Questions for med/surg nurses. (school assignment)

Nursing Students Student Assist

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For an assignment in one of my classes we are to ask 10 questions to a currently practicing RN in our desired field. I would like to go into medical-surgical nursing, so I would prefer to hear from those of you that are med/surg nurses, but I would be glad to hear from those working in other specialties.

If you could, please take the time to answer all 10 questions. I'm not expecting an essay or anything, just some brief replies.

Thank you!

  1. What do you find to be most rewarding about being a nurse?
  2. How do you deal with noncompliant patients?
  3. Have you ever had a patient that you refused to care for or were apprehensive about? I so, how did you deal with the situation?
  4. Do you prefer day or night shifts and why?
  5. What was your experience during your first month of being an RN?
  6. Is there anything that you learned later in your career that you wish you had learned earlier?
  7. Has there ever been an experience that made you think about quitting?
  8. If you do not speak Spanish, have you thought about learning Spanish as a nursing skillset? Why or why not?
  9. Did you start out knowing that you wanted to do med/surg nursing?
  10. What specialty other than med/surg would you prefer to work in?
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Answers on this anonymous forum may, or may not qualify as from practicing nurses. There is no way these questions can be answered briefly. We all have individual experiences.

Best of luck with these questions ... and your instructor. This assignment is a joke.

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Holy moly answering all those questions would be akin to writing a thesis. Hard pass. Anyone else wonder about the wisdom of this assignment in the middle of the current mess? We all know these are intended to get students “out there” which isn’t really possible now but like BTDT so wisely stated there’s no way to be certain the person answering is an actual nurse.

OP, you need to clarify with your instructor what her requirements for sources are. And then let her know that the questions are too time consuming. There’s no way to be brief. Most working nurses don’t have time to write what is nearly equivalent to a paper.

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Specializes in Community Health, Med/Surg, ICU Stepdown.

I'll answer it since I'm sheltered in place LOL but check with your instructor first if online forum is an OK source ?

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Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.

Moved to nursing student assistance.

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Specializes in anesthesiology.

I think a phone call would be better with that list of questions.

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So, here's the issue: My final semester is divided into two 7-week courses. School policy dictates that both semesters use the same curriculum. Because of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, that makes this difficult for those of us taking this course in the 2nd half of the semester.

Our professor is well aware of the issues with this and had requested for this assignment to be changed. The idea was kicked about for several weeks, but was denied due to school policy. She is okay with us reaching out online and recognizes the pitfalls with this.

My personal issue is that the RNs I have reached out to, that I did my preceptorship with and the two that are friends of various family members, have not gotten back to me. I have followed up and still not received a response. The hospital where I precepted has closed the wing that I was on, converted it to a COVID-19-only wing and furloughed most of their staff. This is not their decision. It is a public hospital and the decision was primarily that of our mayor and state legislators. I'm not even sure who I could call and I doubt they're going to be any more proactive in answering these 10 questions than anyone that I have already contacted, nor more than anyone on this forum.

I understand that this seems like a lot and I understand that many of you think this is stupid, a waste of time, irrational, etc. I agree. I would much rather just crank out a three-page paper about how I would answer these questions than waste someone else's time.

I am simply trying to do what I need to do in order to finish my assignment and graduate. My hands are somewhat tied on this and so are my professor's.

I apologize if this has upset and/or annoyed any of you.

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On 4/30/2020 at 7:48 PM, LibraNurse27 said:

I'll answer it since I'm sheltered in place LOL but check with your instructor first if online forum is an OK source ?

I would greatly appreciate it! I am sorry to bother you all about this, but my other contacts have not followed through. I am having to reply via forum because I cannot send a Private Message.

I know the questions might seem like a lot, but I really only need like one or two sentences per question. If you want to ignore some of the followup bits ("and why?" etc.) that is fine. I really just need something in writing.

My professor is aware of the issues related to reaching out to online sources and, given the circumstances that we are currently in, has said that doing so is okay.

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Specializes in retired LTC.

OP - we all understand the difficulties at this C19 time, and I believe that many here are truly sympathetic. HOWEVER, it's your questions!!!!

Not just a couple, but like so many!! Some of your questions are interesting and they DESERVE well thought-out answers. But your request is a bit unrealistic. And that's prob what's turning off so many potential respondents.

Even short answers are still time-consuming.

Now this is personal - what is with the bit re speaking Spanish??? Most of your other questions seem, meh OK, but that Spanish question?!? I REALLY do not grasp its relevance.

Wishing you luck. Stay safe & stay strong.

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We had to turn in our questions at the beginning of the semester and these were the ones I submitted. We aren't allowed to change them. I know, it doesn't make sense, but school policies, bureaucracy, etc.

The relevance to speaking Spanish is thus: I've worked for several years in restaurants and construction. In both I have needed to know at least very basic levels of Spanish to effectively work with my peers. While precepting, I had a pt who understood very little English. It got me thinking that maybe I should improve my broken Spanish to being at least semi-fluent. The translation service was very helpful, but it was a bit tedious and time-consuming. The question was something that just came off the top of my head and I decided to throw it in there.

Thank you for your well-wishes! Ia greatly appreciate it. I hope you and yours are staying well during all of this!

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Specializes in Community Health, Med/Surg, ICU Stepdown.

I sent you a private message. I recently answered pretty much the same questions for the student who did her preceptorship with me so it worked out! Good luck, must be hard to be in nursing school right now with all that's going on...

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4 minutes ago, LibraNurse27 said:

I sent you a private message. I recently answered pretty much the same questions for the student who did her preceptorship with me so it worked out! Good luck, must be hard to be in nursing school right now with all that's going on...

I just got the message. Thank you so much for helping me with this! I really cannot express how truly grateful I am that you took the time to do this and to provide such great and meaningful answers! Especially to do so for some random nobody on the internet! Again, thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Our final semester is divided into two 7-week courses. Half the class does study courses first 7-weeks, the other does their preceptorship. Then they swap. My preceptorship ended the first week of March, right before all of this hit and then our school closed campus, all clinical sites were cancelled. So, I'm actually really lucky.

Originally, half my class was not going to be able to pass due to not meeting the requisite clinical hours needed. However, our state BON created a waiver allowing students to use Shadow Health to complete their clinical hours. I'm not certain how it all works out and our program head is not discussing it with students other than those currently enrolled in the preceptorship course.

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