I've been in two different hospitals in both my first and second semesters and come up against some ROUGH nurses who would rather do everything themselves than let me touch a thing.
I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that they are BUSY, they have a TO-DO list, they have patients that NEED meds, help, EVERYTHING. But, I'm here to help. I'm wearing these bright purple scrubs not because I like the color, but because I want to learn, I NEED to learn. I will take them to the bathroom, I will bathe them, I will take their vitals, just PLEASE let me.
When I say 80% of the nurses I've followed have done NOTHING with me I am not exaggerating. Why is this? Last week the nurse I was following wouldn't even let me take vitals, VITALS!! I am in my second semester of nursing school, I think I can handle that.
Anyway, I wanted to know whats up with that! I recognize that they are busy. I also recognize the few nurses that have taken me under their wing and shown me SO MUCH. I'm thankful for that, and grateful.
Guess I'll chime in here, after "liking" a half dozen or so posts
I no longer work the floor, but when I did, I enjoyed having students. THAT SAID, there were some I enjoyed more than others....and sometimes when I just didn't have the kind of time I wish I did. Sometimes I could give a more in-depth answer to a question, or explanation of what I was doing, than other times. For the times I could, I'm sure I was The Nurse That Rocked! For the times I couldn't....maybe I was seen as The Nurse Who Can't Be Bothered. Same nurse, different day.
Sometimes, even with a student who was doing well, my time was just so hard-pressed I couldn't do much more than call out "follow me if you want to see this!" as I sped down the hall. Maybe she would think I was awful for making her trail after me, and not "do" anything. But hopefully when I said I just HAD to get this thing done, and NOW, she understood. From what you're saying, maybe she didn't? Don't know.
Sometimes I had the great good fortune of having The Future of Nursing right there at my side! By this I mean the student who was there on her big white horse to Save the Day and "help" me out of my daily drudgery. Yessir, she was a star in her class and could show me a faster/better/more modern method. Yeahh.....except she was annoying as hell, and I interacted with her as little as possible! So did she do less, learn less? You bet. And it WAS her fault, as others would gladly tell her (I really did like having students, so...if one was missing out, it tended to get noticed).
If I could have had fewer patients, so that I could focus a bit more time on the student, that would have been wonderful. But alas, assignments were done in such a manner that if I had a student, I was SURE to have at least one extra patient, or an assignment with a heavier acuity. Because, after all, I had "help". LOL....
Students, we don't want to ignore you. We don't want you just trailing around after us. But sometimes it's the best that can happen, if your instructor dumps you on the nurse without warning, and without preparation. AND with a full patient load! I wondered, sometimes, how well those INSTRUCTORS would have done in the same situation...!
But we are there to 'help'- we are there to learn, and help. Although we can't complete tasks flawlessly like the nurses, I assure you there are tasks that can be done by the bottom-feeding nursing students, I swear... !
There is an old book called "The House of God" about med student and intern training. It has a list of "The Rules of the House of God". One of them is, "Find me a med student that does not triple my work load and I will kiss his feet."
Much the same can be said of nursing students. You may often double or triple our work load/stress load and we end up staying after work a few hours to make it up. And that is after a day of virtually no peace whatsoever, of being followed, stared at, grilled and questioned for 8-12 hours.
Your school could do the right thing and allot more clinical instructors, people who are getting paid to educate you. But noooooo. let's abuse and trash the floor nurse more.
Where are these hospitals that get paid for hosting students? Seriously, the bedside nurse is getting one thin penny if it. Get the useless bureaucrat nurse in her pumps and pearls to teach.
Where are you located, where schools are paying hospitals for clinical sites? I've been involved in arranging and coordinating clinicals as faculty member at a few different schools over the years, and I've never been aware of (never even heard of) a situation in which the schools were paying a hospital to do clinicals.
I am in Fl and Rasmussen, Keiser, and Jersey College all pay my facility a small fortune to do clinicals.
STUDENTS: you are NOT a burden. You are, in fact, going to LESSEN the burden by adding to our workforce.
That's only if employers hire more staff nurses. Since there is no nursing shortage now, if employers were going to give us better staffing we'd have it already.
