Heylove

I work weekend option and have been a clinical instructor one day per week for the last two semesters. In the fall I will have two clinical days per week, but added a L&D clinical for three weeks as well. It works out perfectly for my schedule.

Will you be clinical instructing at the facility that you work? In my opinion, it is much easier that way so you know the staff and know your way around. When we are visitors at a different facility than where we work, it is challenging, but not impossible as we have to get to know the staff and remember where supplies are kept. Your role is to make sure students are where they should be, complete their work, know the rights of medications, are able to preform and articulate a patient assessment. Three years experience is great, I think! I had two years of nursing experience before I became a clinical instructor. Good luck. I have an awesome experience with students. They have usually regenerated my soul.

Hi there! I am a newer clinical instructor. I was a clinical instructor in fall 2019 for students in their psych rotation at the facility where I am a weekend option adolescent RN but I often float to adults, seniors and the ECT lab. I am in an MSN nurse educator program and expect to graduate in the spring 2022. I love teaching adults and taught childbirth education, CPR, and other community/family classes many years ago before I became a nurse. I knew I wanted to become an instructor in nursing school but needed some nurse experience first! I have only worked psych and plan to stay in psych although I'm not totally opposed to clinical instructing in other clinical environments later, after I graduate with my NE/MSN. I have been told that masters prepared mental health/psych instructors are not very easy to find. I haven't read through all 500+ responses of this thread (yet!) but I'm wondering if you all find this to be the case? I just accepted another mental health clinical instructor position for spring but this one is not where I work. I really enjoyed last semester at my own facility because I knew all the staff and they were so kind to my students. I guess I'm just looking for advice who have "been there, done that" at facilities that they are not familiar with. Thank you!

Walk away from that place with your head up high.

I am so sorry to hear your story. It sounds like one of my worst nightmares, and I don't have any answers for you. In our area of nursing, even with what I believed to be the protective factors of cameras and video recording -- some of our organizations will throw us under a bus in a heartbeat. It is so disappointing. I hope you are able to resolve the unemployment issue and hope the people that were responsible for your termination can sleep at night. Were you also reported to the state board?

Oh my goodness! Sign me up! I'm not bad mouthing my employer or our staffing, but your ratios are dreamy!

I have trigeminal neuralgia and although I know that so many out there can suffer from way more pain than I ever endured, my TN is the most painful thing *I* ever experienced in my life. I will never forget the mentality of the ED staff, the choice of words, and huge medical bills (I'm still getting new bills in the mail and I am still on payment plans seven months later) because of my hospitalization related to this condition. I will suffer in pain and would probably cut off a limb if I had to rather than turn to my own profession for help ever again. There is good news! Fortunately, the experience led to lifestyle changes and I was able to reverse most of my symptoms with diet. I very rarely rely on medication for pain relief. I was never prescribed and will not take opioids as they don't do anything to alleviate this type of pain. Does this change the way I approach my patients in relation to their pain and their experience? Yes. Do I believe there are many ways to manage pain? Yes.

I would add one more suggestion, if it works for some. I started clinical instructing and my passion for nursing reignited as soon as I saw all the student nurses in my facility. I would be cautious if you're really burned out and not happy with nursing, then I would not suggest clinical instructing!

I have asked this same question. The short answer is...nobody. Not management, not a facility, not a union, not BON. The closest we have to someone looking after us is our coworkers thanks to the close bonds we have formed with them, and who actually SEE how we work on a day-to-day basis.

Where did you end up working? I moved to Missouri from Santa Clarita/Lancaster right after I graduated from nursing school in 2016. It was quite the shock!

No kidding. Nobody warns us about this part of nursing in nursing school! I don't blame you for leaving nursing.

Why is this funny? It's true, no matter if the patient comes in a "psych patient" or not. Every patient deals with the psychiatric issues of becoming hospitalized, whether it's anxiety from being hospitalized and not able to be with their family, go to work, take care of family members, depression of their disease process, confusion of hospital procedures, their privacy and modesty ultimately in the hands of others. And this is just for adults. Imagine the fear that children face while hospitalized? It's not funny at all, it's the truth.

