Nurses on floor not very helpful or nice

renerian, BSN, RN · Jan 23, 2005

Where is your instructor in all of this? I worked alot with my instructor as well when the floor nurses were busy?

renerian

Kelly Wimberly · Jan 23, 2005

Where is your instructor in all of this? I worked alot with my instructor as well when the floor nurses were busy?
renerian

WOW-I got really lucky with my clinical experiences. I do agree with the comment that it depends on how well the instructor is liked by the floor nurses. I only encountered one "bad" nurse during 3 semesters of clinicals. From what I have observed from the other students in my rotations it all depends on the attitudes of the students. We had several students who always thought they knew as much as the floor nurse who had oodles of experience and these students always seemed to have bad experiences. I would have the same nurse and go in with a positive/helpful attitude and have great experiences. One time, I had a nurse who always had the pedi patients and supposedly had given every student a hard time with all her demands. The first thing that I said to her was "I hear that you are the best pedi nurse in this hospital and I am looking forward to working with you and learning all I can from the time that I spend with you." I had the best day with her. Call it what you will, but, it worked for me.

I would think that most of these hospitals where the students go are used to having students and maybe they have had some "bad" students but that doesn't give them the right to be hateful. Maybe as a change agent project for the hospital it would be to find out which nurses would be most likely to welcome students and use them when possible or to have some kind of training for all the nurses that could possibly have students so they will know what the expectations are for them. Communication is a powerful tool as we all are learning.

I have made a promise to myself that once I "survive" nursing school and begin practicing that I will take the students that I have under my wings and give them the same experiences that I had. The hospitals that we worked in and the majority of the nurses that we had were grateful for our help because they knew their patients were getting the attention that they couldn't always give with the load of work that they had.

LauraF, RN, ASN, CNA, LPN, RN · Jan 23, 2005

I am sure that the nurses on our clinical floor are so swamped that they do not want student nurses hanging around them and i can understand that but how are you supposed to learn??? i am a somewhat older student i asked this one nurse if i could follow her she looked at me and my friend and said yea, one of yall can follow me pointed to my friend and said she can follow me i was thinking what the heck??? oh well, i just want to get some hands on but sometimes feel so lost and inadequate during clinicals that i am being in the nurses way maybe i just need to be more assertive??? please input

I have been rather frustrated as well. I have been on my Mental Health clinicals and have not talked to a nurse. We share the room with the activities director who has been very nice, but not once nurse has talked to me. Thank goodness the idea is to practice our therapeautic communication.

RainDreamer, BSN, RN · Jan 23, 2005

That "good clinical experience" is the job of their instructor - what they get paid for - and the instructor needs to communicate with the floor nurses. Which they generally don't.

Then I guess I've been lucky because our instructors DO communicate with them. And if the nurse doesn't want a student, they are comfortable with telling our instructors they would rather not have a student and that's totally fine. So yes, the instructors should communicate with the nurses, but the nurses need to communicate back .... if they don't feel comfortable having a student, then just say so! If a nurse doesn't want a student then no one wins in that situation because the nurse is frustrated and the student isn't learning anything.

I agree, some nurses aren't cut out for precepting, they need to make that known rather than just dealing with "more work" that the students create for them.

HappyNurse2005, RN · Jan 23, 2005

I'm a first year, 2nd semester ADN nursing student.
I too am feeling like I'm not getting much from my clinical experience. In my school, we are thrown right into clinical environment without any preparation. Th only thing we follow by are what we were told to read and some objectives that are very brief in description.
My clinical day consists of just me with my assigned patient for the day alone most of the time. There are 7 students in my clinical group and only 1 teacher so she can't spend as much time with us. She only just checks in on us once in a while. But I feel I really need to have someone beside me to let me know if I'm doing things that I've never done before correctly. The nurses I have treat it like it's their day off with that patient. Since I have the patient for the day they just don't bother with anything related to that patient and expect me to have performed everything and charted correctly. So everytime I have clinical I end up coming home feeling so fustrated and exhausted as well as anxious about the next week that I have to go again.
Is this normal of clinical experiences is what I'm wondering about?

is that normal of other clinical groups at your school? ask your classmates, or upperclassmen who have had that instructor before, if he/she is like that. 2nd semester was a while ago for me. I remember it was occasionally hard to find the instructor, but if we needed him, he was always willing to come help out.

Now in 4th semester, sometimes I don't see my instructor much during the clinical day, but at this point, that is fine. We still have to do meds with the instructor watching, start IV's with the instructor watching, but other things, its up to the instructors discretion if they want to watch. some do, some don't. Some want to watch you do the dressing changes, some don't. But they are always available if you need them.