O.M.G. i hate clinicals!

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Specializes in Acute Rehab.

i'm sorry to even post something that sounds so dreadful, but d*....it's necessary. I'm at the end of third semester, and we have covered psych, ob, and peds. Nursing school in general is definitely ranked in the top 5 percentile of the most unorganized, chaotic, unprofessional experiences i've had to deal with to date. i was in the respiratory therapy program prior to nursing school and it's a complete 180. It took me by surprise no less. But, i must say, i was warned that this program was messy. Regardless, it's been horrible. However, my reason for posting is concerning clinicals. They have been beneficial at times in regards to applying theoretical knowledge and skills practiced in clinical lab, but for the most part, I want to slit my wrist when I'm there. This feeling was heightened during this semester. There have been too many days where I've literally stood in a small area for hooouuurrrsss because there is nothing for me to do. For example, today I had a pediatric patient who is 9 months, admitted to r/o sz and to be treated for pneumonia. I gave ibuprofen for fever 1 hour into the shift, calculated I/O every two hours and took vitals twice. Those activites combined took all of 10 minutes to complete. The rest of the shift, my classmates and I just tried to stay out of the way of staff (a very challenging task on this cramped unit). The one antibiotic this infant is receiving is QD and was given at 0200 (baby was admitted very early in the AM today). I don't mean to sound so pessimistic, but it's grueling to have a 10 hours clinical day when there is 10 minutes of work to do. *sigh* "what're you gonna do?"....suck it up i guess. One more clinical day this semester and then on to the last semester...thank god :D

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Clinicals are as good as you want to make them. You can ask questions, review charts, learn equipment / supplies. To get to do anything cool you need to interact with staff. As a tech there is always stuff to do. I would usually grab nursing students to help do stuff that comes under nursing / like start IV's , draw rainbow's, put pt's on monitors, start on nasal cannula. All of these things are essential with ER patients and I'm sure on any floor initial assessments / skin integrity checks / repositioning / patient interaction (like anything I can do for you) are constant processes. If you are bored look for things to do. There are always extra tasks.

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Specializes in Acute Care Psych, DNP Student.

Try to find the positive. Understand that nursing students have a "short leash" in peds clinicals, and for good reason. Read charts and learn. You'll remember this time after you have RN after your name, when you're inundated with tasks, including students, and don't have time to go to the bathroom.

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Specializes in Acute Rehab.

@EmBeMap,

i believe there is always something you can do as a nurse or tech, especially with adults. But not as a student nurse. But in peds, we do have a short leash as multicollinearityRN stated. There are parents who are apprehensive about students, parent's who like to provide the care for their child, or the baby is sleeping. The staff is busy handling emergent situations also so it's hard to have other nurses, who you aren't assigned to, explain things. They are pretty busy. My nurse today had 4 patients and 3 students. She handled it very well considering the acuity of her patients...she was very pleasant. Seeing as she was busy with so much, i tried to bug her as little as possible. I did ask the techs if they needed help and most of the time they didn't. they did find random things for us to do and i got to feed a baby :). Honestly, there wasn't much we could do, and as a result, we left 2 hours early. i went through the chart atleast 10 times. The unit is so cramped that it's easy for us to get in the way and frustrate employees. It just isn't a good situation. But I am the person who loves to help with w/e to learn and help the day progress. You have good days and not so good days. I just needed to vent earlier. Clinicals aren't always bad, but I am growing weary of days like these....

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Specializes in Acute Care Psych, DNP Student.
@EmBeMap,

i believe there is always something you can do as a nurse or tech, especially with adults. But not as a student nurse. But in peds, we do have a short leash as multicollinearityRN stated. There are parents who are apprehensive about students, parent's who like to provide the care for their child, or the baby is sleeping. The staff is busy handling emergent situations also so it's hard to have other nurses, who you aren't assigned to, explain things. They are pretty busy. My nurse today had 4 patients and 3 students. She handled it very well considering the acuity of her patients...she was very pleasant. Seeing as she was busy with so much, i tried to bug her as little as possible. I did ask the techs if they needed help and most of the time they didn't. they did find random things for us to do and i got to feed a baby :). Honestly, there wasn't much we could do, and as a result, we left 2 hours early. i went through the chart atleast 10 times. The unit is so cramped that it's easy for us to get in the way and frustrate employees. It just isn't a good situation. But I am the person who loves to help with w/e to learn and help the day progress. You have good days and not so good days. I just needed to vent earlier. Clinicals aren't always bad, but I am growing weary of days like these....

