What do you wish you would have learned in your first nursing school clinicals that would have helped your student and professional career?

[Tymber Higgins]

I have been a Clinical Nursing Instructor for new BSN students for a couple of years. This is their first experience out of the lab after completing their skill evaluations. In the past my focus has been open ended communication as well as a full understanding of how to find patient information. This clinical is difficult for me as the students are not done with many of the classes needed for the higher level understanding of nursing. They aren't able to make care plans yet as that's next semester, and understanding medication is also difficult as pharm is next semester as well. My group is more like an introduction to nursing, becoming a CNA. I just want to give them a fulfilling experience and if anyone has ideas of something they had wished they learned early that would have helped them in school or out in their career I would love to hear it.

TIA!!

[mrphil79]

Seriously... nursing students need to be taught the realities of the profession... Specifically that patients aren't always rainbows and sunshine and so happy that you're helping them...

Sometimes they literally bite, kick, punch, spit, scream, etc... 

Nursing school instructors tend to "Florence Nightingale" up their ideas of what it's going to be like. Then when we get new nurses, they are paralyzed the first time someone yells at them - they literally think they have to take it and back away pleasantly with a smile and an apology because Mrs Collins in nursing 2 said so...

That just ain't real life. They need to know that this is common - not to scare them, but because they need to know how to handle it. You can absolutely tell a patient you won't be talked to that way. You should absolutely set limits with these patients. You can absolutely protect and defend yourself. You can absolutely press charges. You can absolutely file an incident report. You can absolutely refuse to clean a 97 year old dementia patient who bites and hits until you get a second or third set of hands. And you can ABSOLUTELY refuse to continue employment at a facility that refuses to take these problems seriously. 

[Pepper The Cat, BSN, RN]

Not everything is about you. Just because someone stops talking when you enter the room doesn't mean they were talking about you.

You may not like everyone you work with and that's fine. But you still need to work with them.

Greys Anatomy is not real. 

[Patricia Ordnung]

I think all nursing students should be, if not taught, at least told, that the CNAs, dietary, housekeeping and all other employees where you will be working, are as important as you are.  Treat them with respect.