When you are at clinicals

[nowim clean]

You guys are starting clinicals once again, and I am offering advice to help you learn. make yourself available and on the floor. One thing nurses hate is when a group of students are suppose to be on the floor but are camped out in the breakroom. I tell every student that is with me stay with me shadow me I will show you things get you into procedures, but I will not hunt for you. I started this post because it never fails that we have a group come I and they just disappear with their instructor camped out in a room. I've had students miss TEE, cardioversions, caths, and open heart because they went to break, was not on the floor etc. The nurses I work with know which students are there to learn and which ones are just there, and yes we look at new grads applications and recommend for hire and also recommend no hires based on how they was as a student. Best of luck, work hard and stay busy.

[randa77]

I don't understand this concept you all speak of about "following" a nurse around all day. We are assigned a patient to take care of and that is ALL we do besides pre and post conference. I would LOVE to just be assigned a nurse and follow her around all day!! This would be more educational to me than what I do at clinicals now. I am excited that we get to go back to the nursing home (from 1st semester) and shadow the nurse all day there.

[kalycat, BSN, RN]

I don't understand this concept you all speak of about "following" a nurse around all day. We are assigned a patient to take care of and that is ALL we do besides pre and post conference. I would LOVE to just be assigned a nurse and follow her around all day!! This would be more educational to me than what I do at clinicals now. I am excited that we get to go back to the nursing home (from 1st semester) and shadow the nurse all day there.

There are a lot of different models for clinical education, in my understanding. My particular program uses the DEU model. I recently posted an article about it in the Pre-Nursing forum.

For my program, we don't really do much shadowing, it is more that the nurse is our superviser and observer. Sometimes when I meet a new preceptor for the first time such as when starting a new rotation, I shadow for half a shift and get a feel for her style and let her get to know me a bit prior to taking patients. It seems to help develop rapport.

Our program discourages shadowing per se (as in, just observing) because they want students to become as technically proficient as possible with their skills and the only way to really do so is to perform the task. Patient safety is the top priority, of course, but we also learn by doing, so there are protocols for performing a skill for the first time and then progressing to independence.

I feel I had a particularly good experience in clinical which is why I wanted to share my program's model. We had a lot of hands on time from the start but it was weighted in such a way that the tasks became increasingly complex - e.g started with tons of manual vitals and injections first semester and proceeded to NG tubes, IV, PCAs, and central line care throughout the program. I hope you're able to start getting the experiences you're looking for. I can only imagine the frustration of feeling like you aren't getting much out of clinical! I'm glad to chat any time :)

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