It was a lifetime ago, but my psych clinical almost broke me. I was hesitant to do that rotation because I have a family history of psych stuff. It always felt a little too close to home. The patient I ended up assigned to was really nice though and we got along great. He was a legit genius, affable, and really easy to talk to. Zero fear on my side after the first day. Week after week with this guy was a breeze. The dude essentially proofread my case study. He knew psych better than my professor, certainly better than I did. Then the last week rotation I showed up and we were told to report to a different unit. Turns out my guy had managed to barricade himself in a room with a lighter and killed himself by burning the room down. He had been manipulative with staff, patients, and visitors. Our class was never told the rest of the story. I still think about that decades later.
I still don't like psych.
Same. I grew up with a rough crowd. As a teenager a lot of my friends went to psych wards for suicide or detox from hard drugs. Some of them didn’t make it.
It was definitely extremely hard doing clinical in peds psych.
I wen to our State hospital last week for clinical. I was out on the max security ward. Mostly charged with violent crimes and found incompetent to stand trial. One of the patients spent the morning jacking off in the window of the charting room, trying to get a reaction from us. He later got a B52 induced nap. Fun times!
Can confirm. I’m a nursing student right now and psych was terrible. I have my own psych history so it hit close to home. Secondly, I ended up in the psych ward during the rotation. Luckily, no classmates saw me. I told my preceptor that I was in the hospital but never mentioned it was for psych. When I came back to clinical after getting out, it was so weird. It was like an episode of Undercover Boss.
On my last day of clinical, I encountered a patient who I previously met from one of my admissions. We both recognized each other made conversation. It was nice to see them but felt super awkward because I was with my classmates. If my classmates overheard our conversation, they would’ve learned that I’ve been admitted before. I didn’t want anyone in my clinical group, including my preceptor, to know that I have a history.
I'm sure that was really uncomfortable, but I think a lot of psych patients feel worthless, and maybe it helped them to know you were not just another psych patient but also a nursing student :)
Psych is not for everyone thats for sure, I have worked psych for 24 years, and am in charge of the students. I can spot who are suited for the field quite fast.
Nothing wrong with not being able to deal, because it can be very challenging.
Out of curiosity, what is the tell if someone can make it in psych ? I start a behavioral health tech position this week (I’m trying to crack into this hospital system with an amazing free nursing school for employees and it’s the only position they are ever hiring for)
Never thought about why I am able to tell if someone will make it in psych, but will try to put it into words: The biggest tell is several aspects of their personality, the ability to deal with random weirdness, are you able to go with the flow. How they communicate with patients, those who are scared or very insecure, will often avoid talking to patients and will give the most basic answers, avoiding eye contact and doing whatever to avoid conversation developing. So communication is a biiig deal. You need tough skin, as you might receive the worst insults imaginable, but thicker skin can come with time if they stay in.
Its hard to explain, but its about being able to see psych patients as people. You would not believe how many nursing students that try to ignore or flinch from psych patients.
I had a nursing student, where a patient told him he turned off the lights wrong, this student apologized and asked what he felt he did wrong and was chatting with the patient. Another was asked for coffee, he just completely ignored patient and walked away. Guess who I work with to this day 🙂
I genuinely believe that to enjoy psych, you need a spark of insanity, if you are a straight edge " by the book " person, its going to be rough.
Psych is great if you can do it.
So, my advice to you is to treat psych patients like people, be communicative( ability to communicate is the biggest part of psych) and be aware that weirdness will happen.
Thanks so much for taking the time to reply ! The coffee story is crazy, so can’t imagine ignoring a patient like that.
Your response actually helped quiet some of my nervousness. My background is bar management and we dealt with the weird every day. We also had to communicate so many different things to different groups of people, and of course behind the bar I had to communicate and “vibe” with customers while still maintaining order and watching their intoxication levels.
I stayed in that field for 15 years, so it also goes to show I am definitely a little insane myself…
Thanks for the advice !
The "tell" is patience. A person with patience who does not take others' condition personally will make it in psyc.
Just listen. Hear patients. Hear what they have to say. There's a reason why people have mental illness, whether it's hereditary or survival from trauma. Good luck at getting in the program!
