I am a B.S.N. Student in Texas. After talking to several other students from my school, it seems that very few nurses we have encountered even acknowledge that the students are there in the hospital. I feel as if they do not "wish" to have time for us. These are nurses with four or five patients who seem to have plenty of time for everything else but no time for students. Granted, I understand that students can get in the way and slow nurses down but most of us truly want to help. Maybe my persepctive is a lot different because I am in school and I see things idealisticly. I know everyone was a student once. I am just wondering how nurses feel when students are in the hospital? Do you personally feel differently about nursing than you did when you were still in nursing school?
What better way to ensure the success and love of future nursing than by nurturing, mentoring and teaching those bright smiling faces of the future. I think that if we as nurses foster self-confidence in students by teaching then the tasks we do every day, then they are one step ahead when graduating. We can teach them what we do but they have to see in us and in the care of our patients why we do it. Yes, nursing is an art and a science, but more the need and drive to be a nurse is in the heart. Our young adults come to us with that desire in their heart and it is up to us to treasure it and recognize it. They are truly our future and the furture of our profession.
I love having nursing students in the ED but only if they want to be there. Some of them come down and have no interest but don't want to do the "bed baths" upstairs. They stand in a group and hold up the desk. My feeling is if they want to be there then they will seek out learning experiences. I don't like feeling like if I have a foley to put in that I have to hunt them down and then get a look like "what, you want me to your job" even after their nursing instructor said they need the experience, it's easier to just do it myself. So I guess it just depends on the student. My suggestion to them is find a nurse and stick with her that shift and you will learn a lot. Your rotation in the ER isn't to hang with your buddies and chit chat and appear uninterested in being there. I guess this goes for any student. One that comes up to me and says "I'm so-and-so and I am here until 4 and if you have anything you need help with or any procedures please feel free to call me" will get me teaching them all day long. Attitude is everything and it's to busy to be chasing students around trying to get them involved when they don't really want to be.
To this day..I still carry that clip board..and it has really been the greatest silly thing I have ever done! That thing acts like my second brain when you are running around multitasking...and hey, I may be RN...but I still as questions daily! You never stop learning!!!!!
I carry a clipboard like that every day and even refer to it as "my brain" I look crazy walking around the unit asking "where is my brain, i misplaced it" but it's a life saver! Lots of nurses do this. :wink2: :roll
I am a B.S.N. Student in Texas. After talking to several other students from my school, it seems that very few nurses we have encountered even acknowledge that the students are there in the hospital. I feel as if they do not "wish" to have time for us. These are nurses with four or five patients who seem to have plenty of time for everything else but no time for students.
To the Nursing Students: Don't expect to be shown anything if you don't step up to the plate! I have seen plenty of nursing students who only show up to fulfill their clinical requirment and nothing else. If you don't offer to help the staff, don't complain when you don't learn and aren't shown anything. Case in point: we had 2 nursing students in our ER the other day...the one that offered to help out learned more and will probably be offered a position after graduation. The other student only wanted to stand around, ignored report when given, and flirted with the paramedics all shift (she was asked not to come back). You have to earn the respect...it isn't automatically granted. It is our licenses on the line and the patients are still our responsibility, even after you leave. Don't take things personally and you'll have a better time. You have to have a little bit of thick skin in order to make it in this line of work!
To the Nurses: As busy as we are, we should remember to smile once in a while and put the student nurses to work. If they want to learn, let them learn. But if you are too overwhelmed or have patients that require more care, have the smarts to let your charge nurse know and ask that the student be placed with another nurse with less stressful assignments. They can learn about admits, discharges, and other paperwork and patient teaching that needs to take place in all phases of nursing care.
This topic is one that my classmates & I discuss often. As an older(50) soon to be BSN graduate (December 2004) I find the personality issue not just exclusive to healthcare. Any work place has individual folks with all our quirks & fobiles.
As I have made my way through I have had many opportunities to shape my attitude. That has been how I have chosen to view the whole experience. What I do not spend much time doing is judging another. I do not have time in my learning or my life to do this.
If the nurse I am paired with does not seem to want to teach me I simply let her know what my perceptions are (kindly & respectfully) & do what I can to find another nurse that wants me around.
Like any other job I imitate the nurses I know are skilled & interact in ways that I respect. There are all kinds of people for all kinds of people. There are some patients that I have a hard time with & there are nurses that do not care for my style but I call them to communicate with these patinets because I know they can better than me.
