I'm in my last semester of nursing school and have met so many amazing nurses in my clinical experiences. These nurses were patient and willing to take a minute in their busy day to teach or allow me observe.
Of course I have also met nurses who wanted nothing to do with us students. I've had nurses roll their eyes at me when being assigned a student, nurses introduce themselves by telling me "stay outta my way", nurses that don't want me to do anything with their patients, nurses that say "your assessments don't count, you're just a student", I've had nurses say "I don't get paid to teach", nurses that have been mean and rude. Why??? Haven't these nurses been new? Students Eager to learn?
So last week on Medsurge unit in our "teaching hospital" I knew I was in for a long day when I saw my assignment. I worked with this nurse once and had heard nothing but horror stories from other students. I started by introducing myself [received an eye roll], and let her know my assignment included med administration, labs (blood draw from central line), general nursing care, and of course shift assessments. Her response a sarcastic "great". I prepared my meds and discussed them with my instructor. As we headed into the room to administer the nurse was already there giving meds. "You took too long" she said. I apologized and explained I needed to do them with my instructor. She also did the blood draw. My day went on like this.
Frustrated I caught her at the nurses station and asked if we could talk. I asked her "what made you want to be a nurse? Do you remember being a student?" She didn't answer. Then I said " I feel like I am an inconvenience, I want nothing more to be a great nurse and in order to do so I need to learn from someone with the same passion". I then walked away. 30 minutes later she came up to me and said that she thinks we have it easy. Computers and nclex prep courses we are just taught to pass an exam. Although I don't fully disagree I did explain that the nursing field is growing and medical advances, increasing comorbitities, and advancing technology does not make it any easier to learn. She then said "I wanted to be a nurse to take care of people, to be respected, and to make a change... I almost forgot". Aside from my end of shift report we didn't talk again.
Since this day my fellow students have said she's a great nurse, willing to teach and patient.
Moral of my king story -- stick up for yourself and never forget why you want to be a nurse.
Even though I have had a scant few nurse preceptors blow me off, for every one who has done so, I've had 4 amazing ones excited to teach who were willing to engage me and show me the ropes. I don't think I would have confronted that nurse whether or not she took my med pass from me -- meds are tricky and I think a lot of RNs reflexively act in defense of their license and rightfully so! I've come to respect how much nurses do and how frustrating the job can be. Also, the BSN I'm working on is my 2nd Bachelors and I have to say students aren't quite what they used to be. There is a lot of entitlement and laziness -- the upcoming generation concerns me and this sentiment is shared with me and the other older students (but some of the oldest students are just as terrible). I guess that just makes me sound old (late 20s, hmph).
I always suspected that it sounded insane that we are at the clinical site to help (um, maybe the CNAs but that's about it -- otherwise, that's a hilarious statement) and now I know my suspicion is true -- we are in the way and a lot of instructors drop their students off and do not stay with them appropriately. A nurse can never know what is coming their way. So a med pass got snaked -- maybe the OP wasn't around when they should have been. I've had that happen to me. I do not want a patient to have to wait on their meds just because I got held up watching a PICC line placement. The meds can definitely go on without me and I wouldn't expect (nor ask!) anyone to wait. I'm going to have my whole career to have my own patients and to do my own med pass.
In the last clinical site I was at, we actually met and were taught by several fresh grads from our school and there was little, if any, evidence of NETY. I think that a thick skin is mandatory and I'm surprised at how sensitive some of my fellow peers are and how needy they are for approval and affirmation that they're doing well. This is medicine, y'all! It's gonna hurt and you aren't going to have someone pat you on the back letting you know you did a good job. Being a part of a patient's successful recovery is that affirmation, I guess.
Overall, my general attitude is just that, I'm here to learn, I'm so thrilled I got into the program at all and I'm open to any and all experiences, even if it's just one bed pan or bed change. Whether or not my preceptor is open to teaching, that's on them. I can figure out something to go do and learn if my preceptor's on bust -- however, I know now enough that if there is a nurse that is rumored to be problematic, I just ignore it because I refuse to go into situations prejudging like that. It just ends in disaster.
