So as a third semester nursing student, myself and many of my fellow colleagues often wonder the same thing. Why is it that when we go to clinical, about 75% of the nurses act snobby and like it's some huge ordeal that we are there in "their space"? They were all nursing students at some point as well, students who wanted to learn skills and gain experience while at their clinicals. I often dread clinical due to feeling as I am in the way or that I am annoying a "seasoned" nurse. One would think, that as a nurse you'd want future nurses to gain as much experience and knowledge as they can while they're in school. So the point of this post, I would like to and I'm sure many other nursing students would like to know; why is it necessary to be rude and someone who doesn't want to help students learn or why is it necessary to not explain stuff to the student when they ask? I'm not trying to be conniving, I honestly just want to know, so that maybe I can understand.
P.S. I'm not saying this is true for ALL nurse's, as there are some that are amazing and share their knowledge and expertise.
Specializes in Oncology, Rehab, Public Health, Med Surg.
It is great that you were able to graduate with a BSN - I think that was not necessarily the norm back at that time ... Anyhow, I mentioned hospital based nursing education because that was the common model back ----.
References please? You keep getting told this was not the case.
Specializes in Flight Nursing, Emergency, Forensics, SANE, Trauma.
.
I am not endorsing bad manners - I am only pointing out that there are generational differences
Not all of us younger folks are entitled. Some of us didn't go into to it expecting to be handed a degree and license.
I'm of the newer generation but I slaved my butt off. I did the basic ADLs* while on ICU clinicals because it helped my nurse I was paired with. I googled my answers instead expecting her to hand them to me. I hated care plans but when I did them, I took to heart the lab correlations, medication regimes, and interventions for each patho.
I don't think it's so much a generation difference as much times have just changed. I had many middle aged women and one early sixty something man who were more entitled than the teenagers and early twenties nursing students.
I did the aide work while on ICU clinicals because it helped my nurse I was paired with.
I don't think it's so much a generation difference as much times have just changed.
As a nurse you will frequently be doing "aide work." Everything an aide does a nurse needs to be able to do too. It shows a lack of understanding of one's responsibilities as a nurse to refer to these duties as "aide's work." As an RN you are responsible for delegating these duties and ensuring they are performed correctly, and for following up on the outcomes. Nurses and aides work as a team. It is disrespectful to refer to performing basic nursing care as "aide work", and it makes you sound as though you think you are above performing very necessary care such as toileting patients or cleaning incontinence, during which one can perform skin assessments etc.
Times haven't changed; people have become more self-centered.
It's the special snowflake mentality. Special snowflakes want everything handed to them without doing any of the work. They also think everyone is out to get them. If you offer sound advice or disagree with what they say, YOU are the one in the wrong, not the SS.
I don't expect anything to be handed to me. I work hard, and actually have never had anything handed to me. And, I am open to advice as well as criticism, I look at both as learning opportunities.
The fact that MANY nurses here have commented about your tone and attitude is telling. It's troublesome that to each one you deny that you are being rude with an attitude. Maybe you should re-read your posts and see if you can't pick up what it is people are commenting on.
I have, and I disagree. I don't see anywhere in this post where I've been disrespectful. What I do see is, a lot of people being disrespectful towards me, and towards nursing students in general. I believe people took my post the wrong way and assumed that I was disrespecting nurse's, which I wasn't. Maybe I exaggerated when I said the percentage of nurses whom are snobby and bitter, but I didn't say anything out of line. It's troublesome so many of the responses here are so negative about students being on their units. That's perfectly fine. When I graduate in a few months, I will NOT be that nurse who gets ill and takes my stressful day out on a student who is there because that's where they got placed for their rotation.
Specializes in Flight Nursing, Emergency, Forensics, SANE, Trauma.
As a nurse you will frequently be doing "aide work." Everything an aide does a nurse needs to be able to do too. It shows a lack of understanding of one's responsibilities as a nurse to refer to these duties as "aide's work." As an RN you are responsible for delegating these duties and ensuring they are performed correctly, and for following up on the outcomes. Nurses and aides work as a team. It is disrespectful to refer to performing basic nursing care as "aide work", and it makes you sound as though you think you are above performing very necessary care such as toileting patients or cleaning incontinence, during which one can perform skin assessments etc.
Times haven't changed; people have become more self-centered.
Don't put words in my mouth. I meant aide level work in that it is work the aides were permitted to do. If you've seen my other posts, you'd know I'm a strong advocate in "aide work" being everyone's work. Don't look for things that aren't there. Without my clinical instructor present I couldn't do "nursing level work" that aides could not do.
Get off your high horse a second and chill.
By the way... I am an RN who was an aide. I understand my role very well thank you
OP, try differentiating between your tech job and your student job.
As a tech, you have a level of trust with your coworkers. As a student shadowing a nurse for one day, you don't.
There's a sort of attitude that I've seen with nursing students. The ones who work in the healthcare field tend towards it...it's an attitude of the student expecting me to automatically respect them because they've "seen/done it before." Well, I haven't seen them before, and I don't know them. Anything goes wrong, it's all on me. So yes, I've been short with students before. And I'll be so in the future if I feel that the situation calls for it, because in my department, with my nurses, you don't demand, you don't assume that just because you do X at work you'll be able to do it here, too. I'll take requests. I expect students to have at least one solid goal for the day and I'll bend over backwards to give them any chance to meet that goal and to learn new and cool things.
References please? You keep getting told this was not the case.
So back it up with some facts...
I have a lot of homework for graduate school and have to keep it short plus I am not sure what kind of sources you would be able to access. You might be able to read this report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for free. It gives a great overview about the history of nursing, nursing practice and needed changes in education. It also reports that nursing education for diploma nurses in diploma schools was 63.7 % in 1980 and fell to 20.4 % in 2008. Now the number of diploma nurses is very low
There are many other academic papers and articles about the history of nursing and the changes in education. When the baby boomer generations writes about their nursing education, their initial education was often a diploma program but it also depends on the state as some states were faster to adopt academic programs.
Of course there were some BSN programs as they got started in the US as an alternative model to the model based on Nightingale but it was not as common as it is now.
I work with several generations of nurses and some of them graduated with a BSN 40 years ago, they also told me that they were seen as "snobby" back then (which would be a totally different topic but just to illustrate that the BSN education was not as common as it is now).
I have read most of the replies on this thread. And we also had this conversation a work with a student nurse who is working on our unit for the summer.
The student asked why it appeared that nurses did not like to teach. The other nurse in the room and I gave similar answers. We are not paid extra for the joy of having a student and it is more work for the nurse to have a student (you make a tech's day easier not ours). And we also discussed how the goals of a student nurse don't line up with a nurse. A sn wants to practice certain skills and to get info to write a care plan. And a nurse wants to do her job. Also a sn is not on the same schedule. They take long lunches come late. Leave early and have meetings with their teachers. Than come back and want me to catch them up on what's been happening? Um no.
Understand op. That you will learn lots in your nurse residency, those nurses will be paid to teach and nurture you. But don't blame the staff rns during your clinical rotations for lack of learning. Talk to your ci
NanikRN
392 Posts
References please? You keep getting told this was not the case.
So back it up with some facts...