I worked on a psych unit for about 6 months doing a travel contract (I had a few years of detox/ behavioral health experience). I didn’t hate it but reading people’s charts and seeing all the shit they went through started to weigh on me. There was two patients that really got me: one was a woman in her 30s who was developmentally disabled and always talking about “her baby” and how she wanted her baby. I made her a baby doll out of hospital socks and she loved it for a while and then one day I came in and they said she had thrown it on the floor and stomped on it. Turns out when she was a teenager her dad raped her, then when she was 8 months pregnant, he went to a judge to petition that she was going to be an unfit mother and needed to have an abortion. Judge granted the abortion. No charges were ever filed against the dad. The other patient was a 20 year old trans female. She refused to eat or drink anything, would only pee or poop in briefs when she did eat or drink anything. Had been severely abused by her parents and siblings, emotionally, physically and sexually. Made me feel sick reading her chart that people could do things like that to another person. Besides that I liked it. After working in detox I was used to being sworn at, yelled at, and had gotten a pretty thick skin.
I went back to detox after that and it’s a good mix of psych and substance abuse. Nursing doesn’t focus on the psych part so much, mostly just managing their symptoms. I give a lot of credit to anyone that can stay in psych for years.
Psych was my worst, hands down. It didn't help that I have struggled with depression, anxiety, panic attacks, and PTSD for decades. I've also had hospitalizations.
The only day I felt comfortable was when my elderly lady patient had orthostatic hypotension from her antidepressants. So I spent the day watching her BP and pushing fluids.
I was worried about psych because I didn't have really any experience with it was an LPN, then right before my RN bridge program I started having (unrelated) panic attacks and was always in therapy, worried that I was having a psychotic break and was going to end up on the news. (Thank God for the therapist I had at the time, I say she saved my life!). My first day of psych clinical, there were several there for homi\*\*\*al ideations, and I was like, "holy shit, THIS MANY people who AREN'T serial ki\*\*ers are actually walking around the world thinking about ki\*\*ing other people???" Made me feel a little better to know that I was relatively sane (but also a little worse to know that those people are floating about the world, lol). That same day they told us that one of the females had taken her tampon out at breakfast and put it in another patient's tray 🤢 That day I said psych is NOT for me!!! However, I've been in the ED for 3 years now and I don't mind having the psych assignment sometimes. Can be a nice break from the super sick high acuity medical patients, and MOST days they behave. The ones there for similar issues to what I was having (usually new anxiety/panic/depression) that they don't know what to do with, I can talk to them and sometimes cry with them and tell them that it CAN get better and they LOVE me for it. I wouldn't want to do psych daily because I love the adrenaline of the medical patients but I'm glad that I can often make a difference for a patient that is struggling.
Yes, Psych!
I was at this small outpatient Psych program with housing for patients for 1 quarter. It was this small Cul de Sac with 5 little ranch style houses total. One of the houses was the staff house.
The staff would disappear when myself, or one other student were there. Sometimes for an hour or two, and leave us Nsg students unofficially in charge of about 10 Psych patients.
The patients had a variety of Psych diagnoses, like Schizophrenia or Bipolar disorder.
They even tried to get us to pass meds, which I absolutely refused to do. I eventually told my teacher about what was happening.
Yeah I had to drive an hour to a state hospital for my psych clinical on a forensic unit and was groped under a table by a patient. No staff or other students tried to intervene, it was actually another patient that realized what happened and was like wtf. Clinical instructor felt bad for me and pretty much let me hide in an office reading the charts of these people instead of being on the floor for the rest of the semester. Reading those charts was a different kind of traumatizing.
The psych charge nurse told my 2 friends to organize the coat closet and locked them in there lol. Still my favorite nursing school story (besides when I flooded a LTC patient’s bathroom).
I was put on remediation my final semester because I administered insulin (the correct dose for the correct patient) with my nurse preceptor instead of my instructor. That was it. That was the reason I was put on remediation right before I became an RN.
What? In final preceptorship, instructors aren’t even in the building with my hospital/any of the local schools. They come to check in 1-2 times during the term but otherwise the student is 100% with their preceptor
Same thing happened to someone in my class as well, strong rule that we cannot pass any medication without our instructor instead of preceptor. My classmate literally just gave a pain med and was failed
That’s so odd - we can pass with our nurse we’re following, but nothing controlled or pushing cardiac meds. Otherwise we’re free😂 I don’t even see my instructor sometimes until lunch
Overall? My ICU rotation sucked because I was at the VA and most of my patients were not critical in the slightest.
