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I've been taking classes toward an RN degree and started my first semester of Nursing school. I am in my clinicals at a long term care facility where we were each assigned a patient. Our job was to create a care plan for them. In order to aquire more information about mine, I asked the nurse on staff that cares for her some questions. Apparently she told my instructor I had asked questions and he blew up at me after class. I am guessing she was annoyed by the questions.

My instuctor is now very upset with me, as I could tell he would no longer make eye contact with me, verbally began saying I don't know anything, and now failed my care plan. I noticed today that my classmates were discussing how he left them many notes but had not taken off points.

I am already under a lot of stress with a full courseload, and also work outside of school. My instructor has been very difficult to approach and responds to questions with questions. I feel as though I am now being subject to his emotions.

Does anyone have any suggestions for me? Was I wrong to ask the nurse? I was not advised not to talk to anyone.

(Another student had missed some work and was going to be sent home and mentioned too he would not look at her, so this is a behavior trend when he is upset).

I fear telling anyone will cause for problems but also very upset over this. I am an A-B student and do not beleive this is an issue of my not doing the work or knowing how to do it. I now face failing my very first clinical and not sure what that would mean going forward if I wanted to switch schools or how it might affect my standing.

I agree with FolksBtrippin. I would be upset too, so I do understand. However, your objective side needs to step forward. For the record I have never asked a nurse for extra info for my care plans. I get the info from morning rounds, personal head-to-toe assessment, and the EMR. Like FolksBtrippin mentioned, that may be an unwritten rule, but it is pretty common sense - nurses are far too busy to sit and chat about patients, and if they were in the break room they likely just wanted a break - not to be chatting to students.

I do understand this wasn't expressly discussed with you beforehand but perhaps they are seeing it from the point of view that you weren't considering the nurses time as valuable etc.?

Either way- just accept it wasn't the best move (even though his reaction to it is OTT and quite frankly childish), apologize, and put together an awesome care plan. Keep it simple: "I recognize I overstepped by speaking with the RN. It won't happed again. Sorry"

3 Votes

I had a CI who was a bit of a loose cannon and went as far as calling me once at 9pm on a Saturday to chide me on a care plan. A lot of this is often the CI trying to act tuff and sadly when they see someone who's emotional they will exploit that. I'm going to take the other side here and say the RN was in the wrong for tattling on you. If someone is really busy you just say I'm busy and can't talk. Tattling to the CI is just childish and unprofessional imho.

Sadly, at the end of the day you're going to have to play his game and just say i'm sorry and find out how to improve your care plans going forward. I can say he's being a douche all I want, but that doesn't change the current situation. Life isn't fair and you often have to deal with douches like this guy and that will continue for when you deal with future professors, co-workers, and managers.

2 Votes

A lot of us had nursing instructors that we felt didn't like us, or were maybe unfair to us. You have to somehow move forward and not let this one experience affect your career.

No nurses are going to have time to help you with your care planning. That comes from your own research and assessments. You said that the environment is "slow paced" which doesn't make sense to me. Nurses in SNFs typically have dozens of residents that they are in charge of. Even if the nurse is at the nursing station and not doing direct patient care, there is an enormous amount of paperwork and responsibility that you are unaware of. He/she doesn't have time to assist you with your homework or paperwork.

5 Votes
Specializes in Psych, Corrections, Med-Surg, Ambulatory.

1. The nurses are not there to be your friends, or help you with homework. They will, however, report any behaviours to the instructor that they think need to be addressed. 2. Your instructor handled it poorly when your behaviour was reported to him.

This probably won't be the last time you step on a mine when you didn't even know you were in a minefield. Time to develop a thick skin and get good at damage control. As the other posters suggested, apologize to your instructor. But apologize assertively, with squared shoulders and appropriate eye contact. You can accept feedback and accountability without being a beaten dog.

Hopefully your subsequent instructors will have more intact personalities than your current one. But if they don't, you can still navigate your way through.

Good luck.

6 Votes

Thanks everyone, once the class is over I will report what happened next.

1 Votes

Just would like to add that no one "makes" you cry. You have to get a handle on your emotions. Crying can be seen by some as a sign of weakness or unprofessional behavior, and it may well have put a big bulls eye on your back. Bullies hone in on this kind of thing like flies on you know what.

You've gotten good advice. Keep your head down and just get through this. Act confident (not cocky) even if you don't feel it. Be calm, cool, and collected at all times, even if you don't really feel it. Be prepared-always-and don't ever be late. Don't arrive without all your supplies and all of your work done. What you don't want is to bring any more attention to yourself.

Good luck.

