I am a new grad (June 2014) and have been working in acute medicine for 4.5 months. There will be two groups of students with us 2 separate days each week. I feel like I have learned and grown as a nurse so much in my short career but I am feeling a bit anxious about having students with my patients because they will be looking at me as the "nurse" and I want to be able to answer questions in a way they understand but am unsure if I will be able to do this yet.
Any tips for helping out students? Do you still vital your patients, do complete assessments etc. when students are also looking after the patient or do you check what they have recorded?
I am am especially nervous about the students at this school because they get in based on a waiting list...... Not GPA. I had students from this school in one of my classes (they could take certain electives at my school that were not offered at their school) and the majority of them seemed like complete duds (one was not able to use the correct form of "there" or "too" buts that's another rant for another time). I'm also 21 so all the students will be older than me.
I am am especially nervous about the students at this school because they get in based on a waiting list...... Not GPA.
^^ I think this must be where your age and life experience come into play because holy judgement batman. The funny thing is I was just talking with the chair of our nursing department recently and he was talking about how he wished nursing school admission was not based off of GPA because it does nothing to predict how good of a nurse that person could be.
Hi!!!! I am a first year nursing student and I came across a post of yours that you posted a while ago talking about how the hospitals make you break out. I experience the same thing!! One day I had clinical that morning my face was clear, then 12 hours later my face is an oily mess and I have 3-4 new zits! I wanted to ask if you found out how to control it? I asked my derm about it and she said when she was working in the ER her acne was so bad she had to go on Acutane..which I refuse to go on. She said that the hospital air is super super dry and this is making our skin over produce oil, which leads to oily skin and break outs!!
I work with students in my ER quite a bit and try to treat them the way I wanted to be treated as a student. That being said, when they come to me with questions, I tend not to answer them. I ask them where they can find that information if this was their patient and they were unsure of something. I'll then go with them while they look in the resource or google it, to see if they are able to access that information and understand it. After that, we talk about it. I feel that helps them more then just giving them answers. I also will say "I don't know" if I don't know because I don't know everything, and then I go find the answer with the student.
The other big thing I try to do is prep them before we go into a patient's room for an assessment. I talk to them about what the suspected dx is and what they want to look for in their assessment specifically. I also ask what labs they want to look at, why, and then go with them while we look at it together.
It's more hands on and does take a bit more time with that patient, but I want to help future nurses the way I was helped. Plus, it helps me go over my pathophys and meds to make sure I'm remembering everything I need to do as well! It never hurts to check my own knowledge.
DatMurse
792 Posts
You are accountable for your patient's health.
So let me answer your question with another question.
How much faith do you have in a random nursing student?