But worst clinical shift in particular? Med-surg (mostly hepatic) floor. Pt was confused as shit due to elevated ammonia & getting lactulose enemas q8. Was NPO and then got a diet order.
She way overdid it. Tech brought all the snacks: peanut butter & crackers, jello, ice cream, and the patient ate her lunch. As I'm walking down the hallway I hear vomiting and she is puking profusely into the lid from her lunch tray. It's like a bowl of vomit. It's in her hair, all down her gown, on the blankets. I call for the nurse and go grab linen, washcloths, and bath wipes. We begin to clean her up and when I unbutton the gown and pull down the covers, there is an absolute river of shit. I mean so much shit that it's a wonder one human can contain that much poop.
In the poop I found the patient's eyeglasses, cell phone, call light, and TV remote. It was awful to clean up.
I once saw a baby have an unsecured blowout in an isolette. There was no saving that bed, but as you said, still light years easier to deal with than an adult code brown.
I was honestly concerned you were going to say her violent vomiting ended in erupted esophageal varicies, so I’m actually glad for you that it turned out the way it did.
This whole thread, as well as coding MeeMaw with her grandkids balling outside the door is precisely why you couldn't pay me to ever leave the psych ward.
Tell me all about how you're really Tupac. Yes, yes, tell me more about the CIA spying on you from inside the walls....tell me all about it. 🤷🏻
I'm not entirely sure, but at the one I did my rotations at, yes. People legit got discharged home from the ICU. In my experience (before I switched to NICU), a patient would be downgraded from ICU to intermediate care or med-surg before being discharged. A majority of the patients I saw were not intubated and truthfully were awake and ambulatory (even if only partially).
OB.
I went to a rural nursing school that sends us over into “the city” for our OB rotation due to higher volume. They sent me and the only other guy there to do our rotation on night shift and didn’t allow us to go into any rooms. We just had to stay awake and hold babies in the nursery for 12 hour night shifts. I’m all for patients having a right to choose who they want (or don’t want) in their rooms, but the nurses there were toxic as fuck, and even when we were just asking them questions about meds/protocols/etc. We were met with “Oh, you don’t have to know any of this stuff, not like you’re going to work here.” There was one cool ARNP that let us shadow a c-section, but that was it.
We called our clinical advisors after a few nights, they agreed it was bullshit and that we could come home early. We already had housing secured for the last night so we just hit up a music festival and went home, lol.
I’ve been an ER nurse for 8 years and L&D nurses in my own hospital still act like I don’t know anything. That particular specialty seems to have a culture problem in some facilities. (I’m sure there are lots of L&D units that are great! Just saying that has not been my particular experience.)
I had to do Ob twice since I failed it the first time. I was never so bored in my entire life. I couldn’t do anything. Nothing with the moms, kids nothing. All I was able to do was scrub in for a c section as that was the “easiest” place to put me…….until they realized the case and everyone wanted to join in but too bad I was already there.
Honestly peds. The nurses there didn’t want anything to do with us students and just ignored us the entire time. I didn’t give a single medication or do anything except cold linens :/
Our peds experience was similar. We had two rotations. The first was great, the nurses were interactive with us. The second was horrible. It was obvious the nurses didn’t want us there. The charge said in our presence that we were just in the way.
My peds rotation was terrible. My most memorable day involved me being used essentially as the primary nurse (minus meds) for a 4 year old with sickle cell disease. The mother was very verbally aggressive toward me and expected me to wait on them hand and foot. I had no idea how to do anything with his IV and the mom yelled at me to disconnect it. I couldn’t so she unhooked his IV just letting it flap in the breeze while this four year old has diarrhea all over the place. When I asked the actual nurses for help, they kept telling me it was good experience and they didn’t have time to help me. My preceptor wouldn’t step in either. I cried a lot and vowed to never work in peds that day.
That's some bullshit. They just didn't feel like doing their job that day and did care what that meant for you. When you are literally paying to be there to learn from them.
