Spring Break!

As of 11:50 a.m. today, I am officially on spring break. There is no greater feeling in a student's life (except, perhaps, Christmas break - where there are no assigned readings and no papers due) than letting go of your responsibilities for a few days. I think I have been in spring break mode for about two weeks now.

Yesterday was my final clinical day of the rotation. As you can imagine, it was torture - just let me go home! - and the end of the shift couldn't come fast enough. We spent a full hour in pre-conference, discussing the poor reputations clinical instructors have, and how we misguided nursing students should try to understand their point of view. Baloney. (Although that "misguided" part makes some sense.)

I've heard it before. I chatted with a friend who is a clinical instructor out-of-state who said to me, "Nurse Betty, you've got to understand where the instructor is coming from - after all, you are working under her license!" At the time, I just nodded in disagreement (did you know that was possible?), but I have recently learned the truth about this common myth. Under the nurse practice act, all practicing nurses must be licensed; however, there are (at least) two exemptions: the first is for unlicensed personnel who dispense medications, for example, in a group home where no nurse is present, and the second is for nursing students. We, as students, are responsible for every act we carry out in the clinical day, to the level of our knowledge. The clinical instructor's license is only in jeopardy if he or she assigns a student a task for which that student has not been prepared. So you see, if I screw up - it's my own dumb fault!

All of that said, I am sure it is frustrating to deal with a student who chooses not to take responsibility for her own learning, and never gains any independence. Worse yet is a student who blazes forward when he should not, making mistakes and giving his patients inadequate care. I fully authorize any clinical instructor to make fast work of these students. Go ahead! Get 'em outta the way! They're just making life harder for the rest of us anyway. What I tried to explain to our heralded instructor yesterday is that most of us really do want to be independent, and we're actually trying hard to be perfect. Not just good, perfect. No mistakes at all. We are in essence holding ourselves to a higher standard than those lucky hospital employees who already have "RN" after their names. Our beef with the leadership, therefore, is not that they expect perfection - after all, we expect that of ourselves - but that they intimidate us into hiding the fact that there may be something we can't yet do perfectly. We have mastered the bed bath, the PO meds, and the subcutaneous injections; we've even learned how to ask "Do you have a history of sexual abuse?" to our COPD patients. We just lack the confidence to try out the skills we don't encounter very often, like starting IVs or giving IM injections.

And what the heck is wrong with that? Who doesn't hesitate when they are trying something new (especially when it involves sticking a needle into your patient)? The bottom line is, we all are learning to suck it up and just get through school, knowing full well that we will probably learn more in the first 6 months following our graduation than we did in our entire nursing program. Every nurse had to go through it at some point

...even the clinical instructors.

Hmm.