Im going into my third yr of nursing school and was wondering one thing...i keep reading that alot of nursing students have to go to the hospital the night before clinical and get all their pt information and their drug info, etc then read up on it and be informed the night before going to clinical.
We have never had to do this at my School...basically we get our pt at the start of clinical and have to read their chart / MAR medication sheet and then note all their pertinent info in a very short period of time and read up on anything we dont know during clinical or ask our instructor if we dont understand something.
I was just wondering if anyone else's NS does the same thing or is it just mine?
The advantage of doing it the night before i guess is you are more acquainted with your pt and their medical conditions...can look up drugs, etc. Isn't it a pain in the behind lol though to commute all the way their to find this out. Doesnt it take up a huge part of your day to travel then find all this info then go home and review it? Its probably better though than what my school does...
I personally do not expect my students to know everything about the patient or their disease process when I hand them theri assignment at 7am that day. If it is something they have not yet covered in theory (and it is usually the case b/c I teach 1st and 2nd semester students), I will ask the group in preconference if anyone knows what it is. I then give them a brief definition, or will ask a student to look it up in their med. dictionary or PDA. They can get through the day, if theyt are able to critically think and put the pieces together, even if they don't know the whole story behind the diagnosis. If it is a 2 day clinical, they best better know about it in further detail by the next day.
When I was a student, we did get the info the afternoon before. This menat the instructors went to the hospital the day before to pick out the patients (not teh students). So when we got to clinical, we had to know everything, every med, action, side effect, etc.
Wow a real eye opener. I was required to do pre-clinical research prior to every clinical assignment, with the exception of specialty units. (ER, ICU, OR, etc) I understand that in the real world, nurses do not do pre-clinical workups prior to taking their shift assignment; however, nursing school is not the real world. The purpose of pre-clinical work is to research patient conditions, review pathology, therapeutic interventions, and pharmacology prior to actually taking care of the patient. I think this is a crucial step in the learning process. It is another way for the student to review and begin to assimilate all of their didactic knowledge prior to the clinical experience. I also believe that your uniform, apperance, and pre-clinical work should be inspected early in the morning prior to starting your clinical experience. Yes, you guessed correct if you said GilaRN also advocates hand written drug cards. In addition, I believe in a short debrief whith the instrutor prior to ending your shift. I understand people think this is strict; however, the attention to detail, motivation, and maturity gained from such an experience is quite valuable.
my last clinical was med surg and it took me 2 hours EACH way to get there so a total of 4 hrs travelling each day wouldnt work if i had to go to the hospital 2 times a week before clinical...that would be insane! plus add that time to how long it takes to go through the pts chart, meds,etc
How about when you spend HOURS working on all of that paperwork only to come to clinical the next day and the patient is D/C'd. That's as real world as you can get!
my last clinical was med surg and it took me 2 hours EACH way to get there so a total of 4 hrs travelling each day wouldnt work if i had to go to the hospital 2 times a week before clinical...that would be insane! plus add that time to how long it takes to go through the pts chart, meds,etc
id go crazy :uhoh21:
I do not know how they did it, but we had alot of students in my class that drove that far each way, to pick up info the night before...we could not get our assignments till after 7pm...then they would have to drive home and start the hours of prep...and be back at the hospital at 6:45 am...I never knew how they did it!!! WOW!!
A little bit of suck it up, move out, and draw fire. We did not do pre-clinicals for every clinical day. We did pre-clinicals prior to our first day of clinicals for the week. If a patient was discharged or moved, we were allowed to pick another patient up and do the pre-clinical work during our clinical time. Our classes on Monday ended around Noon, and by 14:00, our patient assignments were up at the facility. However, I remember doing two 6 week rotoations at a facility that was an hour and a half from home. They were some rough months, but you cannot expect Nursing school to be easy...
Our school didn't require us to pick patients the night before, but I wish they had. It would have been much better to look things up the night before and be ready to go the next morning.
Yeah, I know, real world nursing. We'll get there. But in the meantime it would have been nice to get the hang of looking through charts, looking up meds, and cobbling the information together into some meaningful way before we have to actually take care of them. It would have been nice to to build up to being able to do it the morning of clinicals once we're more accustomed to the process.
Over the summer I have had a clinical instructor who is ALWAYS LATE. That means we get to the floor late and sometimes miss report. Then we're running around trying to get things together. I hate it! Last year our instructor didn't require us to wait for her before we went to the floor so long as we didn't get there before 6:30. That was much better. We could take our time choosing a patient, looking at orders, researching meds, etc. while waited for the nurses to give report.
During nursing school, we always had to go to the hospital the afternoon before clinicals, get the info and do our care plan to have the morning of day one in clinicals that week. Then, after the first day, you took your care plan home and added to it after caring for the pt that day. It wasn't fun, but I learned soooo much more than those who didn't have to do this in school. I learned about patho and disease process the night before, and then was able to apply it once I cared for the pt that day. It was a wonderful learning experience.
Specializes in Addictions, Corrections, QA/Education.
We were required to go the day before clinicals too. It was called our pre-assignment. We had to research their drugs, their disease processes and do care plans. We had to find at least 3 nursing diagnosis for the patient and do a care plan on each. All the night before clinicals. I hated it!! Each semester we had to do 2 "big" care plans that were graded and we had to use 5 diagnosis.
Our professor would review everything the day of clinicals to be sure everything was complete.
You all that did not have to do this were pretty lucky, huh?
I fail to see how this is considered lucky? Sure, you get out of doing a little work; however, you only have 2-4 years to bake, then you roll out of the oven a newly minted RN ready to hit the floor. Any chance to review all of the material spewed out at you in class is time well spent. I continue to advocate this practice and give kudos to instructors who are this involved in their students educational process.
We were required to go the day before clinicals too. It was called our pre-assignment. We had to research their drugs, their disease processes and do care plans. We had to find at least 3 nursing diagnosis for the patient and do a care plan on each. All the night before clinicals. I hated it!! Each semester we had to do 2 "big" care plans that were graded and we had to use 5 diagnosis.
Our professor would review everything the day of clinicals to be sure everything was complete.
You all that did not have to do this were pretty lucky, huh?
That is pretty much the system I am on, but I really enjoy this process except for making up med sheets. Does anyone else have to do med sheets?
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ReinventingMyselfAgain, MSN, RN
1,954 Posts
Here's my take, from an instructor's perspective:
I personally do not expect my students to know everything about the patient or their disease process when I hand them theri assignment at 7am that day. If it is something they have not yet covered in theory (and it is usually the case b/c I teach 1st and 2nd semester students), I will ask the group in preconference if anyone knows what it is. I then give them a brief definition, or will ask a student to look it up in their med. dictionary or PDA. They can get through the day, if theyt are able to critically think and put the pieces together, even if they don't know the whole story behind the diagnosis. If it is a 2 day clinical, they best better know about it in further detail by the next day.
When I was a student, we did get the info the afternoon before. This menat the instructors went to the hospital the day before to pick out the patients (not teh students). So when we got to clinical, we had to know everything, every med, action, side effect, etc.