litlrooh

I love your idea, but I don't think they would work for us. The students already have so much paperwork related to clinical, and only 5 hours to get their patient care AND all the info they need for their papers. And some of the papers are quite extensive. To add more to that plus their theory work seems like asking too much. I have warned my students I'm very heavy on pathophysiology. I don't just want to know what and how, I want to know WHY. Last time I taught, it was senior level students. This year its 3rd semester students (part time evening is each usual semester divided in half and stretched over a whole semester). So, I'm actually a 2nd semester out of 4, instructor. Anyway, I decided I'm going to use post conferences to emphasize pathophysiology, and their med cards. I may also use an idea that someone else gave me: Assign 3 students, each to their own "abdominal pain" pt. The students are not to care for the pts but to come up with all of the pathophysiology of their individual pt. Then at post conference, present the similarities and differences between the 3 pts, and the why behind those sims and diffs.

In the school that I teach for, I am faculty for the evening program. The students do not arrive to clinical until 4pm because they are older students with families and jobs many times. My advice to them was to go through the chart, and I gave them a strategy for gathering information quickly...say, within a half hour. Then I told them to check in with the RN to make sure there wasn't anything special that they needed to know, like new orders, change in condition, etc. I also tell my students that even if VS have been done at 4pm, they are to do their own at 5pm as part of their assessments.

I have had the exact same experience. I work in the ED, and the ICU. And in both areas, the instructors are not there at all. The students are left to fend for themselves, assigned to an RN. Its a shadow experience but with skills thrown in for good measure. So I try to find things that they haven't done yet, or not enough of (like starting IV's, drawing blood, and inserting foleys, IM injections etc) so that they can at least get some practice. I also go over how I organize my day in the ER (kind of an oxymoron, but ve have vays.)