New perspective on clinical skills testing

Published Jan 12, 2010

38 Posts

I just finished ADN program last month. My son is a Navy corpsman assigned to a platoon of Marines. Not to brag on my son but he laughed when I told him of our skills testing in starting IVs (in nursing lab). His IV starting skill test was starting an IV on a classmate.

First he had to low crawl into a dark building, under simulated gunfire and other weapons fire, find his patient in the dark, find his IV kit in his backpack, start the IV while the patient screamed and wiggled and the instructor yelled at him to keep his head down and repeatedly reminded him that if he screwed up, his patient will die.

Somehow he and most of his classmates passed. Next time you feel bad about skills testing, remember it could be worse!