We've all been there. If you haven't yet, you will. Some of us were sweating. Some of us were shaking. Some of us were quiet. The one thing that we did have in common is that we were all scared. Here we are, stepping on a floor, full of patients that we needed to take care of but we knew NOTHING. "Go find your nurse" is what our instructor told us. Slowly, we strolled to the different pods and introduced ourselves.
As I approached the nurse that I was to shadow the entire day, I became increasingly relaxed. She was an older nurse that looked mothering and I believed that I was going to learn a lot that day. "Ms. Martha? Hi. I'm Charlotte. I'll be your student nurse today" I widened my eyes and mustered the best smile possible, considering it is 6:30am. I was greeted with a blank stare, followed with an up and down glance that could make a dead man's veins run cold. She finally said, "Hmmmm. I already have a student nurse that is in her last semester. I need to focus on her and help her graduate. Where's your clinical instructor? Can you just be with her? If you have questions, you can ask. I just need to focus on my other student."
Let's fast forward this day. My patient went to dialysis, meaning I will not have anything to do for 4-6 hours of my 10 hour day. Because my patient was gone, I volunteered my services for her other patients. I volunteered to empty foley bags, change bedsheets or whatever other tasks or errands that needed to be done. I asked questions. After the attempts of basically begging her to let me help her were denied, I even asked if I could just watch her and shadow her without even being acknowledged. (Mind you this was my first day. I know I sounded like a sad puppy but I had no idea of what else to do). Unsurprisingly, she shot those requests down as well. This is only a small insight to how my first day went.
This is living proof that the advice that some nurses give about why nurses eat their young and all of things to do to avoid it is all FALSE!! "Make yourself available". Did that. "Ask questions and act interested". Did that. "Make sure to not come off as a know it all". Did that. "Sometimes, nurses are very busy and teaching a student will disrupt them blah blah blah!"
If you are a nurse and do not want a nursing student, JUST SAY IT! It is very unfortunate that there are some nurses out there that do not want to teach. The cornerstone of nursing is teaching. You must teach the family and patient constantly during their visit. Also, "each one, teach one" should be taken to heart. Think about when you first became a nurse. You were frightened and scared.
Fellow nursing comrades, if this has happened to you or if this ever happens to in the future, take it with stride. It is difficult to work with and hard to not take it personally. Just remember that day and vow to never EVER treat someone that is willing to learn and help with disgrace.
Specializes in Specializes in L/D, newborn, GYN, LTC, Dialysis.
I am so sorry for your experiences you described here. I feel, however, your blame and anger may be misplaced. While that nurse did not make you welcome and her "up and down" glance was very intimidating, you are blaming the wrong person. She was unfairly placed with an extra student assignment (and likely never told ahead of time) that she neither had the time nor resources with which to cope. That blame rests squarely on your instructor's shoulders. THAT person should have checked with the nurse to see if it was an appropriate placement and if the nurse could actually accommodate it. (which she could not).
You have not been a preceptor nurse yet, apparently. When a nurse precepts students, she is not only responsible for their learning, but the safety and care of the patients assigned to her. It's a grave and heavy responsibility. The work she does is more than doubled and she most often does not get one dime more in pay to compensate for the trouble. Your "helping" as a student her is not helpful at all. She is responsible for everything you do and if you make one mistake, she is held accountable and has to watch everything you do. So when she finds out she has not one, but two students for the day, essentially quadrupling her work----She is understandably frustrated. Her day has gotten a whole lot more difficult and longer. So she is annoyed and upset. She is taking it out on the wrong person, to be sure. But it's not her fault. You are working under her and HER license is on the line for everything you do.
Unfair all around. But the schools are doing this all too often. Dumping students on staff for their clinical experiences and learning and not stopping to consider the enormous burden placed on already stressed out and overworked staff and never stopping once to consider their needs when doing so. The nurse is left holding the bag, trying to figure out how to reconfigure an already impossibly busy day, accommodating the learning needs of not one, but TWO nursing students, and trying to keep them from harming or killing one of her patients. The clinical instructors are often not even in the building!
It's a nasty situation all around.
When you are a preceptor and some instructor unceremoniously dumps students on you this way, get back to me then. Then talk to me all about eating your young.
As I'm sure you've discovered, a lot of nursing requires you to "read between the lines". By informing you that she was too busy with another student, that nurse was trying to subtly say no to you. It can be pretty uncomfortable to directly say to a student, "no I can't have you today" and, depending on the institution, refusing a student may also cause some backlash. If you clearly communicated to your instructor that this nurse could not take a student, and she continued to push you upon that nurse, it seems your instructor was not using good judgment. From your posts, it also sounds like you might have been a bit too forward. However, you have received plenty of that sort of feedback already, so I won't beat a dead horse.
Specializes in critical care, ER,ICU, CVSURG, CCU.
From the post written, the nurse did tell YOU up front and then YOU proceeded to interrupt her throughout her shift because YOU are in need of learning, correct?
YOU are paying the school to teach YOU, YOU are NOT paying the nurse to teach YOU, correct?
Are you making a connection yet and realizing just how selfish YOU sound, correct?
Doubt it because this post is all about YOU and YOUR needs, correct!
There is NO NETY going on here, correct!
