Nursing Faculty orientation on a medical unit

[sassysmart66]

Veteran nurses:

I need some input from those of you who are in management or who have been around awhile. I am nursing faculty in a baccalaureate program at a small private college. My background is Community Health, outpatient, ambulatory settings, and patient education. When I was hired into this position, I made it clear that I had not worked in med-surg for 15 years. I have been in this position for 3.5 years and the dept head continually puts me in to teach senior students on a very busy medical unit every spring. I have voiced concerns about being required to work in an area where I feel uncomfortable, but have been told to "just go work on the unit for 40-60 hours and you'll be fine." I feel that this attitude just perpetuates the "a nurse is a nurse is a nurse" refrain.

Well, I am so uncomfortable that I am starting to push back. I feel like it is unsafe for me to guide students in this environment and I feel that this practice is endangering my license. The dept head has told me that since we are so small (7 full time and 1 part time faculty) we need to be able to double up on the clinicals that we teach. I am considering leaving nursing education because of being put into an untenable situation like this.

What are your thoughts? How long would a nurse like me require to orient to your unit? Is 5- 12 hr shifts or 8- 8 hour shifts enough?

Thanks for your input.

Sassysmart 66

[ImThatGuy, BSN, RN]

I have a limited exposure to nursing, but I'm a second degree nursing student right now. I chime in here having been a high school science teacher (different), a paramedic (different), a EMT preceptor (different), and a police officer (most of my career experience) where I often had new people riding with me and had to train them and/or keep them safe. Yeah, obviously, I like different things...don't judge.

First, I think all students can perceive when a teacher is talking about something he or she doesn't know much about. Sure, you can read from a book or teach what's in the book, but when you get that question that you can't answer your body language and voice tone changes. It's obvious, I think particularly to girls, that you don't know what you're familiar with. All teachers, at some point, have to teach something from which they have very little knowledge or experience to draw. It is indeed uncomfortable. With nursing particularly being as broad of a field as it is I think it'd understandable to admit to students that you have little experience with or knowledge in a particular area. I happen to hate it when teachers and trainers feign confidence in a subject.

Second, being uncomfortable in your job is pretty common, but the degree of liability that comes with whatever is making you uncomfortable makes it all the worse. I largely decided to quit my last job and go back to school due to internal problems within the agency for which I worked. I was in a supervisory position and became "the whistleblower" thus turning in my supervisor for misconduct. I'd do it again, but after doing that eight months of misery passed before my last day arrived last summer. I understand going to work everyday not knowing what you're going to be up against. Granted, this scenario is a bit different than your's, OP, but I understand the emotions. You can indeed move on to better or equal things if you so desire. Others have suggested ways for you to gain familiarity with what is less known to you, and I can't provide such suggestions because I'm obviously neither a nurse or nursing instructor. I'm just here to say that sometimes you have to push back in order to stay out of more trouble, and sometimes you eventually have to walk away like I did.

[Old.Timer]

I can't help but feel that it is an injustice to the students.

[Riseupandnurse]

Canoehead: You certainly have the right to your opinion. I can tell you, though, after 17 years in a specialty area I went prn and just did about 6 hours a week working there. I am an educator, so I took clinical students to other areas of the hospital too where some of the patients had the same problems and consults as my speciality. But last month I quit bedside nursing because I had no life putting in 60 hours a week as an educator and 6 in practice plus required inservices etc. and a family. Not only did I have no life I couldn't even really keep up with changes in my own specialty. Nearly every week there was some change, new policy, new piece of equipment I didn't know about and had to learn about. that's the way nursing is today, So my sympathies are with the educator. Tried so hard, so very hard.

[kimmie2011]

Not to sound harsh but you should not be teaching clinicals for which you are not prepared or experienced. You've had more than enough time to get experience and obviously didn't. I've had more than one instructor like that. One comes to mind. She had ZERO clinical experience. She had graduated over 13 years ago and just reactivated her license. Her school let her teach in the RN-BSN program until they got experienced faculty and realized that she had no idea how nursing worked. She was an embarrassment to herself and the school. She insulted students in class when asked questions about lecture material covered in class and then changed the subject to irrelavant topics. It was obvious she was skating on thin ice.

She handed back assignments without grading them and just said things like "you know if you put time into this assignment or not". WTH does that mean? It looked like she had just randomly assigned grades when we finally got them. She cut lecture early all the time. By the last week of the semester, we only had grades from the first two weeks of class. Word has it that she had been conducting all her classes like this. The crazy part was that she was teaching so many classes and didn't even have an MSN. She had a masters in another field. She was working on her PhD but still had no clinical nursing experience. We had more nursing experience than her.

Last I heard she finally got in trouble with all her abysmal evaluations and is not teaching anywhere anymore and still has no clinical experience. If she wasn't such a lazy instructor I might actually feel bad for her. That's pathetic that students have to pay money for this type of incompetence.