For the record, I used to love having students to teach when I worked staff, and loved being a clinical instructor. And it is absolutely true that staffing and patient acuity and equipment needs are all worse now than when we were students, or even fifteen or ten years ago, and so when my friend and colleague RubyVee says students really are one more burden adding to an already-overburdened nurse's list of responsibilities, I regretfully have to agree with her. We don't have to like it, but it's still true if clinical instructors have 8-10-12 students and can't possibly do everything with them. And, of course, they can't.
This is the main reason why schools teach as much theory as they can, so people will pass NCLEX (and do not knock the idea of "teaching to the test" -- you wanna pass that test? Yep, I thought so.). And then their real learning ho to function of an actual nurse continues.
We all know that nobody ever learned everything they needed to know to be a nurse in school. You'll have to plan on learning how to function as a nurse in your first 12-18 months of practice.
No, you will not learn/see/do it all as students. No. Remember that. Do not whine about it, just keep a little list in your head of what you need to learn as you go along, remain observant and curious, and you'll get there. Just not as fast as you thought you deserved to (cuz you don't).
I take in everything I can. It's actually an important skill in and of itself. Astute observation is a foundation upon which to build critical thinking. Even Florence Nightingale recognized this. I can't remember her words at the moment but she was right on it.
"For it may safely be said, not that the habit of ready and correct observation will by itself make us useful nurses, but that without it we shall be useless with all our devotion."
Specializes in Oncology; medical specialty website.
OK, I'll bite.
Some of us have gotten burned by students who were rude, disruptive, lazy, etc. After a while, even the most patient person just throws her hands up in the air and says, "Forget it."
I know you think you're helping, but you're not. The moment a student lays hands on a nurse's patient, she has to be concerned for the patient's safety. A lot of the time, it's just easier, and faster, for nurses to do things for themselves. Administration piles more and more on nurses' shoulders, but nurses get little in the way of compensation for that extra work. On top of that everyone complains: patients complain, families complain, management complains, and now we have students complaining. There's only so much kvetching you can listen to in a day. Many nurses start to resent being expected to be instructors on top of everything else.
When I went to school, nurses who had students had a lighter assignment so they had the time to spend with students if the instructor wasn't on the floor. For the most part, where I went to school, the instructor was always there with us. We had a bit of a longer leash in certain rotations starting in junior year, but we could always page, and the instructor was there shortly. Now we hear about students being dropped off on units with no supervision from faculty whatsoever.
Specializes in Oncology; medical specialty website.
I love how people think on here and how we all have different opinions. Mine is opposite then most posters here. I hear you. I know your eager and want to learn and I hear your frustration. I may agree with some of the points in the above posts, but c'mon, even if, as someone mentioned, "the nurse wants to assess the pt herself, " when referring to VS, give me a break, you can do that and not be in her way and not be taking up her time. It takes 60 seconds to show you how to use the VS machine, if you don't already know how. Whether she takes the VS or you do, she can assess them as well from yours as she can from hers. VS are VS. Many mornings I will come to work and see students and go, "uhhh..." Yes they take more of your time and since I'm not a morning person, I don't always feel like going, "GOOD MORNING!!" as they do, but I give them a smile and do my best to make them NOT feel as the OP is feeling. You all, face it, students as a general rule do not get treated well and it's sad. I don't care how busy we are, we can still give off a SENSE that we are caring and thankful to have their help rather than give off "I-wish-you-weren't-here-and-in-my-way" attitude. Just be NICE. It's really not hard...
We're also getting one side of the story. For all we know, the staff may have been polite to her, but she had expectations for more.
We were assigned patients and co-RNs. The instructor would talk to the nurses about having a student and what task or meds we would be responsible for regarding the assigned patient.
This is actually part of the issue for floor nurses. Some students just assess. Sometimes, all the students pass meds. With some clinical groups, half the group passes meds on one day, half the next. Some groups only do PO meds. Some do IV meds--some with IVP meds, some do not push. Some do insulin, some do not. Some students do ADLs, some could not be bothered. A group of students is there for 2 days...once the floor nurse finally has the students' routine down, a new group comes the next day and they have an entirely different list of "dos and don'ts."
In addition, even though the students assess, chart, etc. it does not mean the nurse is not responsible for that. The nurse still has to do his/her own assessment, review and sign off on students' charting, and adjust that charting PRN.
