I'm an intelligent person, pretty good student, and good with time-management, so I just don't understand why nursing school has to be so unrelentlessly difficult.
I'm so tired of nursing school always being a downer and never being able to feel good about it. Other majors/professions aren't like this. Why must everything be made to be so difficult and stressful? The subject matter itself isn't that bad, there's just a whole lot of it in a short time but I'm talking more about the "culture" of nursing school.
Our program is filled with intelligent, hardworking students and yet we are all constantly feeling like failures, battling stress, and trying to get it together and push on. Why? I just don't understand the reason behind the high pressure situations we are always put in, including huge last minute assignments, high pressure "validations" and ISTAN experiences with threats of being kicked out if mistakes are made.
Is it to prepare us for the high stress environment of hospital bedside nursing? I'm sure not all of us plan to end up in that segment of nursing. I'm also thrown by the manner in which our instructors sometimes treat us.
I feel sometimes as though we're being treated like naughty children instead of the hard working, capable adults we are. I've always heard that the military tears you down to build you back up again, if that's the idea nursing school has too I hope they get to the build you back up part soon!
Anyone else feel this way? Or do any of you attend a nursing school that is more positive, and has more mutual respect?
I'm glad others feel the way I do. I had heard the phrase "nurses eat their young" and it's very appropriate for the way nursing school has been for me. I'm in an ADN program and got a warning (two in a semester counts as an error...two errors = expulsion from the program) for not knowing the pathophys behind an obscure admission Dx that had been ruled out on my patient at last a month prior. Our program doesn't even require pathophys as a pre-req, and as I mentioned, the initial r/o Dx had been ruled out. I feel like they just look for reasons to increase your stress and squelch your confidence. While I agree with one post that mentions the difference is that our profession has increased pressure due to the lives being at stake, I don't believe instilling a feeling that you are always doing SOMETHING wrong is a good way to educate. Being paranoid and working in fear just pushed me to start picking up patients who were easy rather than having a complex patient that I could learn more from.
Just because our instructors had to go through the same thing we did is no excuse for a teaching method that rips away your confidence and stresses the students into poly-pharmacy treatments for stress.
My first degree was in engineering where the structures we built put peoples lives at risk, but I never had an instructor tell me "you will not make it as an engineer, you should just go into construction." Instead, they helped us become more thourough in our thinking and taught ways to ensure our success rather than threatening us with being kicked out of the program if we didn't figure it out. I actually had an instructor tell me I should be a CNA because I wasn't going to make it as a nurse.
Fortunately, there was an instructor who would actually gave CONSTRUCTIVE criticism during clinicals and I carried on... and am about to graduate.
I can't wait to get out into a professional environment where expectations are rational and realistic. I would have much rather done nursing school over a longer period of time in a professional setting as an apprentice rather than the high stress environment I had to endure in nursing school. Hopefully nursing education will move away from "nurses eat their young" to "nurses educate their young".
I'm literally going through the same thing at my school. I actually need some advice.
Its the beginning of 2nd semester, OB content. Last semester, I did well. Did not have to go for any remediation or anything like that. I get a diff instructor this semester. She says right off that shes not a teacher, she's a "facilitator". There's no teaching in college? I guess meaning no spoon-feeding? Weird.
So starting from the beginning I answer questions with things out of the book and I'm wrong. At clinical, I'm always wrong. I had dropped a vitamin on the floor and she was really mad and glaring at me so I got nervous and upset and made another mistake. She sent me home. She tried to get me kicked out of the program the other instructors did not agree so I stayed. She made me go to remediation for basically everything ive ever learned last semester and i dont understand why. She never even seen me perform 95% of those things. She never tries to teach or redirect me about what I did wrong. She just wants to kick me out.
The next week at clinical, I was giving the first injection I've ever done. She did not like the way I found the muscle (which I had learned that way the previous semester from a different instructor) so she sent me to the lab for remediation again because I couldn't find the muscle. The lab instructor went over the same way that I had learned the previous semester. She also tried to kick me out of the program AGAIN for this.
At the meeting when she had told me this, she had complained over assignments that I had done and how I did them. She is unclear and contradicts herself so how am I ever going to do something right? I cant ask questions other wise she will make it look like I'm unsure of myself. She uses intimidation. And when I'm intimidated or upset, I'll make more mistakes...which she loves so then she can make me look like an incompetent idiot and try to kick me out again.
Also in this meeting, she had an instructor, that I would have next semester, sit in. I have never had her before and have never met her. Based off of what my instructor was saying, this instructor jumps in asking me about if I'm just out of high school, what have I done since then, maybe it's not a good time for me to be a nurse because maybe I'm not mature enough. She also told me that I need to go home and look in the mirror, referring to m maturity. Weird. We don't even know eachother and she's saying that to me? What does my age have to do with it? I felt like I was being bullied.
She had also complained about when I completed my remediation. She said I had to do it before Tuesday, which I did it before Tuesday. There were no other instructions. She wrote down thy I can't follow instructions because of when I did my remediation. I don't understand her.
So after that meeting, my instructor emails me about my care plan. Of course there is something wrong with it. I could hand in a perfect careplan/ assignment and she would find something wrong with it. She said I never reported abnormal vital signs when I had. I never answered back and I did not go to clinical/class because i really feel like I'm being harassed and mentally abused, and I can't take it anymore.
She is pushing me away from the only profession that i want to pursue. I dont understand why i have to endure this mental abuse when all i want to do is to learn. She doesn't do this to anyone else. She wants me out of the program and it's obvious. Its not like I'm a slacker. I spend most of my time studying. I work hard. i have no life because of that. Her classroom/clinical is not an environment that promotes learning (well except for her favorite students, which she lets everyone know who they are). I contacted the dean but I feel like it's not going to be resolved. I'm looking into transferring but it will take me longer, more money for tuition, and a longer commute. I feel powerless against her. I don't know what to do.
cobrahicks
2 Posts
I'm glad others feel the way I do. I had heard the phrase "nurses eat their young" and it's very appropriate for the way nursing school has been for me. I'm in an ADN program and got a warning (two in a semester counts as an error...two errors = expulsion from the program) for not knowing the pathophys behind an obscure admission Dx that had been ruled out on my patient at last a month prior. Our program doesn't even require pathophys as a pre-req, and as I mentioned, the initial r/o Dx had been ruled out. I feel like they just look for reasons to increase your stress and squelch your confidence. While I agree with one post that mentions the difference is that our profession has increased pressure due to the lives being at stake, I don't believe instilling a feeling that you are always doing SOMETHING wrong is a good way to educate. Being paranoid and working in fear just pushed me to start picking up patients who were easy rather than having a complex patient that I could learn more from.
Just because our instructors had to go through the same thing we did is no excuse for a teaching method that rips away your confidence and stresses the students into poly-pharmacy treatments for stress.
My first degree was in engineering where the structures we built put peoples lives at risk, but I never had an instructor tell me "you will not make it as an engineer, you should just go into construction." Instead, they helped us become more thourough in our thinking and taught ways to ensure our success rather than threatening us with being kicked out of the program if we didn't figure it out. I actually had an instructor tell me I should be a CNA because I wasn't going to make it as a nurse.
Fortunately, there was an instructor who would actually gave CONSTRUCTIVE criticism during clinicals and I carried on... and am about to graduate.
I can't wait to get out into a professional environment where expectations are rational and realistic. I would have much rather done nursing school over a longer period of time in a professional setting as an apprentice rather than the high stress environment I had to endure in nursing school. Hopefully nursing education will move away from "nurses eat their young" to "nurses educate their young".