Nurse Per Student Ratio in Clinicals?

twarlik · Jun 20, 2004

In our clinicals we are not "assigned" to a nurse. We are assigned to the patients and we work along with the nurse if necessary. Only one student is assigned to each patient.

Have fun in clinicals! :)

suzy253, RN · Jun 20, 2004

in our clinicals last semester we were a group of 6-8 students, each assigned to 1 patient to care for for the day and our instructor was guiding us along. Semester 1 started with basic care; semester 2 we were administering meds, injections, IV's, Foleys, etc. Clinicals were Thursdays and Fridays...all day. Had to do an extensive report on the patient to hand in on the Monday for which we were graded on.

Good luck to you.

elkpark · Jun 20, 2004

You will have a clinical instructor with you who is a faculty member of your school, and who is responsible for you when you're in clinical. You will also be interacting and working a lot with the staff nurses of the hospital (or whatever) who are assigned to the same patient(s) you are. All of the patients you work with will also have a staff nurse from the facility assigned to them, the same as if you weren't there (you are considered entirely "extra.") Some of those nurses will be v. friendly and interested in enhancing your learning experience, and some won't! Your school has no control over that, and there really isn't anything that can be done about it (except for the instructor, when s/he is making assignments, to try to avoid certain nurses on a floor, if they are hostile toward students.) Some of the nurses may feel that having students on the floor for the day means that they can sit at the nurses' station all day and look at magazines while the students do all the work (not many! But I've seen that be the case when I was nursing faculty.)

The number of nursing students allowed per instructor in clinical is set by your BON and the organizations that accredit nursing schools. Best wishes for your studies --

SCRN1 · Jun 21, 2004

We had about 8 in our clinical groups and we worked under our clinical instructor from school that we were assigned to. We also only had one patient each and never more than one of us assigned to the same patient. There were certain things that we had to report to the nurse also assigned to the patient since s/he was ultimately responsible for that patient's care.

sun1shine1 · Jun 21, 2004

I am in my second semester of clinicals now. In my first semester we had 10 students per faculty member per clinical day (we only went one day a week per group. the instructors each had 2 days of clinicals = 20 students total.) Our care maps and documentation (and at least one research article) were all due first thing Monday for the Friday groups. This go round we are doing (in a condensed semester) 2 9-hr days (10 once you include preconference and postconference) on Wed and Thur. Our paperwork is due at the end of the day on Wed. We have all day to "finish the details and evaluations". I think it will be easier that way. We only have 8 per clinical group this semester because so few ppl wanted to do summer school (May 19-July 28). The staff nurses have all been very helpful at my clinical sites, and for the first semester you don't have a whole lot of knowledge to work with yet. We knew how to do wound care and Foley's. It was a great opportunity to really do focused health assessments. We had plenty of practice performing bed baths, linen changes, perineal care, and just kinda got our feet wet. This semester we started with meds, trach care, and NG tubes. We actually start our clinicals this week!! I can't wait!

Just a quick question - How far is everyone else driving to clinicals? This semester the hospital is halfway btn my house and campus (and I live 5 min from campus)? Last semester, I went to a hospital a couple of parishes (counties) over. It would take us about 35-40 min beceause we left my house at 5 am. That drive gets to be about an hour long when we would be coming back home in the afternoon.

Sun1shine1

KristinWW · Jun 21, 2004

Thanks all for your responses! I wondered as our program seems different. The nurses were trained in advance to be educators, and we had the opportunity to meet them and were told to "choose" a nurse with which to work. I didn't really understand how this could work, as we will be changing areas. I'm still wondering. What I am reading on this board makes sense about being assigned to a pt.

I also seem to be the only student not concerned with continuing on to an NP program. Every other student is with the exception of the one who wants to be a CRNA and continually tells us how she'll start at $130K/year :)

twarlik · Jun 21, 2004

I also seem to be the only student not concerned with continuing on to an NP program. Every other student is with the exception of the one who wants to be a CRNA and continually tells us how she'll start at $130K/year :)

:rotfl:

That seems to be the trend in my program as well. The thing that really kills me about the students who want to go on to become CRNAs, is that they know how much money they'll be making but don't really seem to understand WHAT a CRNA does!

Have fun in classes this week.

KristinWW · Jun 21, 2004

:rotfl:
That seems to be the trend in my program as well. The thing that really kills me about the students who want to go on to become CRNAs, is that they know how much money they'll be making but don't really seem to understand WHAT a CRNA does!
Have fun in classes this week.

I'll do you one better; this one couldn't even spell the word originally, but she was sure that's what she wanted to do!