I know the old days but modern day, where are the essential patient care skills being taught and confirmed?
ie
Sterile technique
Clean technique
Foley care and insertion
Patient teaching
IV infusion principles
I'm currently thrown off by needing to teach these skills, which ones or any could I expect to be taught in school or is it generally inconsistent?
ETA Prior to very recent years, it truly never occurred that these weren't known skills, we'd review and check off competency but we weren't needing to teach them.
Now I'm wondering if these are questions we should expect to have to ask, ie do you know how to perform sterile technique? (That would have been insulting to nurses educated in past years and newer nurses are newer to me/us).
I'm a new grad nurse who has had a similar experience as several previous commenters. I graduated in December and during all of my clinical experiences, I was barely able to practice any of these skills. I put a foley in twice (three semesters apart from each other), did one clean technique dressing, placed an NG tube once, started one IV, passed meds through IV's, had a few patients with g-tube and tube feeds, and passed oral meds. During the rest of clinical I spent time looking up care plan information, giving bed baths, taking vitals, or simply walking through the units asking nurses or other students if they needed help with anything. In one clinical, I kid you not, I would walk in circles on the floor, searching for something to learn. Granted, my instructor was not the best, but I feel as though my clinical experience throughout nursing school was lacking in many areas. We were required to go to open lab to "practice skills" every semester, but no one was really there to guide us or teach us much during these labs.
I took my NCLEX near the end of February and passed my first try with 75 questions. This does not speak to my competence, but I feel that after some experience, my critical thinking skills will come together. I still have not found work yet. Knowing what I've read in this thread and knowing that my skill set is not up to par, my question is what can we do as new graduates awaiting employment to help prepare us for work? For experienced nurses who have gone through an influx of new grads, what skills and knowledge do you truly EXPECT someone that you're working with to know? As frustrated as I am that I have not found work, I've decided to use whatever time that I'm not applying for jobs to refresh my memory and reintroduce myself to the basics to help when I do enter the work force.
Not to change the subject, but would anyone be willing to speak to how students can gauge whether or not a program will be lacking in these areas before they apply (if at all possible)? Obviously, showing up for an interview with a checklist of skills and frantically yelling "WILL YOU TEACH ME THESE THINGS?!" is probably not going to work out in your favor, but maybe things to look for in class descriptions or tactful questions to ask?
I find this thread very disconcerting!
Word of mouth, particularly within the nursing community. Even the public might get wind of a school's reputation. When I was getting ready to apply to nursing school as a mature adult, even my father knew about the reputation of the ASN program that I mentioned earlier in this thread. That school was known throughout the state at that time.
I learned all those skills in my first semester of my ADN program with the exception of IV infusion, which was my second semester. I feel that a lot of schools in my area are very hit or miss with the skills they teach. I feel like I learned a lot of skills in school, including IV insertion. Therefore, I did a decent amount of skills in clinical. Other schools in my area seem to teach fewer skills. One doesn't even teach the students IV insertions which I found to be pretty shocking.
Mybe I'm the odd man out here, but the skills part of nursing can be taught in a matter of hours, not years. Maybe schools need a skills intensive every semester, and then open the skills lab a few times a week for those who want additional practice, but really that's about it. "Muscle memory" happens over time, but I don't think it's necessary for new grads to have it. They just need to know how to do it.
What is more important is being able to recognize the s/s of central line-related DVT, urinary retention, Foley occlusion, phlebitis, infiltration, extravasation, etc. all those things that are subsequent to the skill being performed. That's what I find lacking and most concerning.
ETA: I was a new grad who didn't know how to set up IVF. I was shown once, supervised once, and that was enough really.
ForeverDreaming
48 Posts
I'm a new grad nurse who has had a similar experience as several previous commenters. I graduated in December and during all of my clinical experiences, I was barely able to practice any of these skills. I put a foley in twice (three semesters apart from each other), did one clean technique dressing, placed an NG tube once, started one IV, passed meds through IV's, had a few patients with g-tube and tube feeds, and passed oral meds. During the rest of clinical I spent time looking up care plan information, giving bed baths, taking vitals, or simply walking through the units asking nurses or other students if they needed help with anything. In one clinical, I kid you not, I would walk in circles on the floor, searching for something to learn. Granted, my instructor was not the best, but I feel as though my clinical experience throughout nursing school was lacking in many areas. We were required to go to open lab to "practice skills" every semester, but no one was really there to guide us or teach us much during these labs.
I took my NCLEX near the end of February and passed my first try with 75 questions. This does not speak to my competence, but I feel that after some experience, my critical thinking skills will come together. I still have not found work yet. Knowing what I've read in this thread and knowing that my skill set is not up to par, my question is what can we do as new graduates awaiting employment to help prepare us for work? For experienced nurses who have gone through an influx of new grads, what skills and knowledge do you truly EXPECT someone that you're working with to know? As frustrated as I am that I have not found work, I've decided to use whatever time that I'm not applying for jobs to refresh my memory and reintroduce myself to the basics to help when I do enter the work force.