You will not learn anything in the conference room!

Nursing Students Student Assist

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Why are you there then?

Do NOT hole up in the conference room with your classmates. Please! Answer call bells, help toilet patients, pass or gather trays.

If you are paired with me, you WILL learn something. If I have to go to the conference room to say, "Hey, I'm about to titrate a Cardizem drip," why aren't ALL of you following me?

If the nurses were told you'll be doing ADLs for the patient today, and I've told you that your assigned patient needs turned q 2, why am I having to remind you? Why isn't your ONE patient washed up by 1000?

Why, when listening in on report, are you chattering to your classmate? Just because it isn't your assigned patient doesn't mean you can't learn something through the off-going reporting to me, or my questions to her.

There are very few students I've been impressed with lately. Today, two of my patients had students. ADLs only, no med pass. One student was velcroed to my side. She removed a Foley, dressed a sacral wound, hung an IVF bag, and did a SQ heparin all with my supervision. The other did nothing with me, and I had to go to the conference room to remind him on turns and a bath for his patient.

With no humility whatsoever, I can say that you, as a student, WANT me to be your nurse on clinical days. If you've shown me that you want to do stuff, I will give you the opportunity to do stuff. If my first impression of you is that you don't have the initiative to take advantage of what I have to offer you, I won't waste my time on the next clinical day.

I've been where you are. I know that not every nurse wants to teach students. But when I found one, I became her shadow, and I learned a lot.

Specializes in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology.
It does depend on the instructor, apparently, and it makes me wonder why, why, why does the paperwork have to be completed on the precious little clinical time? Is it possibly for *the instructor's* convenience so she can do the care plan grading that night? Hmmm....

Yep. However, in the defense of instructors whom I've had do this in the past, they have their regular job and also are in the process of either NP school or getting their Master's (one taught my clinical, our theory AND pharmacology -- if she hadn't, we wouldn't have had a program that qtr) and frequently they grade our papers right prior to our midterm and final evaluations. They're just making the most of the little time they have.

Also, we've had instructors sit with us while we look up and explain the meds we will give or what procedures we will do prior to administration. There is a lot of time-intensive activity that sometimes goes on in the conference rooms.

I start my program the week after next and there are 20 of us in our class. At our first orientation last week our clinical instructor told us our clinical schedule. We go every other Thursday, 10 one Thursday and 10 the next. At clinicals, we will go half the day with our preceptor and the other half we will be doing projects in a conference room. So 5 students will be with a preceptor and 5 will be doing the projects/paperwor for half the day and then we will switch.

Specializes in ER.

It is hit and miss. There were two clinicals where we did a time out and instead watched movies and analyzed different beliefs/views/whatever in the movies. One was Contagion which was interesting thought of what we would do as healthcare providers should there ever be an outbreak like that. Such as would we be willing to come into work to risk exposure if there was no cure and all we could do is push fluids and hope for the best? This was two years ago so the Ebola scare hadn't occurred yet. Another one was the successful surgeon who was diagnosed with cancer and saw everything as a patient so he changed his viewpoint.

We were in our second semester on a med-surg floor that was abnormally slow that semester so the teacher saw it as a better teaching moment for us to question our beliefs and our own actions through movies instead of each of us taking one patient.

I feel you beckyboo1 my program requires a ton of paperwork as well but we are required to do it after clinical. I have been very fortunate during my program. My instructors and nurses have been awesome!!! I feel like my clinical hours are the reward for all those hours of reading and practice question in theory. For me there is nothing like the hands on experience you get in clinical.

It is hit and miss. There were two clinicals where we did a time out and instead watched movies and analyzed different beliefs/views/whatever in the movies. One was Contagion which was interesting thought of what we would do as healthcare providers should there ever be an outbreak like that. Such as would we be willing to come into work to risk exposure if there was no cure and all we could do is push fluids and hope for the best? This was two years ago so the Ebola scare hadn't occurred yet. Another one was the successful surgeon who was diagnosed with cancer and saw everything as a patient so he changed his viewpoint.

We were in our second semester on a med-surg floor that was abnormally slow that semester so the teacher saw it as a better teaching moment for us to question our beliefs and our own actions through movies instead of each of us taking one patient.

You'll have to pardon me if I don't see how that was a practical way to learn anything about nursing. Having one patient for each student is still better than watching anything Hollywood dreams up. When things have been slow at my own hospital, I know the students have doubled up on patients just to have some experience and someone to work up a care plan for.

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