While there is no excuse for rude behavior, it is my responsibility to behave in a way that let's the person know that I will not participate. Effective communication is a skill that can be learned & I wish we had more time to learn it in school but the 'real world" has plenty of opportunities.
like any other job i imitate the nurses i know are skilled & interact in ways that i respect.
wow, could we all as nurses carry this quote out in our professionalism. i am a nursing instructor & i can believe & have seen, many times that nurses treat students very poorly, as they also do to new employees. the term "we eat our young" is very true & when i did my thesis on mentoring in nursing, i found the majority does this & it impacts greatly on recruitment/retention. i myself used to berate students for "not knowing" until one day in grad school i had an epiphany that of course they don't know what we experienced nurses know-it's taken us many years to get where we are. but, we should help them learn what we have experienced to make them better nurses who will one day care for us or our family. if you consider yourself a good nurse make sure you pass this legacy on through the students you mentor in your job. we may have trouble changing old minds, but we can shape the new minds coming out to promote this profession that i have a passion for.
i get frustrated with students when they take a little longer than i may think is needed to catch on to a concept, but i try not to let it show because that just makes it more difficult for them. there are also students whom i have questioned why they want to be a nurse & that it may not be the best choice for them, they usually listen & make a change. when you base your decisions on the pay wages being advertised at 40+ per hour & see nurses on tv, the idea of nursing seems to good to not give it a try.
so students hang in there & for all of us seasoned nurses-lets give them the help & understanding that we may not have gotten so that our legacy becomes one of nurturing our young rather than eating them.
Specializes in Med Surg, ICU, Infection, Home Health, and LTC.
I love having nursing students when my patient load is not much over 5 or 6. It takes time and commitment to really share and help teach and provide them with good clinical experiences.
I will hunt any procedures being done, specially if they are not ones commonly done on the floor like inserting chest tubes or CVC lines, a complicated debridement, etc. I will find anything going on that I can and ask them if they want to go watch, even if it is not my assigned patient, just so they can learn and see more.
I will also talk to the cortor ahead of time and tell them about the students. Most of the docs love the audience and the opportunity to teach. ((I don't approach the doctors who I know are butt holes though.))
Students help me remember the youthful side of nursing, when it was all new and fun and exciting and scarey .....all at the same time. I need that enthusiaim. I love to have them and will always love that fresh look at things they bring.
Yes it slows me down. Yes it adds to my load. Yes it takes time. But these are the ones replacing us older nurses and I get to be a part of their furture and all their future patients. I like that legacy.
I think there are a lot of factors as to why some units/nurses are more welcoming to students than others and that we should get them out in the open, acknowledge them, and deal with them. Here are a few of the relevant factors that I have seen:
1. How frequently do students come to that particular unit?
2. What is the student to staff nurse ratio?
3. How prepared are the students for their clinical assignments?
4. Does the faculty member regularly embarrass the staff by criticizing their care?
5. Does the faculty member report every break in policy/procedure that she finds to the unit management?
6. Do the students arrive on the unit at the appropriate time?
A few examples: (And by the way, my hospital hosts the pediatric rotations for over 400 nursing students per year from 8 different nursing schools. For some units, they have students almost every week day and some Saturdays.)
1. We ask schools to have their students there on time for report so the nurses don't have to give a special report to the students immediately after the regular morning report. We have a couple of instructors who like to meet with their students before clinical -- causing them to be late for report or to miss it entirely. We have asked them not to do this, but they continue to do so. Who can blame the staff for being a little irritated by this? When the nurse receives report, she doesn't know if the students are simply late ... or if clinical was cancelled ... or the student calendar is wrong ... etc. Then, after report is over, the students arrive and want the nurses to repeat the report.
2. We have some instructors who regularly criticize and embarrass our staff in front of the students. They also report any discrepancies in practice they see to the unit manager or educator. Can you blame the staff for trying to avoid that instructor and her students?
3. We have a couple of instructors who make their assignments the night before clinical -- or at least far enough in advance that the students have an opportunity to read up on a few things ahead of time. That's great! But we have some instructors who don't make assignments until 10 minutes before the students arrive on the unit. Those poor students are clueless as to what their patients' diagnoses are, and know little more about the assessment and care that they need. While we feel sorry for those students, the staff really doesn't have time to be the substitute for a textbook at that moment.
4. Some of our schools assign their students to the same units several times, giving the students a chance to get oriented to the place. Other school put the students on a different unit each week -- never allowing the students to get oriented. This makes it more difficult for both the students and the staff.