5 Votes

I agree, your questioning the nurse was probably interpreted as looking for the easy way. And the reaction to it was way overblown.

What saddens me is that this would happen in no other profession.

2 Votes

I'm actually really, really surprised at this and I am so sorry this has happened to you.

In my old program, the clinical instructors encouraged the first semester students to ask questions. I mean, as long we are polite and professional theres no such thing as a stupid question. There are some nurses who just don't like students, and I think that's what happened with you.

Whenever you ask a question, just always be polite and say thank you. I would always let the nurses know if they need any help I will do my best and be there for them. Usually thats when they start to feel like they can count on you. Sometimes it just doesn't work.

Please make sure you are able to debrief after each clinical. It can be mentally and physically exhausting, self care is so important. I think that's what happens to so many of us nursing students we get so stressed to the point where we physically/mentally sick. I always call someone or my peers to talk/vent about what happened.

Specializes in ICU.

Woah. As a first semester instructor, he should be fueling your passion for learning and nursing...not extinguishing it. Do you have a director of nursing? I'd voice my concerns to him/her. Ensure your other classmates speak up too. This is inappropriate behavior for a faculty member and open communication as a nurse (especially in first semester!!) is a must.

In my clinical, our instructor printed off the patient's chart and gave us time during clinical time to make our care plans. This was extremely beneficial. Perhaps you could suggest this as an alternative for "interrupting" the nurse on duty?

Good luck!

Specializes in Med/Surg.

My first semester instructor was awesome. She was an adjunct, so she wasn't an instructor that worked at the school. She encouraged us to ask questions. The nurses on the floor were all mostly nice too. I tried to avoid bombarding them with too many questions.

It was second semester that was a bit problematic for me. The staff (long term care facility) weren't very friendly either. There was only like two RNs there that I thought were somewhat receptive to students. The instructor wasn't terrible, but she was also a bit of a hardass. I did learn a lot from her, though. As rough around the edges as she was, she encouraged us to use our heads and did not just hand things to us. A lot of whats, whys, how, whens, etc. I was convinced (still am, lmao) that she didn't like me. She drove many of my classmates to tears. She even went as far as to telling us (on several occasions) that we would never be good nurses. I sucked it up though. Didn't argue with her. Just thanked her. It was pretty hard to play it off. You gotta let go sometimes and accept that sometimes you won't necessarily be buddies with instructors, and that is fine. Just suck it up, get your degree, keep it moving.

1 Votes
Specializes in Neuro.

This is interesting. I've never actually heard of nurses going back to complain about a student to a clinical instructor, so I always imagined that if it happened there must be 1) something the student did majorly wrong or 2) the nurse may have a personality conflict with whatever. So it kinda makes me wonder what type of issue the nurse had with you asking questions.

The only thing I can think is perhaps the nurse thought you were asking too many questions where they felt you were pretty much trying to get the nurse to do the actual careplan for you (without actually physically doing it of course). As in, perhaps the nurse felt your questions were something you should be answering and not them? I'm not sure, but again, for the nurse to say something like that is a little puzzling without more details. I personally never asked a nurse about my careplans, I may have ask about details about the patient and why this or that happens, occurs or is for, but nothing about my careplans. I kinda understood that was my assignment to do, asking questions was okay of course, but the careplan was the students responsibility. Maybe the nurse felt you were asking too many careplan specific questions? You also have to keep in mind they have a lot they are trying to juggle on top of having a student asking them a bunch of questions. Do you think you may have asked too many questions to the point where it may have interfered with your nurse being able to chart and get their work done on time? You never know if your nurse had to stay an hour after report to finish charting because they were answering so many questions. Just trying to look at all angles here, I'm not saying that is what you did, but try to objectively assess what would have made the nurse say something to your instructor, put yourself in the nurses shoes in other words.

Your clinical instructor sounds like they may not be handling things well and their approach may frankly just suck. But, I've had good clinical instructors whom I've asked a question in turn ask me a question back to help me critically think through the process and help me come to the answer. I hated that, I'm not going to lie, but, I learned a lot and more from asking a question and my instructor in turn posing a question to my question in return. Forced me to think and they helped coach me through it till I, myself *ding-ding* was able to answer my own question. That may not be the same situation here, but, some instructors do have that technique and you can honestly learn a lot from it.

As a previous poster said, you at this point don't have much of an option. Unless you want to fail clinical, you have to power through this. Your instructor may not be optimal but just ask yourself if this is a battle worth fighting or can you just bide your time, do whatever he asks from this point on, and not do whatever it was that upset him and get through it?

1 Votes

Good Lord, there is so much ridiculous toxicity and bullying in nursing.

2 Votes
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