Taking care of people, and the theory of taking care of people are actually quite different realities. That’s on of the big reasons I believe in observation only clinicals, with a very small exception. Nursing students are forced to practice theory with every step by the book. That’s fine, but it doesn’t always work. People make mistakes, they forget things, and until you’ve done something 1000 times in the real world you’re not a pro. Also the added stress of those judgmental eyes aimed at the back of your head will make anyone nervous. Being nervous helps people not think clearly. Oh but they need to learn to work under pressure…. yes they do, and they will, when they have a lisence saying they understand theory. The nurse who orientates a new nurse for a month on the hospital floor can watch them do the skills. She is the same nurse who would “watch over” the students training. She is also the one who would rather sit back while someone else does her work. At least when training time does come around, the one being trained has their own RN and is legally employed but the hospital to do patient care and management.
School is a joke. The only classes that aren’t “self taught” in my eyes are Maternal and physical assessment Lab, taught by the same instructor. The others we discuss what we’ve learned, and we attempt to apply our skills in clinicals; but we’ve been back to school 1 month and their shocked we don’t have the drug book memorized. They have no intentions of teaching RN level pharmacology. They actually expect LPN students to learn everything from how to wipe front to back, to RN level pharmacology in 1 year.
A quick recap on last week before another one kicks off.
Monday was OB class then physical assessment. Physical assessment gets harder every week this week we learned about, memorized, were checked off on, and wrote out our clinical findings for a comprehensive eye exam. I worked Monday night 7p-7a. I worked Tuesday night 7p-7a. I got a little OB studying in there but not much.
Wednesday I took the OB exam. I made a 91.6% and my friend mage 96% I believe. Don’t know how we did it, but we’re happy.
Thursday I was anxious all day in anticipation of clinicals. I went to the college and worked more on the discussion post that was due Friday instead of reviewing med surge chapters like my friend was. I should have. First thing in class everyone was handed a blank piece of paper and told to write down what they learned from the chapters we are looking at in classe today. Great. Turns out she didn’t have them turned in, but she was seeing who was prestudying the chapters for her class like we should. So basically read it and come to class to discuss and work on weaknesses. I know we all will do better this week. Not sure how I feel about it but I understand the logic for either argument. We’ll call that argument preteaching and postteaching.
So that was Thursday. I turned in the discussion post before leaving the college, and off I went.
– off I went
The RN journey 