I am an educator in an acute care 400+ bed hospital. We will be going live with our electronic system in September 2012. I also coordinate nursing students. Our hospital wants to NOT have any students during go-live, however, I believe differently. I think student nurses may serve as extra hands to do basic things e.g. passing out water, bringing linen into the room, providing baths to the patients etc. While nurses are learning (we are paying lot of attention to training btw) and dealing with the new system, students can be extra hands.
I want to know if any hospitals have allowed nursing students during go-live and how did it go? What strategies were used, was there a limitation on how many students were allowed, what semester students were allowed. I will take whatever information I can get.
Above all, how did it go for the bedside staff? Were the students any help or a burden? Any feedback is appreciated.
and let me add...a "young student" wouldn't help me out because they are "computer savy". I am only 23 years old...so i don't need a "young computer savy" student with me. Becuase i am computer savy myself. I am pretty sure the more senior nurses would rather ask me for help with a computer than a student.
sorry for being the negative nancy here and sounding like a bully...but it is crap like this that the hospital does that really irritates me. I appreciate you asking us if it is a good idea or not, but maybe the people you need to ask is your staff.
A student slows you down. They are not "extra hands" because a student is not there to pass water, take people to the bathroom or answer call lights. It takes me 2 minutes to get someone a glass of water but an extra 30 minutes to do ONE patient's medications with a nursing student, and i still have 3 other patients to go. Students are extra stress on a nurse. So unless you plan on taking all the students yourself, and spendng that extra "30 minutes on each patient for medications" then by all means, bring in the students. But the floor nurses, they don't have time!
Just a question. When I was at LVN school our instructors did all the med passes with us not the staff nurse. In general we did hardly anything with the staff nurse except report and coordinating care. Naturally because of our scope we were assigned mostly stable patients but is this not standard where the instructor does the teaching and the staff do well whatever staff nurses do?
Hmmm interesting. I'll being to my bridge soon and for that would feel arkward slowing someone down when they are NOT being paid to teach me. On the rare occasion 2-3 of us were paired with a staff nurse we would make it clear we were to do all their scut and they were to sit down and take a lunch and we did answer all calls beds do all the ADL's etc
Hmmm interesting. I'll being to my bridge soon and for that would feel arkward slowing someone down when they are NOT being paid to teach me. On the rare occasion 2-3 of us were paired with a staff nurse we would make it clear we were to do all their scut and they were to sit down and take a lunch and we did answer all calls beds do all the ADL's etc
i wish ours did that. We are a very large hospital and many nursing schools that do clinicals at our facility. i can think of ONE school that the instructor does morning medications with them. That really helps out alot. It is also better if that student is assigned to one patient so that way they can do ADL's, bath, vitals, walks etc with that one patient while the CNA and myself take on the other 3. But for the most part...nope, i have my "mini-me" that follows me around with all 4 patients. Expects to do medications with all 4 of these patients, and every task that is assigned to all 4 patients. Then they expect to go on a 2 hour lunch break and im playing 2 hours catching up because im 2 hours behind since i have a student. So 95% of the time i don't get any breaks if i have a student with me.
Hmm interesting maybe thats the VN/RN difference most of the stuff within our SOP we can do without much supervision but we were always expected to take at least one of our own patients often times with the instructor covering the things we couldn't do though usually the nurses at the hospitals we did clinical at knew that if a VN student was on to still go ahead and do the IV meds.
We didn't have nursing students on the floors when we went live with our EPIC...because they did not have sign on. We had enough trouble making sure all the staff were being able to sign in without trying to get clearance for all the students also. The first week was was spent ironing out gliches and bugs, we had people who couldn't sign on, we had people who could sign on but were under the wrong things, etc. I don't disagree with the decision. We had no students for one month, then they had a system for them to be able to have a sign on, etc. We are also a large teaching hospital so we had over 1500 people we had to make sure could get in and do what they needed to do.
It isn't about not wanting students, it is about what is practical at that time. We did let the schools know 6 months in advance so that they would not schedule anyone during that time frame.
Jenni811, RN
1,032 Posts
and let me add...a "young student" wouldn't help me out because they are "computer savy". I am only 23 years old...so i don't need a "young computer savy" student with me. Becuase i am computer savy myself. I am pretty sure the more senior nurses would rather ask me for help with a computer than a student.
sorry for being the negative nancy here and sounding like a bully...but it is crap like this that the hospital does that really irritates me. I appreciate you asking us if it is a good idea or not, but maybe the people you need to ask is your staff.