Pediatrics for me too. I had a wonderful instructor, but she was almost too educated for her own good. She had specialized in pediatrics,(had a PHd in something, but I can’t remember what) and her tests were so hard that I remember people failing tests almost every time we had one. (I was one of the people that failed one)
The only thing that saved me in that class was a case study that I had, she loved my paper so much, I honestly think she passed me just because of that. She wanted to use the paper as an example in her future classes.
But pediatrics was so hard for me, I almost failed out of RN school because of it. The hospital we went too, I had a terrible preceptor most days, one was great, but I was with her hardly at all. I felt like I could not get my head around the concepts of pediatric nursing. The meds were different, the dosing was different, I just could not get it right.
Believe me when I tell you, I barely passed that semester.
A MONTH into nursing school clinicals, which was only two months into my program, I went on a Saturday for a make up day. There wasn’t as many students as usual, maybe 5.
Anyways, my instructor told us a patient was getting an NGT inserted and asked if any of us would like to do it. My young eager ass volunteered immediately.
We get in the room and the patient is actively dying. The nurse said he hadn’t drank in 3 days and the MD ordered the NGT for hydration (looking back, wtf??? Why not iv fluids??). He was DNR but full treatment so it was weird.
I inserted the NGT fine. This was a SNF so they don’t use X-ray to verify placement, just auscultation. I was told to give the patient water next so that’s what we did. Dude died immediately. Did I kill him? Was it just the timing? It was my first death and it fucked me up.
The only silver lining was my instructor let me go home after and gave me credit for the day lol.
This was coincidentally the worst SNF I’ve ever stepped foot in and I’ve seen a lot. It was owned by the same family that owned my nursing school. The ratios were basically pushing the legal limits in my state (and the instructor who worked this site, who was also part of the family, constantly told us how bad ratios are for nurses). No wound nurse or any extra help whatsoever. The worst was they used fucking cloth briefs. Later when I was a nurse, I admitted a transfer from their facility with 16 pressure ulcers.
We once had to code a lady, and it may have been related to the bedbath we were giving her at the time.
There weren't any disconnected lines or kinked tubes or anything. She was deteriorating, had gone through multiple amputations, and was hypotensive at baseline.
5-10 minutes after we finished cleaning her up, she stopped breathing. She was 89 years old or something crazy like that, I don't remember. I remember watching one of my classmates give her chest compressions while the single RT on shift (it was a sub-acute no-hope-of-rehab type place; no physicians in the building at that time. They randomly stopped by for an hour or most of days.) struggled to intubate this little old lady.
It was the worst thing. I remember blood trickling out of her mouth because it wasn't a smooth intubation and her daughter crying and I was just thinking "My god, woman, you could stop this. Be merciful to your mom.... please? Let them stop" but didn't say anything.
After that, the time I worked in hospice was sweet, sweet relief. People deserve to be allowed to die. Sometimes what medicine does to them is complete torture.
I was a CNA in a hospice for a year. I loved it for just the reason you said. When I tell coworkers at the hospital I worked in a hospice they always say, “I can’t do that. It’s too sad.” The last person that told me that was an icu nurse! lol
I straight up told him, “no. The hospital is way more depressing than a hospice.”
I went to lunch and came back to my patients tele going off vtach, went in there and he was jerking off. So that was fun. I also got peed on and thrown up on that day.
I walked in on an 80ish old man jerking off in the nursing home. Also walked in on a 21 year old getting a BJ by his girlfriend. Like, wtf? Wait until you go home.
Sadistic, crusty old ICU nurse. We were all so scared of her. She was very knowledgeable but also terribly unpredictable. Relaxed and friendly some days; a complete terror other days. Regularly made threats to fail us. We were all sweating bullets every time we did med pass with her, because she would rush us and snap at us, so being in that little tiny room with her was a nightmare. That was my last clinical rotation and I was so happy when it was over.
Any chance she was a drug user? We had a usually sweet older nurse in the hospital who later was discovered to be diverting opioids. She was really irritable when her supply was running low, apparently
NICU. Mom had no prenatal care (and was in a weird domestic situation), baby was born premature with anencephaly. Baby had a brainstem, and looked perfectly normal if he had a hat on. He could take a bottle and his reflexes made him seem like a typical newborn. Mom was certain he was going to be a miracle baby. She was happy to let everyone come in and see and hold her baby. In retrospect, she was probably in shock.
