Overcoming clinicals...

[dstiegyrn]

This is my second semester in my BSN program, which means it is my first semester of clinicals. Last week was the first time I had clinicals, and for our first semester we are placed in long term care facilities. I have a problem that my clinical instructor pointed out to one of my professors. I am very uncomfortable. I have no problem sitting and talking to an elder adult for hours at a time, but when it comes to direct patient care I feel extremely uncomfortable. I'm not sure why, but I think it is the population and the fact that I feel I am invading their "home."

I had a head-to-toe assessment that I had to be checked off on today. My professor (same as the one my clinical instructor spoke to) said I did awesome, and that I definitely know my stuff, and she doesn't know how I am the same student who is so uncomfortable in clinical because I seemed so comfortable there. We do the checkoff on "patients" which are actually students who we don't know that are a level below us. I was very nervous for it but it wasn't the same uncomfortable that I feel in clinical. Anyway I talked to my professor a little bit about it and she was really understanding and said I just have to remember I don't have to do this forever.

I don't plan on having my future being in geriatrics, but its not like I can skip through this semester. Is there any advice any of you can give me on what I can do to feel more comfortable in this setting so I can get through this semester?

[Nepenthe Sea]

I don't know that I really have advice. I was just in a similar situation, and I can tell you that I was uncomfortable everyday. Especially the first day of caring for a patient. I would just get in there and do what I needed to do and then I would feel better. It is weird and awkward. Becoming so intimately acquainted with peoples' private parts and bodily functions probably SHOULD be.

If I feel like I have helped that patient in some small way, by keeping them clean and comfortable or assisting them with the bedpan, or whatever, that makes me feel good. You just have to look at it that way. I hope you start to feel more comfotable. I am sure we will get used to it!

[psalm, RN]

Practice on people you know, so it becomes routine. I was in my late 40s when I was in clinicals so when my son's friends came over for a meal or game, I had my stethescope ready and told them I was assessing heart and lung sounds and pulses today...no one ate until they were checked out. One of those young men is now a PA!!!

[cingle]

Well, I think it's prefectly normal to be uncomfortable when you're having to do intensely personal skills on people who are essentially perfect strangers. If you think about it, feeling comfortable walking into someone you've never met and telling them you now plan to look and them naked, touch parts of their body that only their spouses and doctors have touched in the past, and ask them about their most private bodily functions...THAT would be weird!!

[llg, PhD, RN]

As others have said and will say, yours is a very common problem. It's natural to feel uncomfortable in that situation. Most of us do -- particularly at first.

I still feel uncomfortable getting "close" to patients in many situations and I have been a nurse for over 30 years. Fortunately, my job does not require I do that. When I was a staff nurse, I worked in NICU and that didn't give me that uncomfortable feeling.

Another thing that helped me a whole lot was having something to offer the patient -- a reason to be there involved with the patient that was for THEIR benefit and not mine. As I started being able to help the patient with something, I felt more like a nurse and I started feeling more comfortable.

BTW: I opened this thread because I could really relate to the title. For me, clinicals were something horrible I had to endure and survive to graduate and get my license. Fortunately, they were nothing like the positive experience I had as a staff nurse in a NICU as a new grad. 2 totally different things.