had a good run with instructors up until now. When we started having problems we took it straight to the Dean of Students. Hopefully, everything will come out alright in the end. But I know how your daughter feels. Tell her not to be discouraged and take action if needed. Not everyone is going to be pleasant to work with, but nursing instructor's should be supportive not abusive. The quality of your experiance as a student is important...I will never forget it.

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Specializes in ICU, PICC Nurse, Nursing Supervisor.

LAWD, I couldn't agree more!!! I had a state lady ask me one time..If you dont have care plans how do you know how to take care of the patient....UHHHH What, I show up get report and assess my patients needs...I don't even know where they keep the care plans here!!!!

Care plans are the most useless invention on the face of the earth. Does anyone come into work and first thing check the care plan to plan their day?
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Specializes in everything but OR.

Hi Homeschoolmom,

I graduated from nursing school 20 years ago, did very well in clinical and got good grades in class. But...the one thing I will never forget is the daily bullying, public humiliation and intimidation my classmates and I put up with by nursing instructors. Some even dared to complain to the school, to no avail. After graduation, I spoke to many coworkers about their nursing school experiences. It was the same everywhere. If I had to go back and do it all over again, I wouldn't. I don't know where this culture came from and it is obviously still accepted.

Like most of the responses to your message, your daughters have little power to change the situation. However, personal insults and/or threats should be brought to the attention of the school. As I mentioned above, the school will probably do nothing about it but if your daughters had a credible witness, like a staff RN for example, they just might have a fighting chance.

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Hi everyone,

The OP is distressing as are the numerous replies. As an instructor and program administrator, I am here to tell you that abuse is NOT OK in any situation. Students do have recourse and that is to let the administration of the program know. Repeated abusive behavior cannot and should not be tolerated. I am tired of the excuse, "But, she's a good nurse" used to described certain instructors. I beg to differ. "Good nurses" don't act in a way that degrades our profession and hinders the education of our future nurses. Homeschool Mom, and daughters: report this behavior to the administration of the program. If that doesn't seem to do anything, then try the administration of the school. Nurses pride themselves as professionals who do not give up and doggedly keep after something until it is resolved. Please do so!

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Specializes in ER, ICU, Infusion, peds, informatics.
i know there are awesome nurses and its sad that a few bad nurses give good nurses a bad name. my daughter wants to work in a hospital and it maybe very different. the particular hospital she is in fired all of their lpn's so there is an attitude on that. my daughter would love to do the night shift. i just hope that one day a blanket of protection could be put up to protect future nurses. i was reading this terrible article about a male nursing student was treated very badly by his instrcutors, i believe he was asian and he had a breakdown and went back and shot 3 of the instructors...my goodness that is horrible!!! did any of you hear about this ?

that sounds familiar......but if it is the situation i'm thinking about, the student was not really treated as bad as he thought. he had issues (to say the least) and blamed much of his lack of success on others.

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Hi Homeschoolmom,

the daily bullying, public humiliation and intimidation my classmates and I put up with by nursing instructors. Some even dared to complain to the school, to no avail. After graduation, I spoke to many coworkers about their nursing school experiences. It was the same everywhere. If I had to go back and do it all over again, I wouldn't. I don't know where this culture came from and it is obviously still accepted.

I think you are so right. I believe that nursing instructors are the way they are because they went through it & feel the need to do it themselves. Maybe some of them have a mistaken opinion that it will make us tough. I don't know but at this point all it does to me is make me resent the instructor. We have a new clinical instructor. One student told her that she thought she was nice & looked forward to having her for clinicals in a future term. She told her that she didn't want to be liked. She wanted us to think she was mean!

Case in point. Most of my classmates feel that our program is run in a very disorganized manner. They bring us into lab, demonstrate a couple procedures & then tell us we'll have time to practice with an instructor before being checked off. It doesn't materialize. Just this week two instructors demonstrated (sort of) head to toe assessment, by the way, skipping entirely several procedures listed on our check off page. They split us into two groups of 16 & had some of us work on wound care & dressing changes (with an instructor) & the other 16 practice doing assessments, also with an instructor. We were supposed to trade at some point. Didn't happen. So when it came time to test out of head to toe assessments most of us had only practiced with a classmate, on our own time, with no way of knowing if what we were doing was correct. Testing out was a nightmare. This was worth 20% of our lab grade. We had to demonstrate the HTTA while at least half the class looked on. The instructor was not one of them that demonstrated earlier & she wanted things done totally differently. For instance we were told to listen to bowel sounds X4 working our way in a Z shape starting in ULQ. This teacher decided that we needed to follow the colon, starting LRQ, and in my case, proceeded to jump all over me for not doing it that way. Every book I've checked since has said to do it the way we were told originally but she's the dept head so no ones going to cross her.

What made it even more frustrating is that we weren't to actually do the assessment but go through the motions so as I did it, I attempted to tell her what I was doing but she kept interrupting me, telling me to not tell her but "just do it." However, I knew that if I didn't point out to her what I was doing, she would say that I hadn't done it. I was so frustrated when I got done.

It's now 24 hours later & I'm still peeved. Maybe it's because I still don't know if I passed that skill. I start clinicals next Thursday & we can't go unless we've passed it. It would be nice to know if I passed.

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tell your grils good luck and not to let the insructer bring them down.

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Specializes in Trauma, Teaching.
LAWD, I couldn't agree more!!! I had a state lady ask me one time..If you dont have care plans how do you know how to take care of the patient....UHHHH What, I show up get report and assess my patients needs...I don't even know where they keep the care plans here!!!!

I think care plans are only important for teaching students the algorythms of care, do it until you "automatically" know what to do next. With experience, they aren't needed. However, it made me mad when I would put something particular about a pt's care that was out of the norm on the Kardex, report off on it as well, but several shifts later find it was totally ignored to the detriment of the patient.

Homeschool mom, {{{hugs}}} from another homeschooling mom. We run into lousy people everywhere, the trick is to just outlast them. I'm on my sixth or seventh CEO, can't count how many head nurses (dang, that's not the title anymore, been through several title changes too, lol). Some were good, some were not, but I'm still here. :smilecoffeecup:

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