Making the most of an unrelated placement?

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Hello Everyone,

I have looked around the forums and could not find anything related to this topic. I'm a second year BScN student have been viewing these forums for a while and learning quite a bit! Today I received my clinical placement and it is in palliative care at a long term care/geriatric focused hospital; the exact opposite direction (in my opinion) of where I am hoping to go as a nurse. I am definitely looking towards the Emerg/Trauma/ICU/Flight direction. I also completely understand that throughout nursing school I may change my mind and passion. Anyways I was hoping some of you could give input on what approach I should take to this placement keeping in mind the direction that I am headed (hoping to head). I guess what I mean is what kind of interaction with patients should I be looking for to learn the most and prepare me for the future? What questions should I ask and what should I keep an eye out for? I hope this makes sense and any help is appreciated!

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Specializes in Critical Care.

What point are you at in clinical? Is this your first year of clinical experiences? I only ask because being placed in a geriatric-focused hospital/floor is super common for first semester of clinical.

I guess my advice is to just focus on honing your assessment skills. Geriatrics is a good place to do this. Learn as much as you can from each patient and just bear in mind that whatever condition your patient has, some day as an ED nurse or whatever, you will very likely come across that condition again.

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Specializes in ED, med-surg, peri op.

Don't think about the future or where you would like to go. Go into placement excited to finally being there, learn what nurses do, learn about your pt, learn about the area, learn nursing skills. When you go in just wanting to learn as much as possible and happy to be there you will have a much better time. If you go in thinking this is pointless and you don't want to be there you will hate it.

No matter what area you are in, you will learn something. And palliative care you will learn a lot that's going to be useful for your career, because there will always be death. Learning how to treat dying pt or very unwell pts (there aren't all dying) and handling death is going to be so helpful for your future career. I'm about to graduate from my bsn, and I haven't experience death in any way as a nurse and it's what terrifying me most about going solo after graduating.

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Specializes in PICU, Sedation/Radiology, PACU.

I agree wholeheartedly with both posters. You stated you're in your second year of what is likely a 4 year program. This is the time where you learn the basics of assessment, pathophysiology, critical thinking, and basic interventions. The advanced skills and knowledge required for ED/Trauma nursing will come later.

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Hi emmjayy,

I'm going into my second year of clinical and had a bit of exposure in my first year.

Thanks so much for the advice. Time to study up on assessment!

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Hi Nzrnsoontobe,

I never thought of it from that perspective, I really appreciate it! Good luck with graduating and with the NCLEX!

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Double-Helix,

That makes a lot of sense, I'll focus on the specialized stuff later on. Thanks for the input!

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