ashesxo

Hello all, okay so currently I am studying Nursing and am loving it! I do well on all my tests/exams and assignments and always try to put in my best effort. I acknowledge I am weak in some areas (mainly in clinical) but I feel that I have improved & nobody is perfect. I tend to spend too much time with pts. and have a lot of trouble saying no. One time I spent a good hour and a half just talking with my patient. Honestly, I have had patients confide in me about things that were pretty personal and I feel that this can both be bad and good but it really made me feel good that they were able to trust me with such personal information (they willingly told me things - I did not in any way shape of form force the info out :) I also tend to be a bit "too nice" and even my fellow classmates have told me that I need to not get so involved with the patients. They are constantly reminding me that it is a job and I should not feel obligated to go out of my way and make more work for myself. I truly feel that it doesn't make any extra work for me and being a student, I tend to have some time to shoot the breeze with my patient(s) while working rns don't always have the time to do that. I had a really rough clinical experience followed by an amazing one. But I will only discuss for bad experience because that is what I feel has caused my nerves to get so bad. My clinical instructor was abusive - verbally. She called me stupid in front of my patients and lied to me to make me feel bad about myself. I used to dread getting up every morning for clinical, especially knowing that I was going to be stuck with her for 12 hours. She never missed an opportunity to make me feel like crap and long story short, I ended up dropping it and retaking it with an amazing instructor:) But after this experience I became a nervous wreck when it came to practicals. I just cannot seem to get my head on straight for these because I am so worried about messing up. When I go to do a practical skill I just freeze up and I miss a lot of important stuff that I know but its like, I cant even think when someone is sitting there, judging my every move and the clock is just ticking, its awful. I have set up IVs in clinical and have given meds on numerous occasions but its just practical evaluations that seem to get me every time. I shake a lot too and imagine having to perform an IM injection while shaking? Awful:( Any advice for me would be greatly appreciated - I have a practical this Tuesday for NG intubation, feeding, suctioning, etc, Oxygen therapy, Trache suction/care and catheter insertion. I feel like I know this stuff like the back of my hand but I wont lie, I am nervous!!

Okay, so I read this as well as all the comments made my other members. Honestly (being a student myself) feel that the instructor(s) should have brought this forward before waiting for the last straw per say. I mean, every school/teacher has different clinical expectations. I have had 3 clinicals thus far and every instructor was different. I mean, I never studied on the floor but I have seen other students do it and some instructors were fine with it, meaning, if they had taken care of all their duties for the day, they really could spend time studying while other instructors would not be too thrilled. As a student, its hard to know what is allowed, especially when some instructors don't exactly put it out there for you - which they should. I mean, we are paying THEM - and it's their job to tell us - beforehand what is permitted and what is not because if they don't, how will we know? So many students are coming straight out of high school and even I, have studied in one class for another class. I hate cellphone use in the classroom but again, so many students do it and its usually because they don't know the rules because the instructor did not tell them. Heck, I have seen profs use their cellphone in class. Bottom-line here is that NOW you know the expectations and now you know what is allowed and what is not. They really should not fail you for this if they truly hadn't told you previously what is allowed and what is not. You are not a registered nurse, yet and you do not receive any compensation for clinical besides the experience. The instructors on the other hand, are being paid and they have no right to fail you for something you truly thought was ok because they failed to tell you the rules prior. Clinical is supposed to be a learning experience (to an extent - you should never put a pt. at risk for harm) but what you did was not harming anyone and seemed pretty innocent to me. I wish you luck and I hope they didn't fail you, because the instructor failed by not being informative and they *technically* are working for you ... Good luck :)