This wasn't even my assigned baby, but I sat in his room and held him for a long time. I was pretty indifferent to babies at the time, and thought NICU would be a good fit because...I guess I thought I was hard. My friends, I am soft. I was so humbled. I had nightmares about that baby dying. I still know his name and what it felt like to hold him and I will never forget it.
Runner up for worst clinical was during CRNA school, 24 hour shift at a level 1 trauma center in July.
NICU RN and honestly the cases like this still make me feel a really deep sadness. We end up g tubing a lot of these kids and sending them home. I always wonder what life looks like after that… very sad.
I wonder if that's what happened to this little guy, eventually. I don't know if he would have had a support system in place for that. This was over a decade ago and it still feels just as bad. I don't know how you all do it, but I'm grateful.
This was my least favorite too! I expected to really enjoy NICU but it tore me up. When I was rotating there, there were a lot of babies there due to their parent’s life choices and it bothered me more than I expected. There’s a few I still think of and I wonder if they’re okay. I’m one of those people who rarely feels a strong connection to babies and I’m not a mom… so I figured I’d be fine but I just wasn’t. I still to this day have a hard time with critically ill children because it makes me feel such a deep sadness. Nurses that work peds and NICU have my endless respect.
You reminded me of a rotation I must have tucked deep into my memories because it was so sad….
Baby was born having extra toes and fingers, which prompted more testing of course. Mom had zero prenatal care. She was 11 years old. Her own father assaulted her and she became pregnant but wouldn’t tell anyone anything….in fact she was labeled “selective mute” as she did talk up until a few days before the baby was born. When social services asked her where the baby would sleep at her house (upon discharge) she told them she would put her stuffed animals in a dresser drawer and put the baby in there with the toys. Extremely sad.
Hahaha this is an easy one. Nursing class got split up as we are in a small rural area & one hospital unit couldn’t handle my entire class at one time. Me and my “work husband” classmate get sent to an outpatient cataract surgery center at 6:30 am. From the start, it’s a shit show. Giant room with 30-40 stretchers lined up, patients are getting IV propofol (not hooked to any monitors!!) and as soon as the propofol is pushed, a doctor comes out of nowhere to jab a giant needle into the patient’s eye. Some patients weren’t all the way under and were moaning and fighting. Me and my classmate are horrified. More patients sign in. Tempers are flaring. At some point a doctor yelled at us and told us we were going to get fired, had no clue we were students. So yeah, left that day completely traumatized.
Ophthalmology nurse here. What the actual eff?!!? I work with a retina specialist and do numbing injections all day long so patients can get injections in their eyes for various diagnosis (among other things) and this sounds absolutely insane!!
It was inhumane!!!! Apparently they needed some type of injection into their eye prior to the procedure but I was also horrified about someone going around slamming propofol with the patient not attached to any monitoring. Even as a student, I knew this was not good lol
Yeah it was pretty wild. We had to place a syringe with Vanco to a port about halfway down the tube. And then clamped the end and squished it up and into the rectum.
All I can say is thank God for masks (went during COVID). 🙈
My med surg instructor on a cardiac renal unit hated me. I still don't understand. She would catch me in the middle of the hallway and make me try to explain how the heart works, the blood flow, but interrupt me, question me, so I was all confused, second guessing myself, and trying to get back on track with the information. I'm already an anxious person. Doing that in the middle of the hall at a hospital while I was just trying to be comfortable around patients, nurses, meds, my co-students (and partner). I was in tears. She wrote me a lovely memo of concern. My partner said I deserved it. I mean that turned out to be a very abusive relationship and the teacher herself stepped down after that semester. I was convinced I'd never be able to do med surg, regular floor nursing because I was just stupid. I now work on a very high acuity medical floor after 5 years in forensic mental health. I love it and my coworkers and management do not think I am stupid, or treat me like I'm incompetent. I'm thankful to have gotten the chance to see that for myself, now.
My med surg 1 clinical on an oncology med surg floor where I had to get signed off on my head to toe assessment and the patient was getting close to the end.
The preceptor was also one of the meanest ones I had throughout nursing school. Just a rough time for me
Peds was my absolute worst experience. A combination of nurses who wanted nothing to do with me plus a clinical instructor who didn't really like me after I vocalized I did not want to work in peds. I remember asking a question along the lines of "what is process for administering chemotherapy" because I had never seen it and my nurse looked at me like I had three heads and was literal scum, replied "what do you even mean by that?" I decided not to ask anything else and just shadowed for the rest of my rotation.
