Tough Time?

jemommyRN · Jan 10, 2005

i am very happy to know that it does get better.

mitchsmom · Jan 10, 2005

That sounds great, congrats!

I actually liked my first clinical last semester, for the most part. Ask me again after this semester...psych & medsurg. :) I'm not really looking forward to psych but (don't shoot me) I am actually excited about starting medsurg.

jenrninmi, MSN, RN · Jan 10, 2005

That sounds great, congrats!
I actually liked my first clinical last semester, for the most part. Ask me again after this semester...psych & medsurg. :) I'm not really looking forward to psych but (don't shoot me) I am actually excited about starting medsurg.

I learned so much in my med/surg clinical and became so much more confident in my abilities. Good luck to you! You'll do great!

Tweety, BSN, RN · Jan 10, 2005

Awesome!

shyne · Jan 10, 2005

Just curious...what was it about clinicals that made it such a bad experience for you all?

I mainly just dreaded going to the hospital the night before to get our pt info. I also dreaded the careplans and paperwork for the clinicals. However, I did enjoy the direct pt nursing care during our rotations though.

RainDreamer, BSN, RN · Jan 10, 2005

Congratulations on your graduation! And that's just great that you got a job in a good hospital that you're really enjoying!!

I really hated clinicals first semester, I don't know why exactly.... just having to go get my patient's information the day before and having to spend 5+ hours writing up all the info for the careplan, then having to get up so early for clinicals the next day .... I just wasn't used to it. But that was just first semester, the last 2 semesters I've pretty much enjoyed the clinicals. Mitchsmom, I really dreaded my psych rotations too! I was surprised that I actually didn't mind them, I found them interseting ... they weren't nearly as bad as what I had feared :)

Again, congratulations and thanks for the inspiring post!

RainDreamer, BSN, RN · Mar 28, 2005

Just bumping this up for those of you that may be having a tough time in clinicals now, it's nice to read stuff like this :)

shape0fmyheart · Mar 28, 2005

Thank you for bumping this up! Boy did I NEED to hear that right now...

TinyNurse, RN · Mar 28, 2005

as a former waitress, I loved lecture and loved clinicals more............ clinicals are something like nursing except your instructor is not watching out for you............noone to back you up. on your own with Nursing........... 1/1/2 years into ER nursing and i'm over that fact yet still dealing with tired feet..........

more patients, ( patience) better assessment skills, noone to look out for you.......... always have a great resource person.

xo Jen

Ayvah, RN · Mar 28, 2005

There are a few things that I don't like about clinicals. First, we simply do not have enough to do. We are at clinicals for 5.5 hours, and in that time we do beds, baths, vitals, feeding prn and sometimes pass out meds/give injections. We only have one patient each, so a good chunk of the time most of the students are just sitting there with nothing to do. I've asked health care techs and nurses if I could help out in any way and they say no (a few times I've been able to help out with turning a patient or something minor, but even with that there is still hours with nothing to do). One of my fellow students asked if they could help a nurse with discharge paperwork and she said 'no, its too complicated for you'. But sitting there at the nurses station looks bad, and we feel like we're in everyone's way since the nurses station is small, and there's rarely an open chair. (Most of the time the computers are signed off and students aren't given a password to do research on it either) So it just all around feels so awkward. I've been luckly in that I've been able to talk with most of my patients to use up time, but the last one didn't feel like talking, so I didn't have much to do. I've got 4 more clinicals to go for this semester and I look forward to being done with them. I just hope it goes a little better in clinicals next semester.

RainDreamer, BSN, RN · Mar 30, 2005

Ayvah, are you in first year? What you described sounds like how it was during my first year. We hardly got to do anything! We only had 1 patient, did all the AM care, assessment, and then gave the 9 am meds. That was basically it. We were able to see some neat procedures here and there, just depending on what all was going on. But for the most part we finished up with the AM care, assessment, meds, and then didn't have much to do afterwards.

But by 2nd year it got a lot better. We were able to do more things. We did pretty much total care for the patient. The clinical days would go by so much faster because I'd keep so busy! I got to where I really enjoyed it after a while, I felt like I had actually accomplished something. Still didn't like getting up so darn early and doing the careplans though.

camkib · Mar 30, 2005

I am so happy to hear that things do get better after clinicals and that as a new grad it is possible to be respected by your nursing colleagues. I'm almost done and have 8 clincial days left. I used to dread going to clinicals because of all the eye rolling and sarcastic comments I would get from some of the nurses. Now that I am doing my preceptorship, everyone is absolutely wonderful. They want to help me and teach me in every way they can. Its like night and day.

~Camkib~