Nervous about clinicals!!

ImThatGuy, BSN, RN · Apr 6, 2011

It's not bad. Here's what I do.

We have a little meeting among the people in class before the clinical starts. Then we have to listen in as the staff nurses provide their oral, end of shift report. They never pay us any attention though.

I then immediately go wake up the patient, perform the physical, document, and get a list of scheduled medicines for the day. I give what needs to be given, document, and I'm generally done with it all after about 30 minutes. Then I wait until it's time to give meds. I give what needs giving. Eventually, breakfast comes and the LPN students deliver that, and I go in to see what they ate. The LPN kids get the tray, and I go looking for a tech to help me wash the patient. I do that, document, give any other meds, and then I mostly wait for the end of the day. At some point I take about 45 minutes for lunch, and we have another meeting at the end of our scheduled day. Not bad. Just boring.

ComeClarity · Apr 6, 2011

It really depends on what your clinical instructor expects of you.

In my LPN program, during our med-surg clinicals in the hospital, our instructor assigned us to 1 or 2 patients each, and we had to go find the nurse who also had our patients and listen in on report. After getting report, we had to go get our patient(s) vitals and chart them before 0830 so the nurses would have them in the computer for their AM med pass (our instructor had 10 students to her and only 2 of us could pass meds per day, because she had to double-check them before we gave them). We also had to look through our patient's chart and find out any pertinent info about why they were there, dx, past medical history, if they had any IVs and what was infusing, etc., and go find our instructor and give her a mini-report on what we'd found out so far.

Next, we would have to perform a head-to-toe assessment of our patient(s) and fill out an assessment sheet and turn it in to our instructor by 0930. We were expected to do AM care/dressing changes/anything else our patient(s) needed that was within our scope as student PNs. Our days were typically done by 1230-1300.