livenlearn08

I don't know you and this was the first post of your that I have ever read, I would have no right to judge you and I actually try not to judge anyone. I was certainly not trying to suggest you don't love to teach :) I guess that students question was kind of odd, how was she going to check with the other nurse if she went home? I misunderstood the scenario, I thought you and the other nurse were both working and the student didn't know who to listen to. PS my original post was actually talking about how fellow nursing students rant about their classmates asking too many questions in class YET all the advice from nurses to nursing students says to always ask questions. I wish the students complaining about their classmates would see that questions are a good thing. (and if us students ask questions in class maybe we would refrain from pointless questions at clinical...lol)

Np will need a Doctorate (DNP) by 2015 that is not the same thing as an MD! NP will not be doctors that needs to be made very clear. Many professions have doctorate degrees, I had a biology professor who was Dr.soandso and he certainly was not a medical doctor. I think that you might be confused. Doctors go through much more extensive training, internships, residency, etc than the extra year beyond a Masters degree (some times 2 yrs) it will require nurses to be a NP in 2015!

As a new student I must say if I were in that situation I would have asked if I was supposed to tell the other nurse too. Will that nurse tell my instructor that I did not follow directions? We are graded on our clinical work and if a nurse were to report to our clinical instructor that we did not do what she asked (not knowing you said it was ok)we could get a poor grade. Obviously not being there to see the exact scenerio it is hard to gauge but that really does not seem like an inappropriate question. We are just learning and don't know the proper proceedures for everything and are really replying on the nurses at our site and our instructors to help us be the best nurses we can be. Could that question been turned into a teaching lesson for the student and instead of just saying "no it's my patient now" explained the rationale to the student too. Then the student would understand what proper proceedure is and not ask a question like that again. I honestly mean no disrespect to you :) I can saythat student nurses are still learning and some RN's/staff might not necessarily tell students to do the right thing (which is unfortunate)and then we get in trouble with our instructors. Plus I think it makes us apprehensive in a situation like you described (is this nurse just trying to shut me up or is it really ok not to tell the other nurse why we did not follow her directions). It seems obvious to you that the other nurse doesn't need to be told but for someone just learning not so much. They teach us in school that if something is delegated to you it is now your responsibility so if it doesn't get done it is your fault. Does that make sense, I am not a very good explainer? I know that you said you couldn't think of the best example and I am sure that some questions are not really necessary but I do think it is important that everyone feels like they can ask any question(even a "dumb" one) without being snapped at or explained the reasoning/rationale because then they are left wondering or even worse next time they might not ask a question that really needs to be asked.

I'm envious!

I attended my local community college last year doing my pre-req's before getting into the program. I thought everyone was nice and we helped each other, it was great. 1000 people applied to my schools program for the 100 spots available, so it was quite competitive, but we all got along. Now that we are in the program it's a whole new world, some of those nice people have turned into mean, competitive, I can't even describe people. There are cliques forming, talking behind peoples backs, rude remarks to peoples faces, I feel like I took a blast to the past and am in high school again. The median age of our class is 30 yrs old. Has anyone else experienced this? I am just perplexed because now we are in the program if anything I would have expected this while fighting for a spot in the program not in the people who got in. I think that I am a pretty nice person and I have gotten a few snotty remarks from people I don't know - it's only been one month! Some people I know say they feel isolated excluded in their labs and clinicals by the others. Is this typical????