Did YOU not take the time, effort, and initiative that YOU spent bothering the staff to instead go bother the clinical instructor that is actually getting paid to help YOU learn and let them know the nurse's concerns, correct?
I'm still on orientation and it's basically going to work to find out what kind of wrench is going to be thrown into the plan I try to come up using clinical judgment and priority setting. Plan my shift? Nope, we're just rolling with it.
"She finally said, "Hmmmm. I already have a student nurse that is in her last semester. I need to focus on her and help her graduate. Where's your clinical instructor?"
That is not NETY. That is telling you ...to have your instructor reassign you.
I gladly precepted any nurse I was assigned to, I could not be responsible for two.
By the way, your description of the units as "pods", tells me what facility you were working on. You need to change that.
Hopefully there are multiple systems that use the term pod because I don't want to think this person is now nursing in my city...
*I had ONE bad day with ONE nurse early in my student experience and I held onto that grudge until after graduation so I could make a generalized complaint saying all those posts trying to help students are useless and nurses are mean no matter what you do.*
It weirds me out when people share these passionate posts about things they openly admit are in the distant past.
Specializes in Mental Health, Gerontology, Palliative.
.... "Sometimes, nurses are very busy and teaching a student will disrupt them blah blah blah!"
Guess what I'm paid to look after my patients. I dont get paid to student sit. My priority is the health and well being of my patients and the welfare of their families. PERIOD
If you are a nurse and do not want a nursing student, JUST SAY IT!
I dont want students. Students add a hell of alot of work to my already 16 hour shift that I have to fit into an eight hour day
Said it, doesnt make a damm bit of difference where I work
You must teach the family and patient constantly during their visit. Also, "each one, teach one" should be taken to heart.
When I've got a dying patient who has screamed for the last five hours, despite being on a syringe driver, despite having multiple extra doses of pain relief, anxiolitics and haldol and have had no opportunity to say much more than hello to my other fourteen patients a student cant do anything in that situation except get in my way
Think about when you first became a nurse. You were frightened and scared.
I still get anxious when I have a screaming patient who despite extensive nursing intervention still continues to scream and I do not have any inclination to involve a student nurse in a situation that left me feeling frazeled and fragile afterwards
. Just remember that day and vow to never EVER treat someone that is willing to learn and help with disgrace.
Nurses dont get paid to teach, clinical instructors get paid to teach. If I wanted to teach students I'd become a clinical instructor
In none of my clinical experiences or, later, as a clinical instructor, were the staff nurses ever expected to take any responsibility or put any time or effort into teaching the nursing students. This phenomenon of dumping nursing students on the staff and expecting them to do the clinical instructor's job is fairly recent and, guess what? Lots of staff nurses don't like it.
I was wondering if this was common practice, as I'd never heard of it until recently on these boards. Certainly wasn't how my school did things!
Wow! These responses to this young nurses post is proof of how nasty nurses can be! I don't know if it's our culture or the fact that our career is made up of mostly women but I have never seen anything more catty!
I never took her post as looking for pity but perhaps as a new graduate she was reflecting back on her own experience in nursing school and possibly giving a forewarning to new nursing students who may experience or will very likely experience a Nurse Nasty. Those of you offended by her post should ask yourself why you were so offended? I hit dog will holler ....
No one's been nasty. Straightforward, sure, but that is not the same as being nasty, not by a long shot.
I think some of the newer nurses are astounded (or don't really believe) that most of us who came down the pike more than a few years ago had clinical instructors that took full responsibility for teaching their students.
I was NEVER supposed to rely on the staff nurse to teach me. I had to report things I'd done or let her know about changes in her patient's status. I know she went over the MARs behind me (her responsibility to her patient didn't go away just because I was there) to make sure everything got done. Occasionally she'd offer me pearls of wisdom if we happened to cross paths. But she was NOT responsible for teaching me. Why would she be? That would be incredibly crass of my university to try to use staff nurses as FREE labor, all the while charging ME tuition for...INSTRUCTION.
My CIs were on site every minute. They were there to teach us nursing. They NEVER threw us onto the floor nurses and disappeared. It's only recently I guess that schools are pulling this on hospitals. How great is it for them that they can take on too many students, charge them out the wazoo for tuition, inflict the students on the staff nurses, then try to make the nurses feel GUILTY for not wanting to provide free services for them, all the while giving the students the impression that that staff nurses (who have absolutely zero affiliation with the school) have some kind of noble obligation to take on students with no compensation or reduction of patient load? You know, because those nurses were students once, too. Not only that, the student nurses go into the situation believing that they are somehow lessening the work load of the staff nurse, not adding to it. And apparently they graduate still believing that!
It boggles the mind that this is apparently becoming SOP now.
I'm a newer nurse (2 years experience) and at the well-respected diploma program I attended, my clinical instructors about ran their feet off because we could not give meds or do most procedures without our instructor there. We received report from and gave it to the patient's nurse, and some nurses would come find a student if they had something to do that would be a good learning opportunity for the students, but in no way were they bearing the primary responsibility for teaching us. Any teaching we got from them was a bonus. If schools are moving away from that model, it's a shame.
Maybe the nurses can send an invoice to the school with a per-hour charge for services rendered teaching their students... (just kidding! ...sort of...)
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Nope, we're just rolling with it.
vanilla bean
861 Posts
gotcha. just edited my original post. thanks for the clarification.