Okay at this point this is my last post on here, because I feel like this thread is just beating a dead horse. The point of my question was, why is the behavior of complaining about being mistreated okay for RNs but not for student nurses? The answer that its okay because this is a nurses site doesn't make any sense because it is still condoning the behavior- meaning that you still accept it as okay behavior from the RN, but not the student. Of course student nurses will want to ask other experienced RNs for their opinion on it, that's the purpose of this site. I'm just saddened to see some RNs defend this type of bullying and behavior, however I do know not all RNs do, so that at least comforts me. But the simple fact that RNs believe they should not be mistreated by busy doctors who can't be bothered with them, should mean that RNs should not be doing the same to student nurses. This idea that student nurses who want to learn are feeling entitled or naive is counterproductive. If a student is naive because he/she doesn't know what to expect, then that's the school's or facility's fault for not preparing them. The whole reason for clinicals is so that the student can learn those things that can't be learned in the classroom- rolling your eyes at the student or getting angry at them for not knowing those things is well....illogical. I feel very fortunate that I am not experiencing this at my clinicial. The nurses, LPNs, RNs, and CNAs, have all worked well with me- allow me to listen to reports on my patient, and let me know when I can be helpful or when they want me to step back or just watch. Never once are they rude to me, and their reports to my instructor have been all positive. I am sorry for the the student nurses on here who are experiencing the opposite and I hope you all can work through it and graduate! I hope that my opinion on this thread won't have upset the RNs on here so that in the future when I seek help, I won't receive it. I have asked questions in the past and have received very helpful advice; I do respect all of the experienced nurses and CNAs, but I will say this thread has really saddened and depressed me. I suppose I am no longer going to be "naive" about the politics and "ranks" in nursing.
I don't know exactly what qualifies as bullying. Is it the eye rolls, snaking the med pass, not acknowledging the student directly?
That's not bullying. For the love of god it is not bullying.
We were told to expect any behavior like that and to embrace it and not let it get us down -- it was an experience had now let's get over it and move forward.
But....
It's not just nursing where this happens. Many other jobs have employees who display this attitude on a typical basis with the exception of those who found favor with them. And, well, that's just how it goes. They may have been burned by previous students or fellow colleagues and in a profession as serious as nursing, that could have meant a situation in which their license (the same license we are all busting our butts for) was jeopardized. It might make you a little jaded, no? Well, I have a long retail experience and I was hard on those newbies, too, for the very same reasons. I couldn't trust them not to multiply my current workload by a factor of 4 until they showed themselves to be professional and to be willing to learn -- let alone if they were even going to show up to work or if they changed their minds or took another job that gave them a better offer late leaving us in a lurch. Oh well. Those that made it hustled and showed me whether or not they could be trusted and long-standing professional relationships came of it. That takes time. That is not time we are granted as students. We get what we get and we do the best with it. Of course we're the low men on the totem pole. What else are we supposed to be???? We know nothing of the job! We have no experience! We have to learn fresh at every new clinical site never with enough time to master the facility let alone prove ourselves professionally. That can't happen. So, we take what we're given. I don't think it comes down to a "they need to remember being students" type of situation. They remember all too well and I agree with the people who say we have it easy. We do. At least in my program, it could be much worse. Academics and people's work ethic just ain't what they used to be.
Specializes in Leadership, Psych, HomeCare, Amb. Care.
If a student is naive because he/she doesn't know what to expect, then that's the school's or facility's fault for not preparing them. The whole reason for clinicals is so that the student can learn those things that can't be learned in the classroom- rolling your eyes at the student or getting angry at them for not knowing those things is well....illogical.
I feel very fortunate that I am not experiencing this at my clinicial. The nurses, LPNs, RNs, and CNAs, have all worked well with me- allow me to listen to reports on my patient, and let me know when I can be helpful or when they want me to step back or just watch. Never once are they rude to me, and their reports to my instructor have been all positive.
I am sorry for the the student nurses on here who are experiencing the opposite and I hope you all can work through it and graduate!
I have asked questions in the past and have received very helpful advice; I do respect all of the experienced nurses and CNAs, but I will say this thread has really saddened and depressed me. I suppose I am no longer going to be "naive" about the politics and "ranks" in nursing.
It is the schools job to prepare them. The facility is there to allow the clinical instructor a setting to integrate theory with practice. It is not the staff nurses' job to be enabling if the school is not doing their part.
Since you haven't experienced the "bullying" do you think that perhaps this issue may be overstated? Maybe, instead of becoming "saddened and depressed," you need to take it all with a grain of salt and make your own decisions over the course of your education.
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
This idea that student nurses who want to learn are feeling entitled or naive is counterproductive. If a student is naive because he/she doesn't know what to expect, then that's the school's or facility's fault for not preparing them. The whole reason for clinicals is so that the student can learn those things that can't be learned in the classroom- rolling your eyes at the student or getting angry at them for not knowing those things is well....illogical. I feel very fortunate that I am not experiencing this at my clinicial. The nurses, LPNs, RNs, and CNAs, have all worked well with me- allow me to listen to reports on my patient, and let me know when I can be helpful or when they want me to step back or just watch. Never once are they rude to me, and their reports to my instructor have been all positive. I am sorry for the the student nurses on here who are experiencing the opposite and I hope you all can work through it and graduate! I hope that my opinion on this thread won't have upset the RNs on here so that in the future when I seek help, I won't receive it. I have asked questions in the past and have received very helpful advice; I do respect all of the experienced nurses and CNAs, but I will say this thread has really saddened and depressed me. I suppose I am no longer going to be "naive" about the politics and "ranks" in nursing.
