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 Critical Care, Med-Surg, Psych, Geri, LTC, Tele,.
Wow. WOW. When I was in school, I had to go to the unit the night before and research my patient and was expected to know all about them, including their scheduled meds, by the time I arrived bright and early 1 hour before shift change. The *only* exception to this was L&D.
Interesting. Things sure have changed.
I just graduated and the way you described it is how we operated! We didn't come the night before but did have to come to work an hr + before AM shift nurses arrived to research our pts and then listen to report.
When i was a sophomore i was on a OB unit with other students and a instructor. I was warned about this particular nurse and her unfriendliness at the beginning... Sometimes when it's that "time of the month" i get horribly sick But I stuck it out and stayed the whole time. I had finished off all patient cares and was trying to report off to my primary nurse. I would literally start talk to her "Hey so-and-so, can i give you report?" and she would ignore me and go back to talking to other nurses. At this point i was SUPER pale and i thought i was going to vomit due to abd cramping. She saw i was super ill, and that i kept going to the bathroom while i was waiting for her, but still treated me like that. My clinical instructor informed the nurse manager about it, because i was honestly horrible to the point that my peers and her could see she was ignoring my very obvious attempts to talk with her.
What a hideous person. I'm surprised her coworkers didn't say something to her! I would have made a comment to her something like, "hey, your student is waiting" and probably would have asked if you were okay. Yikes. Well that sucks, sorry that happened to you.
What a hideous person. I'm surprised her coworkers didn't say something to her! I would have made a comment to her something like, "hey, your student is waiting" and probably would have asked if you were okay. Yikes. Well that sucks, sorry that happened to you.
I always find these type of experiences, although annoying and generally uncessesary, keep me grounded. Same can be said with certain doctors, kind of a reality check to say "Wow that felt horrible to be treated like that." makes me strive to be more kind on days when i feel my patience is wearing thin
Specializes in Mental Health, Gerontology, Palliative.
Or when I assess the patient and find a S3 gallop and tell my nurse and she just looks at me like I'm insane and does nothing about it, even though it's never been charted on. ...
Theres a valuable lesson you learn as you progress as a student and into a beginning practitioner.
Deviations in vital signs should be assessed as is the patient showing any symptoms and should always be taken in the context of a bigger picture and never in isolation of the bigger clinical presentation, for example, I had a patient with a blood sugar level in the boots. Patient was completely asymptomatic and when I checked again with a different blood sugar meter it was completely within normal parameters.
As a student, I had a patient with a blood pressure 90/60. On the low side, however when I went back and checked the patients blood pressure readings over the last few shifts has been consistently around 160/90. Turned out the patient had a change in blood pressure meds, the nurse asked me to run it buy the patients house surgeon who made the decision to split the dose mane and nocte and all of a sudden no more dips in blood pressure.
I've also taken a patients blood pressure with an electronic machine and gotten a really low reading and when checked with a manual cuff have found it to be within normal parameters.
I agree. We always got to the floor before report started and introduced ourselves. I'm noticing though more and more that students are coming in later and later in droves. I love teaching students but it's very hard to stop my routine while I'm in the middle of it to give report.
I'm not questioning the nurse in front of the patient, just simply sharing what I have found and know to be abnormalities. S3 if new and not previously diagnosed may indicate ventricular dysfunction caused by fluid volume excess, renal insufficiency, valvular regurgitation, etc. So, for me to share with the nurse that I auscultated an S3, should have grabbed her attention to listen to the patient again so that appropriate interventions could have been in place. This patient also had +2 bilateral edema.
Did the pt have a chf hx? If so, s3 is an expected finding. Did you peruse the h&p & consult notes? Did a doc notice the gallop?
Wow. WOW. When I was in school, I had to go to the unit the night before and research my patient and was expected to know all about them, including their scheduled meds, by the time I arrived bright and early 1 hour before shift change. The *only* exception to this was L&D.
Interesting. Things sure have changed.
My thoughts exactly!! We never expected a report from the nurse if for some reason we missed the one given to the oncoming nurse. I remember staying up until wee hours researching and writing up everything I had to on the patients. Sometimes I knew some of the extraneous facts of the case (that weren't any importance to the care) more than the nurse that was assigned. Only one nurse was ever rude to me and I didn't take it personally. And it wasn't so much rude as frustration with many things; a slow student in her way in the med room being one too many exasperation. She was having a really bad day and we had friendly conversation on another day in which she shared some of her thoughts, challenges, disappointments and hopes. Very enlightening conversation so I'm glad I didn't get my panties in a bunch during that previous encounter.
After reading this post and most of the comments, this is what Ive learned:
1: nurses are busy and not paid to train you- dont ask questions.
2: im not your CI, they ARE paid to train you- ask them the questions, not me.
