Cassidy Clark

I have been teaching LVN students for two years in both the community college and technical school environments. I think that when multiple students have a gripe or complaint about an instructor's approach or attitude,the instructor needs to examine it seriously. For many years nursing has been known for eating its young alive. This begins in nursing school with the instructor breathing down the student's neck and increasing anxiety. Many (or most) of our students come from dysfunctional backgrounds and are already under a great deal of stress in their personal lives, which nursing school tends to compound. I think nurse educators need to start taking a humanistic and holistic approach to nursing education. For example, last semester I was teaching a group of LVN student's on their second clinical rotation. This time period is one of great growth...as they begin to pass medications, they have many opprotunities to focus on their patients as systems and they can begin to formulate a picture in their mind of what certain patient populations characteristics are. I had one student in particular who started off the quarter performing very well, demonstrating great capability and potential. As the semester wore on, she became increasingly stressed in clinical and was having difficulty passing the simplest medication...she had difficulty even accessing her drug book for med. info. In her mid-term evaluation, instead of being harsh and critical of her performance I related to her that I was gravely concerned with her performance, but I knew how hard nursing school was, especially with family responsibiliites. The student broke down in tears and confided that she was in an abusive situation with her husband and she saw no way out of it. I was able to contract with her to see the school psychiatrist.She started counselling and problem solving her home situation. Amazingly, her clinical and classroom performance improved dramatically. We don't need to be our student's best friends, but we do need to address them as holistic human beings. There must be some mutal respect. Perhaps your faculty needs to take a closer look at their philosophy of nursing education and their approach with students. If we are ever going to attract indivivuals who are qualified and capable of earning a BSN, we must treat them as qualified and capable human beings.If you are doing this in your program, it will be reflected in your student evaluations.