teaching first clinical class

Congratulations on the new job!

I remember learning most of what I learned from the book, I always wanted my clinical instructors to show me how to do things in clinical, like doing a complete physical assessment on a patient, or administering an IM injection. If your able to give them an example on a real live patient I think they would benefit greatly from it. Good luck!

Hi!

As a student I always appreciate when my instructors give us case studies in post conference. Our clinical instructor for 1st semester clinical was really cool. She'd make sure we helped the CNAs whenever we could. She gave us a clinical case study packet on the first day. Basically it was a scenario of a pt with all their VS, dx, etc. She taught us how to create careplans with these. So she'd ask us to point out every problem we could find and potential problems etc. So by the time we had to turn in care plans for evaluation we were all ready.

We had a substitute for clinical once and she would give us various handouts about emergencies, special precautions, pulse oximetry, etc. They were cool handouts we would go over real quick. She gave us a few examples where we would use these.

My clinical instructor was well known in this nursing home so she was able to have us observe nurses for a whole day. This was the best experience because we got to give lots of insulin and learned things we normally hadn't yet, like giving oxygen or transferring pt's from bed to stretcher. These nurses were on different wings/depts so it was great.

First semester students are normally reallyy scared so teach them how to be as confident(and professional) as possible. Don't let them see YOUR nerves for a second! Congrats and good luck!!!!! I hope I can be in your shoes someday!

observe the clinical site and meet with the nurse manager b4 hand and ask her about prior concerns with other clinical groups

My first clinical instructor gave me great advice that had a profound impact on my learning through nursing school. "If you don't know what's going on with your patient at the cellular level, you aren't looking close enough or searching deep enough." From then on, my patho, my research, my careplans and my approach to patient care has always been thorough, scientific, and carefully thoughtful. It was a great peice of advice to build on!!