Not prepared for clinical!

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It's my Second semester, first clinical rotation, second week. My intructor contacted us tonight to say she had an "emergency" can't make it to the hospital tonight to prepare our clinical assignment so we are just going to go in tomorrow morning "cold"

I am so nervous about being totally unprepared and knowing nothing about my patient and what to expect.

Any suggestions as to how I can prepare myself for this?

Thanks!

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When I had clinical, we were never allowed access to patient info prior to clinical. We always went in cold. Get report, go do a quick head to toe, look what's going in and going out. Ask if any pain?? Look up labs, look up meds. Any meds that labs won't agree with? Look at the last few orders and MD and nursing notes. Quick chat with CNA, then off to the races!

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Thanks, that really helps!

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Yeah, we never had the opportunity to prep prior to clinical. Most of my instructors are on the clinical floor with our assignments by 6:30, though, so I've always gotten there early to gather my information, look up drugs, get report, etc.

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Specializes in Acute Care, Rehab, Palliative.

We never even knew who our patients were ahead of time.We always went in cold. Sometimes we wouldn't know who our patients were until AFTER report, so you really had to pay attention.Good practice for real life.

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Specializes in Cardiac Telemetry, Emergency, SAFE.

For my ASN program, the first semester, each patient was always throughly reasearched the night before. The second sesmester...not so much. We went in cold and HARD..we had an hour from 7-8a to research the heck of our patient, their course of stay, labs and medications. Stressful, but I feel like I remembered more. It was fresh since i had just looked everything up that morning.

Good Luck! You can do it. Take it as an evening to relax!

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My last semester towards the end we didn't know who our patient(s) would be. My instructor felt this would be useful for when we got out on our own. Unless you work in LTC you won't know what patients you will have. Even when we knew at the beginning many times they would get discharged and we had to start from ground zero.

Hopefully she will give you some time to look at the chart and MAR to get some info before diving in.

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Specializes in OB/GYN, Peds, School Nurse, DD.

We never had the luxury of knowing our patients the day before. We showed up and got our assignments(we never had less than 2-3 patients.) We really had to be on top of *everything* because you never knew exactly what you'd get. At the end of the day we composed our nursing care plans based on the information we received during the day. The next day we showed up for a *different* assignment with previous patients' care plans in hand to do it all over again. I never did so many care plans in my life as I did in nursing school.:cool:

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Specializes in Cardiac Telemetry, Emergency, SAFE.
I never did so many care plans in my life as I did in nursing school.:cool:

I havent done one SINCE nursing school...:p

Crazy nursing instructors and their crazy care plans!! :lol2:

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Specializes in Pediatrics.

what type of floor are you on? Is it ortho, telly.....peds...medical.....do you have med cards already made up, most hospitals have some type of micromedex online to look up meds there.

My second term we still did patient prep the night before and I remeber showing up at 0615 in the morning to find that my patient had been discharged. I am doing my clincals at a peds hospital and they wont let us come in the day before, every shift we have come in cold, which is good, it is prep for the real nursing world. Today I had a patient, that I was able to do a quick research on and then the patient went down hill and off the patient was to the PICU and I had to pick up another patient

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Specializes in critical care, PACU.
We never had the luxury of knowing our patients the day before. We showed up and got our assignments(we never had less than 2-3 patients.)

haha we never had the luxury of not knowing our patients the day before. we were up till 2am typing frantically and then walked in only to find our pt was discharged or transferred. so sad haha

your way of doing it after makes a lot more sense

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Specializes in SICU.

well.... in REAL life i.e what you SHALL do once you graduate- you arent going to come in the night before and do research. So take it as good practice for the real world because you must get used to going in 'cold'. Best of luck!

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