3: you can shadow me- as long as you dont get in my way and dont ask questions.
4: you look like you want to ask a question. Can you look it up? Great. Then dont ask me.
5: you see a change in my pt status that YOU felt is significant?- its my pt, i know what changes are more important and what to look for so if im not worried you shouldnt be either.
6: my duty is to my pt not you. dont bore me with your stupid questions. ( this one is based on the comment that said students ask stupid questions. But isnt it better from a students view, seeing as they are new to this and still learning, to ask a question to find out why as opposed to guessing why? A molehill will look like a mountain to a student because they are going by the book and as life will show you, real practice is not by the book.
This is the tone that i got from most responses. Whats interesting to me almost all the responses complained of being busy as the reason to why they didnt want a student. Makes me wonder if nurses had less pt load and/or were compensated for the time they were shadowed if they would be more willing to teach without becoming annoyed or seeing it as a bother.
I'm a new grad and had 2 nursing students follow me today. It was tough trying to explain things to them. I felt bad that I couldn't go into depth like I wanted because I know how it feels but I was sooooo busy. It was ridiculous! I try to be as helpful and I want to facilitate learning but sometimes you gotta get your work done first because it's YOUR license
Specializes in Flight Nursing, Emergency, Forensics, SANE, Trauma.
when I ask a question about something that I've been taught is concerning.
We have patients who have a bunch of individually "concerning" findings. However, not everything is truly an emergent finding. A patient may have a certain arrhythmia and some small finding you have, if acted upon, could actually be more detrimental to the patient. Sometimes, somethings are left alone. You can't always fix everything and sometimes things just are the way they are. You won't truly appreciate what the "big picture" is until you graduate and maybe a year after you start working.
Wow. WOW. When I was in school, I had to go to the unit the night before and research my patient and was expected to know all about them, including their scheduled meds, by the time I arrived bright and early 1 hour before shift change. The *only* exception to this was L&D.
Interesting. Things sure have changed.
My daughter is in nursing school currently and she goes in the night before to research her patient. She writes up cards on each medication and researches the diagnosis, and current labs.
I've seen and heard nurses be exceptionally rude to students....that said, many of us love them. I've also heard some pretty tippy stories of nursing students. Basically....nurses (and nursing students) are people and they come in all sorts of packages lol
So, think about this. You listen to a geriatric woman's heart. It sounds atrocious. Sometimes there is an S4. Sometimes a skipped beat or two. The HR is abnormally low. The systolic is high but the diastolic is very low. You come out and tell me your findings. I say thanks. I don't assess the patient. I don't call the doc. I basically just move on about my day. Should I be crucified to your instructor or online for being a terrible nurse who doesn't care?
Now what if I told you this particular patient has a known heart block that is not in her chart and we don't daily chart about it? What if I tell you she has HF, A-Fib, HTN, the list could go on. She is also a DNR, and ALL OF THOSE ASSESSMENT FINDINGS ABOVE ARE COMPLETELY NORMAL FOR HER. I don't always have time to go into an I depth explanation for why I seemingly don't care about your assessment. The fact is that you have told me nothing I didn't already know about her, and I have many other priorities over teaching you.
I love students. I'm still pretty new, but I love their enthusiasm (most of the time) and will show them things and teach them things. But that is only when I have time and when they aren't rude or dumb. I'm sorry if that is offensive but when they say that not everyone will pass nursing school, I is because not all can. I have had students who interrupt me with questions during a narc count (LTC). I had a student not tell me about a syncope episode until about 5 minutes after the fact because they were listening for heart sounds and trying to arouse the patient (again I am an open person and have not been told I'm scary to the students). Granted the patient had a know history of syncope and was on hospice expected to eventually not "wake" back up eventually. The student did not know that yet.
Basically students dont don't know what they're talking about half the time in respect to what is important and what is not. That's ok. We were al students once and also did not know what we were talking about either. You go to nursing school to learn theory and disease processes. You start working to learn how to be and think like a nurse. You can't possibly know how much you don't know and how much of a burden you truly are until you start working yourself.
OP, you may be bright and you may make a stellar nurse. Who knows. What the floor nurses know when they see you is that you are now another burden to their already very busy day. Gain some perspective and realize the staff nurses owe you nothing. Your CI does. If your paired nurse has some time, they will be more agreeable to answer i questions. If they are busy, just keep your mouth shut, soak up what you can, and just be patient until you finish school. You will have all the time in the world after that to be able to intervene on assessments you feel are important and ask questions of the people who will be PAID to teach and train you.
vintagemother, BSN, CNA, LVN, RN
2,717 Posts
I just graduated and the way you described it is how we operated! We didn't come the night before but did have to come to work an hr + before AM shift nurses arrived to research our pts and then listen to report.