New Student Rant!!!

Published

First, thanks to anyone who takes the time to read this. I really just have to vent, and facebook doesn't give me enough room to do it in. Secondly, this is a rant, so before you jumped to conclusions and want to possibly berate me for being a baby about it, please read all of it.

I just started a 2nd degree BSN program. 1 year in length. Before the program started, we were given forms that asked which hospital we would prefer, and our top 2 choices for units (med/surg, ICU, Pedi, ER, etc.). I won't name the hospital, but my top 2 choices were ER, and then SICU. I had wanted PACU, but they said no, and I understood. However, after the beginning of the program, they then came to us and said, no one will be getting ER, PICU, or NICU (they were on the fence about NICU to begin with).

Well, today we received our emails telling us where we will be. Since ER was cut from my preferred list already, I figured I would at least get the hospital of choice or SICU. I got neither. I ended up at the other hospital on MICU. I then found out from some of the other students, that they got placed in units and hospitals opposite of what they wrote on their sheet. This bothers me a lot, because I know without a shadow of a doubt that where I want to take my nursing career revolves around emergency medicine. I was hoping to get experience in the ER as well as face time with potential employers.

Now, don't get me wrong, from what I have heard I will have the opportunity to experience a myriad of challenges working in a MICU, and I am truly excited about that. But, it is the principle of the matter. If you can't get everybody what they want, then make sure nobody gets what they want. Better yet, don't even make them want. If you are not going to allow students to work on certain floors, say that up front, not AFTER we have filled out our preferences. I understand COMPLETELY that as a nursing student I need to build a solid foundation in nursing, and that is primarily done on med/surg type floors. I agree with this wholeheartedly. That being said, our faculty and clinical facilitators should not even give us the choice of where we want to work as student nurses. This eliminates any hard feelings, disappointment, or in my case, anger.

Thanks for listening, or..um...reading. :-)

Specializes in aged care.

damn,,,,,that would crap me big times.....mebbe you need to come down

here to Australia...we've got a massive shortage of nurses, and it pays very well.

btw.....an additino of my own....how do you guys deal with difficult nursing co-students? i've got this one person who was in my group (just finished a group presentation today thank god)....who's just so non-contactable...not only does he not communicate, and touch base with others, but he also blames other ppl for not doing there work. this craps me no end.......how do you guys deal with ppl that seriously **** you off at school?...im intending on just pleasantly avoiding him.

pls help....really frustraten me!

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Well...my two cents....

In a lot of communities, there are numerous nursing programs. With this comes a lot of students needing clinical sites. Sure, we all have our wants, but in the end it boils down to more students than available slots on clinical sites.

In my case, there are around a dozen hospitals in our community. Some of these do not participate in being avaliable for clinical site teaching, some do. There are also about 8 accredited nursing schools in the community. This creates the problem of more students than clinical slots. So, someone will not get the site they want.

My program is one of the newer programs in the area, and have had to take what we can get, but that is changing. This change is due to students from other schools not actively participating in the clinical teaching in a positive manner, meaning some students have preferred to stand around and not jump in to help (and in the process, LEARN). There was even an instance when I was assigned to work the ICU at our site, and assigned to a nurse that was coming on shift. With me standing there, she stated she doesn't 'do' students. After an awkward silence, she looked at me and asked "what school"...I told her and she said "Cool...I will work with students from your school" and the shift went great. I learned and enjoyed it alot. I did ask her about her reasoning, and was told that she had a bad experience with a student from another school. She explained that she needed the student to assist her in positioning a patient, only to be told by the student that he/she didn't have time since it was time to go to lunch. This would have soured my opinion of that school.

With Preceptorship coming up, it is looking like my school is getting a larger share of the slots than the school Mr/Ms Lunchtime attends. Too bad for them....

Moral of the story: Your actions and willingness to step up and help on clinical sites IS noticed. It will also have an effect on the availability of clinical sites for you and your classmates.

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Specializes in CNA.
This bothers me a lot, because I know without a shadow of a doubt that where I want to take my nursing career revolves around emergency medicine. I was hoping to get experience in the ER as well as face time with potential employers.

Welcome to Nursing School.

Instructors ask for student preference so they can take it into account if they can. The vast majority of time, they cannot.

When it comes to clinical times and sites, the program has to work with what they can get. I would wager your school's program is disappointed they could not score clinical sites and times that matched your and other students preferences.

I have never met a nursing student or a nurse who felt his or her program was tailored to their personal career goals.

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Specializes in Emergency Nursing.

If it was just done randomly without any input it would really suck for my to get sent to hospital A 50 mins away, and my friend to get hospital B 50 mins away when if we switched hospitals it would only be like 5 mins away for each of us but the staff picking had no way of knowing this. Same with days and evening shifts.