Your nurse had 3 students? :nono:

And she was pleasant? She's a saint.

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Specializes in Acute Rehab.
Your nurse had 3 students? :nono:

And she was pleasant? She's a saint.

that's correct. I don't know what my clinical instructor was thinking. The nurse was precepting a 4th semester student and then had me and another one of my classmates. She was very nice, calm, and pleasant to be around coincidently :)

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Specializes in Critical Care; Cardiac; Professional Development.

Can't you follow your nurse?

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Specializes in Critical Care; Cardiac; Professional Development.

Gah, just saw your post above. Sorry. It does sound like a LONG day.

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Ah Peds clinicals. The ones we had on the floor were bo-ring too :lol2: To start with- this program has OB/Peds as our second rotation. We can't give G-tube meds, we can't do IV's. And most of my patients I had (all of 5 times) had either a G-tube or an IV. I did get to d/c an IV, but that was only by telling the nurse a half dozen times "BTW- we CAN stop IV's"

We tried to make ourselves as useful as possible. And our teacher helped. One of the CNA's was swamped, she couldn't feed one of the babies- she was SCREAMING to be fed, parents were out so I fed her :) I had an 18 month old patient whose parents couldn't come during the day, so I spent a lot of time in his room :) Then there was the 3 year old with severe asthma whose mom needed to sleep (so did she) but she was so wound up that 3 of us took turns pulling her around the floor in a wagon LOL. We did manage to get her to sleep- but then her O2 Sats got bad and she woke up while the staff was trying to get some oxygen on her.

The staff was very nice. We tried to stay with only 2 of us in a pod (because the pods were small).

And, we only had about 5 days a piece on the floor. We also got to play school nurse (I never did but someone said that was bo-ring too), I got to go around with a home care nurse (and that was just neat :)), and we observed in a day care center (I played with 3 year olds, that was fun).

We do medsurge next so I can just imagine how busy I'm going to be. And, this program is now a BSN, and the staff told us (because we all complained just how boring clinical could get) that this class is going to be a senior level class. So hopefully the people behind us will get to do a little more on the floor than we can.

And I understand we have a "short leash" in ped clinical. Quite honestly- I really didn't WANT to give any kind of meds to these little kids- you need to know exactly what you're doing

Cheryl

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Specializes in med surg home care PEDS.

Peds is rough, you always have parents who don't want you to touch thier child, the nurses are rightly concerned about thier clients, all in all I didn't enjoy Peds clinical. I am in last semester we are in an MICU unit, a kind of step down from ICU, every body is high acuity, lots of vents, PEGs, foleys, chest tubes, AMS, you name it, I am exhausted, I have never worked so hard in my life, I am lucky to get 10 min to look at a chart, just do orders, enjoy your rest, your last semester is going to be a killer.

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Specializes in Telehealth, Hospice and Palliative Care.

I agree with EmBeMap wholeheartedly "Clinicals are as good as you want to make them..."

Assuming there isn't a lunch tray in the hall that can be picked up, and that the bed rails and room surfaces have already been wiped down, there is always the chart.

Bring your textbook and, if there is down time, really learn about the pathophys to be found in that patient's particular history. Nothing like learning in a real-life setting. Start at day 1 in the chart if you have time...look at the labs and how they relate to the patient's current and past condition, understand what procedures the patient has had in the past, why they did them, how they went...read all the doctor's notes, look at all the imaging, get the BIG picture. You just MAY be able to help your nurse out.

EX: Once in the CPRU I caught that the patient's pre-procedure PT had not been ordered...I figured they were waiting for it...my speaking up kept the procedures on schedule.

EX2: After I some digging I found out my peds patient had Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia, a rare disorder associated with all the internal organs found on the reverse (mirror) side of the body: liver, stomach, heart, lung lobes, the works...I knew this would definitely have an impact on the nursing assessment as well as defibrillation, if it (God forbid) came to that. And my poor busy nurse didn't know a thing about it because the condition wasn't explained fully in the chart. When she had a minute she had me tell her all about it. It was GREAT!

So much to learn, so little time!

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