This is amazing. I am going through something similar but not exactly. I still have my job. I have no idea who to turn to for help as I am not part of a union, and since HR is the one that brought the action against me, it's not like I can go to them for help.

You can also rely on coworkers for help. Sometimes particular staff members seem to upset a patient, so others step in to help de-escalate the patient. If you don't have helpful coworkers that do this, then I don't know what to tell you. My coworkers are fabulous in this way.

Absolutely. It was while I was in nursing school and my first day of my psych rotation that I absolutely knew I wanted to work in psych. The downside is now it appears that I won't get the chance to work other specialties since I have only worked psych... I have applied to other units in order to advance my career opportunities but because I am no longer a "new grad" I am not eligible to go through "new grad" training for ED/ICU. I haven't tried med-surg yet.

Although I have a base "hourly" pay, I also get Baylor pay and I wasn't sure if I should have included the extra pay into the "hourly" rate. Does that make sense? For example, if my base pay is $20/hour for 24 hours (two-12 hour shifts) worked per week, but I get an extra 12 hours of Baylor pay, that works out to $30/hour. I answered with my base hourly rate. I hope this was okay? Like others, I am happy to be able to finally call myself an RN and am honored to be able to answer this survey. Yay!

Have you not been hired somewhere else because of this?

I can't see the picture, so I'm just speaking from personal experience. It's a pain in the butt to have to cover them...so stop getting them. I had classmates that had to put bandaids in weird places during clinicals.

I am interviewing for ICU after 1.5 years in psych. I absolutely love my job, I love my patients, I love my coworkers and used to the love the corporate culture that I worked with. I just feel like it's time to move on. I have been very active in the training of new and upcoming nurses, and I feel like it's "my time" - however...I'm having some self doubt. I interviewed for ED at my same facility a few months ago and it didn't pan out so I feel like I've now be pigeon holed as "just a psych nurse" which is fine, because I'm an awesome psych nurse. Has anyone moved to ICU after psych?

Without going into too much detail, I need help. I have been disciplined at work, and I don't know who to turn to for help. HR will be no help (since they are the ones that pursued this discipline) and I am not part of a union. I feel that contacting an attorney may be the only option I may have, I just hate that I have to do that so soon and before trying to work this out with upper management, first. So, who do nurses turn to? Thanks.

Some hospitals still have smoke breaks for whatever lame reason they give. I don't fight it anymore. I'm just grateful that my hospital is not one of those facilities that allows that. It would make me ill. My approach with patients is that we deal with "what's happening right here, right now, in front of us." Dogs, cats, goats, pigs, cows, wives, children, teachers, bosses...none of them are here in front of our face to deal with right in this minute. All of those things will be waiting (or not) after discharge. Patients must get to a point where they can at least handle walking out the door of the facility, and then face those issues. We don't fix issues in an acute facility, we just learn how we are going to take the steps to face all of the difficult parts of life after discharge. The team puts all the parts in motion - medical, therapy, primary care, case management, housing assistance, IOP, PHP - whatever it takes to make the patient have the most success once discharged. The dog? Sorry, I stand by my original answer. It is not an acute problem that will be solved while in my facility.

I can only comment as a casual observer. My response would be "you can look for your dog once you are discharged."

I've applied for law school and waitlisted to begin fall 2019. I plan to combine that with my BSN level degree and my experience in acute psychiatric nursing to do...something? I'm not sure what it is, yet, but I'll figure it out! I always have nursing to fall back on.

From my experience, I can say that I have hit some barriers when I have attempted to explore other specialties because I started in psych nursing. It's not totally impossible, and it depends on the facility or the speciality you're trying to go into. I had ER nurses that responded as though they were appalled that I went straight to psych from nursing school. I believe I spent the first year of my nursing career learning my way around the EMR and documenting, prioritizing, gained confidence in nursing skills and established relationships with coworkers, learned how to communicate with doctors, all of which are very important skills for ALL nurses. Be sure to really focus on your skills as a nurse, not *just* a psych nurse. ALL patients are psych patients.