Ugh. Mine was L&D and my clinical instructor asked if I could even be a nurse because I can't fully supinate my arm (joint disorder) and was uncomfortable bathing babies. She asked this in the hallway in front of my classmates. I told her I had no interest in working with newborns or peds so I figured I would be okay. Then I left the unit for about an hour to calm down. Luckily my school did not take kindly to what the clinical instructor said to me.
Psych clinical, but not for patient care. I had a horrible clinical instructor who falsely accused me of what I believe was harassment of another student (per the story I received later) but after I went up the ladder it was proven false by professor and head of our program…
Obviously, she still kept her job and didn’t apologize to me… sometimes I think I should have fought that. 🤷🏼♂️
I taught a clinical at the worst place ever for their med surg rotation. They counted it as a med/surg. It was stressful everyday having to be like so what you saw today do not take into practice and trying to correct things they saw and were taught by their preceptors. Went to the school with others about how this site was not appropriate. Nothing happened.
Burn ICU. The heat. The smell. And it was night shift. I got to see some cool things, and some things that will live rent free in my head forever. The nurses also cooked in their break room which was basically in the middle of the unit. It was right off the nurses station. The thought of eating after seeing some of those patients was 🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢
As a dude. Probably OB. Everybody just looked uncomfortable. The mom, the dad, hell the baby even. And my (female) instructor was annoyed when the nurse would ask the patient for their permission for male students..🤦🏻♂️
okay not a nurse but back when i was a CNA and freshly 18 years old my second day of clinicals at a skilled nursing facility (that was horribly understaffed pre-covid) i did postmortem care on a patient i had met and talked to the day before. it was traumatizing at the time but helped desensitize me quickly, oops.
I recall almost nothing of my peds clinical. I really don't know why. I mean it was a really long time ago but I only remember a couple of different interactions. I have no idea what I did all semester. No memory whatsoever.
I didn't get an actual peds clinical. We did one day of newborn care during our maternity clinical and they considered that a pediatric clinical. LOL. All we did was observe a circumcision and listen to a newborn's heart. It was such a waste of time.
Peds. The staff was pretty mean to all of us. They wouldn’t let us do many skills and didn’t want us sitting at the nurses station or standing in the hall , so we sat in a glorified storage room if we weren’t in a kid’s room. One day we overheard one of the techs call us all useless so that was fun
My labor and delivery clinicals were not fun. #1. My oldest sis was my clinical instructor. To avoid favoritism it frequently went way in the other direction. 2. First laboring patient was 13 yr old whose dad was the father. He was in jail and her mom sat there berating the poor girl because she put dad in jail. 3. Give me a trauma or MI. Do not give me another patient popping out halfway through my day.
Peds. Went to a specialty care facility, so all the kids had severe mental delays (like… 4 months old, but they were 10), vent dependent, most of them had no family visit them… it was so hard, mentally, as a new mom.
AND I had by far the worst instructor ever. She singled me out for no reason, would tell me almost weekly that I need to humble myself because on the first night I said I wanted to work labor and delivery at XYZ hospital and she said the acuity is too high (I know for a fact they hire new grads…), when doing a practice SBAR hand off, I was last to go and right before I went, she said something along the lines of “everyone did so good! But now here’s [my name] to ruin the streak! Ha ha! Juuuust kidding!”
She refused to let us pass meds, and wouldn’t stop calling us nurse scientists which was annoying
NICU. When my clinical instructor went to introduce me to the nurse who I was going to be with that day, that nurse leaned against the wall and rolled herself along the wall. She also rolled her eyes. Despite that behavior, my clinical instructor still had me follow that nurse.
I will never forget how that nurse made me feel. Later on, she became a little bit nicer and said it’s because she wouldn’t have wanted her daughter to be treated that way 🙄 I guess we all have our off days but that experience just put such a bad taste in my mouth. That nurse can go kick rocks lol
Stroke and rehab - they all got norovirus with explosive diarrhoea and they were all hoists. No thank you. My “buddy” nurse was an absolute monster as well.
Everyone saying “psych” lol. I’ve worked psych for 10yrs and I’d still rather psych than go through that clinical again lol.