As I said before, I like to teach, and I like having students. However, it is just not true to state that a student lowers the nurses' workloads. Although the student has the best of intentions, they are not there to "help," and sometimes a student can be more of a hinderance. It is not as simple as "that nurse has a student...everything the nurse does should involve teaching the student." Just not possible.
Specializes in Oncology; medical specialty website.
Believe it or not, nurses haven't forgotten that they were once students, nor have they forgotten how it felt. Students, however, have no idea what it feels like to be short staffed, assigned one or two more patients than "the maximum" and THEN told we have a student as well.
I see all these students here indignant that "the nurse wasn't nice to me, nevermind that she's tired and overworked and doesn't feel like being bothered." I see very few (none, actually) students advocating being nice to the NURSE.
I agree reaching. Reaching out to the nurse and asking "How can I help you?" would go a lot further than indignant foot stamping and hair flipping.
Eye rolling was my pet peeve, esp. when accompanied by "I already seen that."
I've been in two different hospitals in both my first and second semesters and come up against some ROUGH nurses who would rather do everything themselves than let me touch a thing.
I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that they are BUSY, they have a TO-DO list, they have patients that NEED meds, help, EVERYTHING. But, I'm here to help. I'm wearing these bright purple scrubs not because I like the color, but because I want to learn, I NEED to learn. I will take them to the bathroom, I will bathe them, I will take their vitals, just PLEASE let me.
When I say 80% of the nurses I've followed have done NOTHING with me I am not exaggerating. Why is this? Last week the nurse I was following wouldn't even let me take vitals, VITALS!! I am in my second semester of nursing school, I think I can handle that.
Anyway, I wanted to know whats up with that! I recognize that they are busy. I also recognize the few nurses that have taken me under their wing and shown me SO MUCH. I'm thankful for that, and grateful.
Any advice? Comments?[/quote
I have had the opposite experience. Of course there is always 1 or 2 nurses who aren't willing to teach, but for the most part every nurse is willing to help me learn. I have even had nurses come looking for me because they are going to do a procedure they know I haven't done and want to know if I would like to help.
I think you have to let them know that you are willing to do the grunt work, ask questions, and be genuinely interested (asking questions etc.). I always make sure that if there is an issue with their patient I report directly to them and then to my CI. That way they know I am truly paying attention to what is going on with their patient. After all, it's their butt on the line if something is missed on their patient.
Our CI is always on the floor with us and always available if we need help, however, she has no problem with us asking a nurse if we can shadow them and help them out.
RNsRWe, ASN, RN
3 Articles; 10,428 Posts
Guess I'll chime in here, after "liking" a half dozen or so posts
I no longer work the floor, but when I did, I enjoyed having students. THAT SAID, there were some I enjoyed more than others....and sometimes when I just didn't have the kind of time I wish I did. Sometimes I could give a more in-depth answer to a question, or explanation of what I was doing, than other times. For the times I could, I'm sure I was The Nurse That Rocked! For the times I couldn't....maybe I was seen as The Nurse Who Can't Be Bothered. Same nurse, different day.
Sometimes, even with a student who was doing well, my time was just so hard-pressed I couldn't do much more than call out "follow me if you want to see this!" as I sped down the hall. Maybe she would think I was awful for making her trail after me, and not "do" anything. But hopefully when I said I just HAD to get this thing done, and NOW, she understood. From what you're saying, maybe she didn't? Don't know.
Sometimes I had the great good fortune of having The Future of Nursing right there at my side! By this I mean the student who was there on her big white horse to Save the Day and "help" me out of my daily drudgery. Yessir, she was a star in her class and could show me a faster/better/more modern method. Yeahh.....except she was annoying as hell, and I interacted with her as little as possible! So did she do less, learn less? You bet. And it WAS her fault, as others would gladly tell her (I really did like having students, so...if one was missing out, it tended to get noticed).
If I could have had fewer patients, so that I could focus a bit more time on the student, that would have been wonderful. But alas, assignments were done in such a manner that if I had a student, I was SURE to have at least one extra patient, or an assignment with a heavier acuity. Because, after all, I had "help".
LOL....
Students, we don't want to ignore you. We don't want you just trailing around after us. But sometimes it's the best that can happen, if your instructor dumps you on the nurse without warning, and without preparation. AND with a full patient load! I wondered, sometimes, how well those INSTRUCTORS would have done in the same situation...!