this morning after giving report, i was walking towards the lounge and noticed a call light on. i go in there, and ask the mom "may i help you with something?" and she and the bsn nursing student answer "the iv is beeping"
so i go and look at it, and the student mentions to me "the iv bag is empty" so i said "ok no problem" and i go to the iv pump to go and put in the new bag next to it. then the student says "oh, i was gonna do it"
so i said it was ok, i would be there to watch him do it.
he took the bag, and looked at it, like as if he's never seen an empty ivf bag before...... and i said "ok, i do it like this..." showing him how to do it, and he asked me "wont the fluid come out (of the chamber)?" and i said "no, it won't it's ok".... then he did it the way i showed him.
and i think to myself that this is a bsn student, and they have already done medsurg before and he didn't even know how to spike a new iv bag.
i was spiking iv bags, priming, giving piggyback megs, flushing iv's the first semester of nursing school. and mind you, i went thru an asn program.
i don't understand why a bsn student from a state school would not know how to do this by the peds semester.
anyways, i heard their instructor telling the charge nurse "the students are doing everything but meds"
so back to the student, isn't spiking an iv a skill that they should know by the peds semester?
btw that school-bsn- has a 78% pass rate on nclex-rn exam, and my school has a 98%-asn-)
What the heck does being ASN or BSN have to do with it??? It depends on the school. Why, why, why would you start a BSN/ADN debate?? Glad you feel so confident as a new grad, just don't be too confident. Someone who thinks they know it all is a very dangerous nurse to work with. My BSN program was fantastic by the way.
One of my instructors in school told me that school focuses on teaching critical thinking and theory (and that is what hospitals expect new grads to know--they can teach skills)--the skill aspect is actually pretty easily learned compared to higher level thinking.
Yeah, this is what all the schools say now, and they say it like everyone agrees this is the best approach to nursing education -- but don't make the mistake of thinking the hospitals are happy about it. It's more like they've unhappily resigned themselves to the (comparatively new) reality that they're going to have to teach most of the new grads they hire most of what they actually need to know to get through a shift ...
Specializes in Did the job hop, now in MS. Not Bad!!!!!.
Yeah, this is what all the schools say now, and they say it like everyone agrees this is the best approach to nursing education -- but don't make the mistake of thinking the hospitals are happy about it. It's more like they've unhappily resigned themselves to the (comparatively new) reality that they're going to have to teach most of the new grads they hire most of what they actually need to know to get through a shift ...
Unfortunately, like it or not, that' s how it is. And who gets stuck in the middle of this debate? We, the new nurse grads do! We struggle through the criticial thinking pathophsyiology demands of nursing school as though we are going for an MD. We take on the burden of upholding the MD's to their tasks, and what do we get for not knowing how to do the "simple things" we were told by our overpriced, schools that dropped us as soon as that mortarboard flew in the air?
We are left with struggling to find a job, and trying to convince that prospective employer that we can do tasks that we might have seen done in clinical or not. And then try to prove ourselves in quick, too brief orientations so that we are no longer a "burden" to that new facility we have contracted with. So that they can check us off a 40 page skills validation list within 4 weeks (or however long)!
So if this is the new way of thinking, when are the nurses that seem to have caught on to this new fangled way of nursing school, gonna stop beating us up and allow us to join their privileged eschelon and build some confidence? Stop gobbling us up. We just want to be the best nurses we can be.
We've fought long wars to get to this job after hearing of the so-called nursing shortage that really only seems to be geared towards experienced nurses. No one wants to hire us newbies, because we really don't know how to do the skills part of nursing. But I could explain what's happening to the patient. It still amazes me that the great skilled veteran nurses with decades of experience don't understand why their patient is succumbing to whatever ailment. And then stick their noses in the air when we ask for a little help w/ an infusion pump or a CAPD, or other invasive device.
Struggling with this very situation on a daily basis!
So if this is the new way of thinking when are the nurses that seem to have caught on to this new fangled way of nursing school, gonna stop beating us up and allow us to join their privileged eschelon and build some confidence?[/quote']
It's not THE new way of thinking; it's the schools' new way of thinking -- very convenient for them, since it lets them off the hook for not teaching students what they need to know to start practicing in the real world. No one else seems to think it's a good idea ...
In fact, I think we're getting close to a "breaking point," and more and more hospitals are just going to start balking at hiring new grads. We're already seeing a fair amount of that.
In your post you write as if you was nice about it so I commend you for that.
But I am a very hands on person and if I have only been shown how to do something (even multiple times) I sometimes don't get it until I have done it myself.
After reading a lot of the post on the forum regarding how new nurses/students are treated, I can totally understand if he was intimidated by your presence and was scared of doing something wrong in front of you. Maybe he had already had a bad experience with another nurse and was already nervous. So many post tell new nurses and students to take into consideration that the experienced nurses are under stress and you shouldn't judge them if you don't know the whole story.
I know that no matter how well I know how to do something, if I know someone is watching me or leaning over me, it causes me to totally screw up!