It's not about politics or "ranks" in nursing. Nor is it about bullying -- if that is what is actually happening, even though nothing I've read on this thread seems to qualify -- being OK. What it is about is a nurse that an entire class of students labelled as "mean" or "unhelpful" or some such, and what one student did to "put her in her place." Never mind that the behavior of the OP could be labelled as bullying toward the preceptor involved. I'm not going to CALL it that any more than I'm going to call eye rolling, missed med passes or behavior that the student views as "unhelpful" by the label, either.
What it's about is patient care. Teaching hospital, community hospital, clinic or whatever, it's about the patient's care. Student nurses are there to learn, and it's a necessary part of their education. We all know that. We all remember (some of us vividly!) what it was like to be a student, yet students are quick to accuse us of having forgotten. We've been there, we've done that; we remember. Yet the student has never been in the position of the experienced nurse trying to juggle an assignment that is too difficult to start with and then being saddled with a student nurse who, however eager to be helpful and to learn, still triples or quadruples the workload. Some nurses are better at being positive in the face of such difficulty, others are better at teaching under those conditions. Some students understand that their presence, rather than "helping" anyone, only increases their burden. Some are better at learning than others and some have either a thicker skin or a more healthy grasp of the realities of the situation.
None of this means that the experienced nurse is a bully or that the student is a victim of a bully. It's just part of the facts of the workplace. I LIKE students, I enjoy teaching and I am, according the the evals I've gotten from my former students and orientees, good at it. I am nothing approaching a saint, however, and some days, some assignments and some students are tougher than others. Ask me the same question I've just answered, or that I've answered four or five times already this shift, you may get a sigh and an eye roll. Suck it up, buttercup, because the nursing unit is not about pampering the students.
It is the nursing school's and the instructor's responsibility to prepare the nursing student for the clinical experience. The bedside nurse is responsible for showing you where the bathroom is if you have to go and your instructor hasn't already showed you -- your instructor should have showed you. Please don't blame the nursing staff at your clinical site because your instructor fell down in her job. On the other hand, no matter how hard an instructor tries to prepare you, some students just aren't going to "get it" until they arrive on the clinical site. I was one of those students many decades ago. That wasn't my instructor's fault, nor was it the fault of the poor nurse who was saddled with me that day. That was my own fault, and I own it.
Anyone who goes into the clinical situation looking for a good experience and willing to fully participate in one is sure to find it. Anyone who goes in looking for bullies is sure to find them, too, even if they have to invent them.
Agree with the "not bullying" comments. Although bullying is a serious uprising event that does exist, i also feel a lot of people have become hypersenitive to what bullying REALLY is. Eye rolling and huffing and puffing at the sight of students is not bullying.
You are absolutely right -- you do not understand as evidenced by your assumption that the student's job is to try to help the nurse.
Students do not help the nurse, ease our workload, take off the pressure or anything of the kind. In fact, it's the opposite. It's far easier to just do the work ourselves than it is to try to teach someone else how to do it, to wait while they do things in about 4 times the time it would take us, and to try to criticize constructively rather than just step in and stop them from doing something stupid. I've read a quote that says "Show me a student who only triples my workload, and I will kiss your feet," or something to that effect. (That's probably from "House of God", but I don't remember exactly where I read it.) A good student only triples your workload. A bad one . . . .
House of God it is indeed, by the beloved Samuel Shem (a pseudonym, though we all know who it is now). #11 of the Fat Man's Laws:
11. SHOW ME A BMS (Best Medical Student, a student at the Best Medical School) WHO ONLY TRIPLES MY WORK AND I WILL KISS HIS FEET.
Thanks. I keep lending my copies to folks who don't return them!
I just got all three of his books on my iPad. I'll never lose them again. (Mount Misery, the Shem treatment of McLean, is another gem.)
OCN said:
I don't work in the clinical setting anymore, but I have experienced the opposite right here on AN. A new nurse starts a thread seeking advice. I reply, and instead of getting a "thank you," the OP will lash out at me. I had it happen to me on two different threads just this week. It's not just me, either; I've seen senior posters here like Esme, GrnTea and others be treated in the same discourteous manner. I can't speak for them, but I know that in my case, I've started to avoid threads from newbies asking for help; I'm not that interested in getting reamed out yet again.
Well, we're just masochists, that's all. No, that's not it. We have tough skin? Yep, in part.
In Scouts we see some boys who will teach the new Scouts square knots all day long, for their first time in youth leadership, and in their second year. Their third year they'll do it, but they're more apt to turf it off to the new patrol leaders because very few of them have the patience to do it one more year; they are on to bigger adventures. The adult leadership can be the same, which is why the average tenure of a Scoutmaster is about 7 years, the length of time his/her boy is in the troop (11-18).
