So I am a first quarter nursing student, and I was talking to some of my classmates. One mentioned how, at clinical, an older nurse kept trying to talk her out of the profession, basically trashing the field. Her opinion. So we keep talking and one of the things that came up was floor nursing. EVERY SINGLE one of them said they didn't want to work on the floor/be a floor nurse!
I was shocked. ***** Why are you even trying to be a nurse if all you want to do is go straight to grad school to become a Nurse Practitioner (Peds)???? One of these girls was the same girl who talked about other students who had to be rushed into the emergency room during clinical, saying they had no place in nursing school.
Maybe it is because I work as a "sitter"/safety care associate and am use to the "dirty working" (i.e. I had to hold a man's member in a urinary because he was in restraints last week).
Am I the only one who has a bad taste in their mouths? Many of these are little girls barely out of high school who have never worked or volunteered a day in their lives at a hospital. I would hate to have a nurse who hated her job and only did it so she could get accepted into grad school.
They will be in for a rude awakening when they realize that most *decent* grad schools aren't going to bother looking at an applicant with 0 or the bare minimum floor experience, and I hope they wouldn't look at someone who has less than two years of work experience on the floor. I see most of the nursing students who say they don't want to work on the floor leaving the profession entirely within the first five years (and I'm being generous)...what do you think?
Specializes in Oncology; medical specialty website.
Eh...I wouldn't call being out for almost three years "barely". That, and having a tough life ages you quicker.
I live in the dorms with the freshmen and the maturity difference between the freshmen and the juniors/seniors is very striking. Even that extra year [or two] can give you a great insight into yourself and what you want out of life. I know the girl I was in 2008/2009 is profoundly different from the person I am today, and I see it in the upper classmen as well. They are much more serious about their career goals. The students that make it to their junior and senior year are more focused and less "Animal House" than those two years younger than them.
It may not seem a lot because you are [far???] removed from the age group, but those of us within the age group can tell the difference between freshmen/sophomores and juniors/seniors.
Which is no different than it was when those of us "older" nurses rode our dinosaurs to get to the hospital for clinical. It's called maturing.
OCNRN63, RN
5,979 Posts
Which is no different than it was when those of us "older" nurses rode our dinosaurs to get to the hospital for clinical. It's called maturing.