In reading a handful of the replies to the original question, I have to say that I am really feeling sorry for the one asking the question. It was just a question, after all. I feel as though she handled the situation with the student very professionally. What she THOUGHT were her own private thoughts. It is how she handled the situation that mattered and she handled it very well. It sounds to me as if she was patient and kind to the student and offered him a learning opportunity.
As for my own experiences with different programs and the feedback that I have heard, ADN nurses are pushed through faster, thus having no choice but to learn the skills and get on the floor and do them, whereas BSN students learn more history and theory of nursing and go at a slower pace. This could explain why this particular BSN student did not know how to spike the IV bag yet.
On another note, at the risk of getting a lot of critcism-most nurses that you talk to will tell you that the nursing students that are in the faster paced programs are better workers as they are taught to get out there and do it as a way of learning, whether it be emptying bedpans or starting IVs.
In reading a handful of the replies to the original question, I have to say that I am really feeling sorry for the one asking the question. It was just a question, after all. I feel as though she handled the situation with the student very professionally. What she THOUGHT were her own private thoughts. It is how she handled the situation that mattered and she handled it very well. It sounds to me as if she was patient and kind to the student and offered him a learning opportunity.
quote]
thank you!
I think that you are the first post that actually read and understood my original posting!!!!
but anyways, it was a learning opportunity for the student, and I never said to him what I thought; I was very nice and showed him how to spike the new bag. And perhaps he was nervous, but I would never treat him the way I was treated by my instructors in nursing school.
and in my ASN program, we were pushed & forced to learn our skills or else.....
Specializes in Did the job hop, now in MS. Not Bad!!!!!.
It's not THE new way of thinking; it's the schools' new way of thinking -- very convenient for them, since it lets them off the hook for not teaching students what they need to know to start practicing in the real world. No one else seems to think it's a good idea ...
In fact, I think we're getting close to a "breaking point," and more and more hospitals are just going to start balking at hiring new grads. We're already seeing a fair amount of that.
No doubt about that. But the trends remain the same. The veteran nurses will be retiring or quitting as a result of burnout, en masse and the new grads will be replacing them. So the hiring trend isn't going anywhere anytime soon. And the recruiters must know this. So we newbies need to be allowed to learn. And I don't see anyone going to the schools to insist they add skills to their curricula. G-d knows I tried! I always got the argument by my BSN Director that they were teaching us to be critical thinkers and that was the hardest part. They insisted that the skills could be learned anywhere and we'd get them OTJ.
So hospitals can balk all they want. But they ought to be throwing their energy into preceptor training programs because as a result of this "unfair practice" they suck at orientation! (but that's another thread! )
It's not THE new way of thinking; it's the schools' new way of thinking -- very convenient for them, since it lets them off the hook for not teaching students what they need to know to start practicing in the real world. No one else seems to think it's a good idea ...
I found out that my school was doing all this critical thinking and theory education because they wanted to subliminally encourage us all to go right into the master's program. That's why we spent so much time learning "ideal" nursing instead of "reality" nursing -- esp. the type the a new grad needs to learn.
In reading a handful of the replies to the original question, I have to say that I am really feeling sorry for the one asking the question. It was just a question, after all. I feel as though she handled the situation with the student very professionally. What she THOUGHT were her own private thoughts. It is how she handled the situation that mattered and she handled it very well. It sounds to me as if she was patient and kind to the student and offered him a learning opportunity.
As for my own experiences with different programs and the feedback that I have heard, ADN nurses are pushed through faster, thus having no choice but to learn the skills and get on the floor and do them, whereas BSN students learn more history and theory of nursing and go at a slower pace. This could explain why this particular BSN student did not know how to spike the IV bag yet.
On another note, at the risk of getting a lot of critcism-most nurses that you talk to will tell you that the nursing students that are in the faster paced programs are better workers as they are taught to get out there and do it as a way of learning, whether it be emptying bedpans or starting IVs.
I agree with you based on my experiences in a BSN program that taught a LOT of theory. We had very few clinical hours compared to the community college's ADN program. There is actually a big debate in town (though everyone keeps it under the covers) about the ADN nurses being better than the BSN nurses simply because they get more clinical experience than us. Having seen it firsthand, I don't disagree in the slightest bit. On the other hand, I have also seen some of the ADN nurses flounder simply because they're so task-oriented that the end up missing the big picture.
Is it more important to know how to spike a big or know the pathophysiology of the patient's condition and know what to do? Well, both are equally important as they ultimately contribute to the overall well-being of the patient... It's a double-edged sword.
So hospitals can balk all they want. But they ought to be throwing their energy into preceptor training programs because as a result of this "unfair practice" they suck at orientation! (but that's another thread! )
Just to illustrate what a joke I think all of this is... My last semester preceptorship was coupled with my critical care course. DUH! What kind of placement is that?? I had 3 shifts (actually, it was a 1/2 shift) in ICU, then moved on to my preceptorship in my area of interest... but the "grade" (even though our clinical hours weren't graded) was coupled with my critical care class. How wacky is that?? I asked my instructor one day, and she responded that we don't have enough time for a separate class, so where else should they put it? I love the whole "let's stick it wherever we can fit it" attitude about learning my future career!
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sirI, MSN, APRN, NP
17 Articles; 45,875 Posts
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