But there are some Scoutmasters who just enjoy the heck out of the new kids, year after year after year, and don't get bored c seeing a new batch of them become proficient in knots, in outdoors skills, in learning what the Oath and Law really mean in greater depth the longer they're in. Some become Eagles, some stay Second Class or First Class until they leave the program, but a good leader can make a difference with every one, even if you don't find out about that for years and years.
So with nursing. I can't speak for Esme either, but that's why I keep it up. Besides, somebody's gotta take care of me when I'm old, and they damn well better know what they're doing and why. I'm just trying to improve my odds of survival. :) (I had somebody recognize me a few months ago and told me she remembered something I taught her and has never forgotten it. What a rush! I usually hear that from Scouts. :) )
You are absolutely right. I did not mean to imply ALL nurses. I started by saying that I have met so many amazing nurses, they far outweigh the ones that have been difficult to work/learn from. You have helped me on this site before and your knowledge and experience is admirable. I also understand that they don't all need to "teach" but professionalism is expected.
I guess my title was a bit general. I just returned from a seminar at the hospital regarding lateral violence amongst nurses as well. This is a topic that as a pre-nursing student didn't even know existed but I've seen it on the floor especially with novice nurses. My point was not to bash any nurse or the profession but recalling what being/becoming a nurse means to each individual.
I don't think the point should be about WHY a nurse became a nurse. The point should simply be respect. Some people can't teach and do their job at the same time. However that is not an excuse to take it out on the student. A nurse doesn't have to like having a student, but the nurse should remain professional. I have a coworker who hates training new employees. I have heard impatience in her voice and have seen her roll her eyes. But she is busting her butt trying to get all her work done in only 8 hours. But this same nurse is actually quite nice. She admits out loud that she does not like training, but it has nothing to do with the trainee, it has to do with her trying to get her work done. She trained me one day, and once I was off orientation she actually treated me as an equal and actually seeks my opinion at times.
I wrote a paper about lateral violence. I believe it runs rampant. Of course it is not just the nursing profession. I started to work for starbucks years ago, and the person training me was incredibly condescending. I quit in the middle of my shift telling her off in front of everybody. I am not proud of this. There are always going to be people who are rude and condescending. We have to have thick skin and deal with it professionally.
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I have asked questions in the past and have received very helpful advice; I do respect all of the experienced nurses and CNAs, but I will say this thread has really saddened and depressed me. I suppose I am no longer going to be "naive" about the politics and "ranks" in nursing.
la_chica_suerte85, BSN, RN
1,260 Posts
Even though I have had a scant few nurse preceptors blow me off, for every one who has done so, I've had 4 amazing ones excited to teach who were willing to engage me and show me the ropes. I don't think I would have confronted that nurse whether or not she took my med pass from me -- meds are tricky and I think a lot of RNs reflexively act in defense of their license and rightfully so! I've come to respect how much nurses do and how frustrating the job can be. Also, the BSN I'm working on is my 2nd Bachelors and I have to say students aren't quite what they used to be. There is a lot of entitlement and laziness -- the upcoming generation concerns me and this sentiment is shared with me and the other older students (but some of the oldest students are just as terrible). I guess that just makes me sound old (late 20s, hmph).
I always suspected that it sounded insane that we are at the clinical site to help (um, maybe the CNAs but that's about it -- otherwise, that's a hilarious statement) and now I know my suspicion is true -- we are in the way and a lot of instructors drop their students off and do not stay with them appropriately. A nurse can never know what is coming their way. So a med pass got snaked -- maybe the OP wasn't around when they should have been. I've had that happen to me. I do not want a patient to have to wait on their meds just because I got held up watching a PICC line placement. The meds can definitely go on without me and I wouldn't expect (nor ask!) anyone to wait. I'm going to have my whole career to have my own patients and to do my own med pass.
In the last clinical site I was at, we actually met and were taught by several fresh grads from our school and there was little, if any, evidence of NETY. I think that a thick skin is mandatory and I'm surprised at how sensitive some of my fellow peers are and how needy they are for approval and affirmation that they're doing well. This is medicine, y'all! It's gonna hurt and you aren't going to have someone pat you on the back letting you know you did a good job. Being a part of a patient's successful recovery is that affirmation, I guess.
Overall, my general attitude is just that, I'm here to learn, I'm so thrilled I got into the program at all and I'm open to any and all experiences, even if it's just one bed pan or bed change. Whether or not my preceptor is open to teaching, that's on them. I can figure out something to go do and learn if my preceptor's on bust -- however, I know now enough that if there is a nurse that is rumored to be problematic, I just ignore it because I refuse to go into situations prejudging like that. It just ends in disaster.