Stupid things your school does/did

[MountainMan]

Re: What age were you when you went to nursing school?

Quote:

Originally Posted by GraceNotes

(I'll try this post again.) I am so apprehensive about nursing school! I am 51 and will graduate with a BSN in 2009 (starting in January, like you). We are expected to disrobe for male & female classmates to practice exams. Does your program do this?? I guess we'll see it all anyway, but doing this at my age is enough of a challenge...

Sounds stressful I'm 50 and have been in construction so I am in great shape. None-the-less I would be uncomfortable disrobing in front of the people I share so many other things with. Your school should think about hiring an artists model or get a volunteer an pay them with a professional massage or something. It seems as perhaps they are trying to get you to understand the being a patientaspect of our field. Their exercise,however, does not duplicate the true environmnet. There is no anonimity in this surender of trust. Sounds like your school or your instructor is out of touch.

This sounds like a good separate thread!

Oh, by the way I am 50 and just started LPN gragiate in a year.

[nurse4theplanet, RN]

I completely agree with you! My school did not have this policy. We learned physical assessment on our patients during clinical, not each other.

The argument, "Well, if you have to do it on each other then you will know how uncomfortable your patient feels...and you will have more empathy", does not satisfy me. This is assuming that I have never been a patient before, that I have never had to disrobe in front of a medical professional, etc.

Nursing students are not yet professionals, some may never even make it through the program. There is also a degree of familiarity that will be developed as you progress. If I had to do it, I would not have let it stop me from getting my degree. However, some students have mentioned in similar threads that it made them so uncomfortable that they wanted to quit the program. I believe the practice is unnecessary.

[LisaJ_RN]

wow...do most schools do this?

[RNfromMN, BSN, RN]

I was shocked when I learned we'd have to strip down to our bra & underpants to give eachother assessments. I don't even remember how the guys in our class pulled it off...I think we had an even number back then & they just paired up with eachother. My partner was almost in tears, as she had just had a baby 8 weeks before. What blew me away was that the instructors didn't even tell us about it...we just happened to hear about it one by one as the students came back from their check-offs. And I remember, after my partner & the instructor were done expecting every inch of my body, looking down and seeing that my nipple had been hanging outside of my bra the entire time:imbar.

[MountainMan]

When I was in college for FineArts I would regularly see fellow students as nude models. They did this for extra money and they were not in that particular class. I knew some of them as close friends. These people appeared nude completely voluntarily. Some of us would get together and model for each other when we wanted to study in our own way or to do poses we needed to use. But never ever was someone from the class used, the teacher would not let them miss the class time AND it crossed a line of professional separation.

[MountainMan]

When this thread is done you shoul all do your schools a service by copying and sending them these resonses

[Roy Fokker, BSN, RN]

We could bring anyone in for our practice exam.

The person I was supposed to bring fell sick and I couldn't find anyone else (exam time).

I ended up doing it on my class mate and friend. :imbar

It was awfully nice of her to do that for me...

cheers,

[MountainMan]

Hey guests you should join It's painless

[Cattitude]

i was shocked when i learned we'd have to strip down to our bra & underpants to give eachother assessments. i don't even remember how the guys in our class pulled it off...i think we had an even number back then & they just paired up with eachother. my partner was almost in tears, as she had just had a baby 8 weeks before. what blew me away was that the instructors didn't even tell us about it...we just happened to hear about it one by one as the students came back from their check-offs. and i remember, after my partner & the instructor were done expecting every inch of my body, looking down and seeing that my nipple had been hanging outside of my bra the entire time:imbar.

wow... we never had to take our clothes off. on occasion we did mundane stuff like ear/eye assessments, learned bp's, and other things like that. but i really think that taking your clothes off is ridiculous, especially when it's clear that some did not want to do this:madface: . i'm not a modest person but jeez, everyone deserves respect and privacy. i think these schools screwed up. there are plenty of schools that don't do this and turn out nurses that do fine...

[blueheaven]

That is the most stupid thing I have ever heard of!! We gave each other injections and practiced IVs (this was before plastic practice arms) but we learned physical assessment on patients! What an invasion of personal privacy!

[MountainMan]

Yes it is! I thought it was the students that were supposed to have the misconceptions. I'm not afraid of my body being seen or probed but class is not a place to sare such things. I may have an old classmate or someone who knows me from my community catheterize me someday, but that would still be different.

I,m just fine going and disrobing at say a clothing optional hot-spring (like we have here in Colorado) with family, friends, and strangers but that is still not the classroom, and the classroom is different. Are they trying to save a couple bucks or what?

Let's face it, some of us are even uncomfortable sharing our test scores.

[styRN]

20 years ago the only things we had to practice on each other were things like feeding, making an occupied bed, (we did have to do a mock-bedbath on each other, but remained fully clothed) and the like.

We also were allowed to practice intradermal and s/c injections with saline on each other with our prof's knowledge, but not necessarily their telling us to do it.

I know most of my teachers were trained having had to perform all kinds of procedures on each other - I remember them telling us that their instructors had the mantra that "if you were going to have to perform a procedure on a patient, you will first have it performed on you so you will know what it's like" and they told us harrowing tales of having to catheterize each other, insert NG tubes...pretty much all the basic stuff.