Coopster1

While I was a BSN trained RN (when I started), my experience had all been ER. Of course I found myself teaching a sophomore M/S clinical. I had excellent support from my Faculty of Record. But the night before I found myself pouring through my old Med-surg book, stressing about what I didn’t think I knew about floor nursing. The first morning with my students, I walked in and saw that most of them were wide-eyed, one was bouncing her knee so nervously, she almost left the chair. In that instant, I remembered something fundamental, stand-by wisdom in 3...2...1: No matter what you think you know about clinical instruction, you always know more about being a nurse than they do at this point. Have confidence in your knowledge and experiences. When they run up and ask you questions (looking for the quick answer), pose their question right back at them - make them look it up, that’s how they’ll learn it. And finally, I always took a few minutes in post-conference to teach on a relative topic. This was to enhance what they were learning from lecture. Make it a fun, but not a lose learning environment. You’ll be great.

Need help on this. I'm trying to justify having a minimum number of years experience for agency/travel nurses. For example, our current standard is you have to have two years of recent (within 6 months) experience in your specialty (ED, ICU, MS, PCU). The question I need an answer for is "why?". Looking for any research sources....I'm coming up dry.