I didn't mean for this response to become a rant against schools ... and certainly not against students. Many of the students are delightful as are some of the instructors. However, sometimes there are factors beyond the control of the staff nurse (and the student and the instructor) that are causing the situation to be stressful and a burden. These factors need to be acknowledged. It's not just whether the nurse is nice or not.
llg
Holy smoke!! I can't blame you for being disgusted by some of the practices of these instructors. I've been a med/surg instructor for 2 years now, and I ALWAYS have assignments ready the day before, have my students listen to report, and would never dream of embarrassing a staff nurse in front of a student!!! However, it seems too bad to take it out on the poor students, who are already stressed enough by a lousy educational experience. Perhaps a call to the school's program director is in order.
I've done a lot of things over the course of a 20 year career, and I think we all should realize that being nasty or rude to inexperienced people, or to your coworkers in general, is not unique to nursing. I worked for a disability management company for two years and what went on there is terms of backbiting, gossip, and rudeness equalled or surpassed anything I've seen in a community of nurses, be in in the hospital or otherwise! We aren't alone in our bad behavior, unfortunately...
Specializes in ER/Nuero/PHN/LTC/Skilled/Alzheimer's.
I am an ADN nursing student from Maine and I only had one nurse who was a hardass. She was down my throat the whole day and made me quote things on a patient's condition like it was textbook. I knew she had made other students miserable and had threatened to write at least two up so I was really nervous. To top it off it was the last clinical of spring term last May. But at the end of that day I realized I had learned more from that nurse than I had by most of the nice nurses. When I graduate, I plan on signing up for the student preceptor list as soon as I am trained at a facility. I don't think I'll be as hard on them as she was, but I feel as a nurse it's part of my job to educate others.
I almost became a nurse, it is still what I want to do more than anything in the world. The program that I was in didn't make it and I could not go into the regular classes. That is neither here nor there now, I just wanted to tell you it would have been wonderful working under someone like you. With your attitude, it's clear to see why you became a nurse. Someday I will live up to the example you set. Down but not out, I will be a nurse someday. Thanks for making my day.
Whenever I am fortunate to work with students, either LVN or RN, I always make it a point to COLLABORATE with them when providing care to the patient. I incorporate some humor, a bit of hand holding and a hug, (I had a student take the death of her patient very hard and she required a bit of sensitivity but was able to express her feelings to the family at the bedside, we all wept shamelessly) and I am notorious for writing each and every student up for some aspect of the care that they provided to the patient, the family or being a team player. I hand write it, make 2 copies, one for the student and one for the instructor and always focus on the positive. In case you can't tell, I have had some very distressing experiences in nursing school. I had one nurse set me up in first semester by handing me some applesauce to feed the patient, never knowing the nurse had crushed the patients meds. She went to get my instructor who witnessed me administering apple sauce (laced with the patient's meds) and I was given my first strike as we were not yet able to administer meds. Very dirty trick. I believe I am a better nurse because I had role models that were happy with the job, enjoyed people and had a sense of compassion and humor. They may not have been rocket scientists but they were heroes to me, and if I can leave the same impression on a student and they leave at the end of the day seeing me doing my job and loving it, then I serve them, the patient, my profession and myself. AMEN!
I work nights so dont really get to work with the students
but I love to see nursing students and medical residents
they are eager and anxious and look to me!! so its like it makes me feel good to see their enthusiasm and the residents......I learn anytime I deal with them!! hang in there
students and remember not to treat the next students bad when you are a nurse"with all the answers"
[in case you can't tell, I have had some very distressing experiences in nursing school. I had one nurse set me up in first semester by handing me some applesauce to feed the patient, never knowing the nurse had crushed the patients meds. She went to get my instructor who witnessed me administering apple sauce (laced with the patient's meds) and I was given my first strike as we were not yet able to administer meds. Very dirty trick.]
Unfortunately, I had an instructor like that. She would set me up for a fall. Once I took the fall, she would make me cry. Whew, I learned quickly, never let an instructor see you cry! That was last semester and it left me feeling stupid and incompetent. This semester I have an awesome clinical instructor. She has been so encouraging. As far as the nurses on the floor, I have had experience with both. In one unit, they honestly wanted to teach and help. The unit Im on now, we can tell they dont want us there. But they are on a hectic unit and I can understand. They have a job to do. I graduate in May and Im so excited!
happycamper
20 Posts
What better way to ensure the success and love of future nursing than by nurturing, mentoring and teaching those bright smiling faces of the future. I think that if we as nurses foster self-confidence in students by teaching then the tasks we do every day, then they are one step ahead when graduating. We can teach them what we do but they have to see in us and in the care of our patients why we do it. Yes, nursing is an art and a science, but more the need and drive to be a nurse is in the heart. Our young adults come to us with that desire in their heart and it is up to us to treasure it and recognize it. They are truly our future and the furture of our profession.