No you can't always still please everyone and some people may get hurt feelings, but that's life regardless. Our handbook states there are no guarantees in clinical placement with requests and we need to be prepared to travel up to X amount of miles from the school. They are doing the requests as a favor to us.

Hopefully that made sense.

This is my exact situation...I am within WALKING distance of a clinical placement, but the way the cards fell, I got placed at a hospital 30 miles away. LOL

But I have to look at the positives: the far-away hospital has a much better reputation than the close one, the clinical instructor is more friendly, and there is a really good frozen yogurt place on the way home!

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That kind of @%$* happens all the time in nursing school. For your own mental health I suggest getting used to it and developing a healthy sense of apathy towards anything where you think you might actually have a choice.

For this rotation I wanted anything except GI surgery, guess what I got? Also, she asked people to list what they wanted and then in the email was like "oh, we didn't have any of the units people wanted, so here's what you got". I don't understand why she didn't just list what was available so we could rank what was actually available instead of saying things like Oncology or Gyn Surgery when those options didn't exist. Oh well. whatever.

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Academics.

The absolute biggest clusterfug I heard of was this: my school has a day program and an evening/weekend program. Rumor is that the day students will be doing clinicals on a weekend for one rotation.

*****! For those that have jobs where they have specifically set up weekends only during the course of the program, what happens to them?!

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Specializes in Emergency Dept. Trauma. Pediatrics.
This is my exact situation...I am within WALKING distance of a clinical placement, but the way the cards fell, I got placed at a hospital 30 miles away. LOL

But I have to look at the positives: the far-away hospital has a much better reputation than the close one, the clinical instructor is more friendly, and there is a really good frozen yogurt place on the way home!

Hey good food at the place (or on the way) can make a world of difference LOL

I had to do my Peds rotation at the hospital that is 45 mins away from me. Thankfully it was only 3 days. LOL Now I am just praying I don't end up there for my next rotation because it will be for a lot longer and more days a week.

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Specializes in LDRP.

Like what most everyone else on this thread has said...ya just gotta learn to roll with the punches.

I'm so thankful I found AllNurses before I started nursing school because I was able to find out ahead of time how unstable and constantly-changing nursing school schedules are. Remember, it could always be worse! One of the clinical groups in my class has to do their weekly 12-hour clinical shift EVERY Sunday until the semester ends in December, and then they get Wednesday off of school during the week to make up for having "class" on Sunday. I'm sure none of them were expecting that and had to adjust family and work schedules bigtime.

Initially I wanted to explore ER nursing and, as a student, see if I could possibly fit in and excel there. However, in my program, our only chance to get clinical ER experience will be during our preceptorship in our last semester, IF an ER clinical site is available and IF I get chosen to be placed in the ER. I just feel so honored and lucky to have been accepted into this program that I'm willing to go along with wherever they want to put me, as long as I learn all the essentials that I will need to know.

Honestly, I see the trials and tribulations of nursing school as a necessary preparation for the world of nursing in ways that go beyond just education. As a nurse, your world will NEVER be predictable and things will rarely go the want you want them to. This is what we've signed up for! :nurse:

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You get/got a choice? We are in clinical groups of 8 and all go to the same floor on that day. Right now, I'm on a med/surg floor, and I don't know where I'll be during the next round. The goal of the school I attend is to give us a little bit of everything by the time we graduate: med/surg, peds, OB, NICU/ICU, etc. And each type of training will be done at a different area hospital so that we can get used to the different set-ups of potential employers.

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Specializes in ED, Tele, L&D.

It's like I tell my 4 and 7 year olds:

You get what you get and you don't throw a fit!

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1st term when we pick our classes, we pick a timeslot for clinical. Basically we choose between Monday from 8-1 or Tuesday from 8-1. That's it. After first term, we certainly can provide the instructor dates/times that are really tough for us, but even then there's no guarantee of accomodation in the schedule. And, we never get a choice on hospital or unit (unless it's an ED elective, then you'd be in an ED or whatever that elective focuses on).

There are quite a few programs in our area and each school is competing for clinical slots. I am fortunate to be at a well established school with a good reputation. But, even that doesn't always guarantee the choice slots

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It's like I tell my 4 and 7 year olds:

You get what you get and you don't throw a fit!

That's nice. Good thing I'm not 4 or 7 and have the option of "throwing a fit."

There are a million ways nursing schools can set up their clinicals for their students. There are also a million ways to make life simpler for those involved. I am prior military so I understand "Semper Gumby." That is why I listed this as a rant, just to blow off steam.

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