Poor Organizational Skills in Clinical??!!!

[lauraw]

I am partway through nursing school, and one of the areas in clinicals where my instructor said I needed improvement was "Organizational Skills", but she wouldn't really elaborate. Funny thing is, aside from nursing school I'm one of the most organized, tidy persons I know. Evidently it doesn't translate very well to clinicals. I'm almost a straight A student (in the classroom) but get C's during clinical. The instructors basically say that only experience makes you an organized nurse (learning how to set priorities?), but it's frustrating to me that for 2 times in a row, I've had "needs to work on her organizational skills" written on my evaluation. Can ANYONE please tell me what it means, exactly, to have GOOD ORGANIZATIONAL SKILLS in clinicals? Our schedules depend totally on what our instructors tell us to do for that particular day. Part of the problem may be that I've never been in the medical field before and everything is so new to me. I'm eager to do well,but I'm frustrated. Any advice, anyone?

Laura W.

[KRVRN, BSN, RN]

You lose a lot of time waiting around for someone to get you your meds from the computer, waiting for someone to check them off, and questioning you about what they are for. THEN sometimes you have to be watched while you give them, so you have to wait around for someone to come with you. Any new skills (or even old ones) have to be supervised. I once had a clinical where some of their SUPPLIES were locked up in a Pyxis thing and I had to wait around for that. So much time lost and never really the student's fault. Instructors and nurses don't always realize that.

[KRVRN, BSN, RN]

Trust me, it's different when YOU are the nurse and you don't have to be supervised and you have your OWN acces code to the computer.