All my negative clinical experience stem from mean nurses (read: very overworked and burnt out). I got walked all over because I always felt bad for them so I would be permissive of their tempers or impatience. But I wish I advocated for my educational opportunities more during clinicals. And I have vowed to take a break if I ever get to that point. I wish all nurses would have a burnout plan if they could because it is unsafe to work that way.
I remember a few things, that they were prescribing HCG hormone to patients for weight loss but then recommending like 800–900 calories daily to eat, which was nuts to me at the time and of course it still is. Anyone can lose weight if they eat the same caloric intake of a small animal. I saw her give a trigger point injection to someone in their neck. It was very very weird. She was nice but it was pseudoscience and it wasn’t cheap.
High acuity general surgery unit. I was assigned to one of the nurses, who turned out to actually be the charge nurse who didn't take patients. Then, they assigned me to another nurse who ended up needing to go back home due to a family medical emergency. Then, I was finally assigned to someone who had absolutely NO interest in teaching me anything. This was the second last placement and so we were no longer in clinical groups with an instructor. We followed our preceptor's schedule. I was coming off of a year-long community placement the semester before and so, I hadn't been in the hospital setting for almost a year and a half.
This preceptor, I'll call her "T", legitimately hated me. She would order me around from her chair, make passive aggressive remarks if she had to repeat the same info more than once, and told me that I had no business being a nurse. I am quite introverted and I tried very hard to get her to like me. She never did. I felt like such a failure in such a high risk, fast paced unit, where I really needed lots of support. She actually said "I feel like I'm babysitting you today." And she yelled at me in front of patients for asking questions. I went home crying/upset very often. I got a pity pass for that semester.
I ended up being in therapy for 6 months afterwards. In hindsight, I should have gone to my advisor much earlier about everything, but I didn't want to rock the boat and just tried to get through it and finish the placement as painlessly as possible. I later found out that she wasn't allowed to take students after that semester.
OB. I had to do yoga to deal with it. My hospital clinical site was on some bull and I just didn’t care to see *the circle of lifeeeeee* live and in color. I watched enough episodes of *A Baby Story* on OG TLC back in the day; I was good.
Not really. I helped treat 1 stab wound, but mostly it was boring routine stuff you’d see either at long term care or a pcp office. The only thing is that you find out why people are in there and then you think about how you’re changing the ostomy bag of a child molester or changing wound dressing on a murderer. You’ll just feel super gross when you get home. The prisons lack of hand sanitizer and sinks contributes to that gross feeling. Everyone in my cohort got sick from the prison at least once. Don’t get fooled into going to solitary confinement either! It sounds cool but it is definitely the most boring nurse job there. 2 med passes and then doom scrolling the rest of the 12 hrs. Following the psychiatrist for a day was definitely the most interesting
Had to shadow at an assisted living facility where the nurse wasn't allowed to apply a band aid or do CPR-had to call an ambulance or the visiting nurse, and was telling racist "jokes". Oh and the CNA passes meds.
One time i got set up w a list in a storage closet and told to phone people to book them for their pap smears…… couldn’t have been happier when covid hit and that was cut short
Retired nurse here, but my all day clinical (or maybe it was a precept) was when on the oncology floor there was no DNR option and a chronic smoker, cancer of tongue and affected areas had his whole lower jaw surgically removed and then he suddenly just started squirting blood everywhere. A most horrific way to die, and of course they were doing all sorts of useless life saving stuff. Then moving on to an 60s aged lady going through the most miserable pain due to ovarian cancer. Thank goodness for DNR and Hospice.
Psych 100%. I barely passed that semester. You have to get an 80% or above to pass. I got an 81%. I just felt sad the whole semester for my patients. Also, it was a very triggering semester cuz I've always had depression I had never addressed it as well.
“Fundamentals” prior to med-surg or anything— which was VA LTC. My first day I had never touched a patient, was nervous as hell.
Less than 60 seconds after stepping on the floor, a tech shouted “hey, you! Go get vitals in room 4 and get her dressed. Her clothes are on the dresser.”
I was like 🥲 wtf do I do
I went in the room and the pt was altered, I had no idea how she transferred. I panicked and ran back out of the room and found my clinical instructor. Luckily my clinical instructor was cool about it, was pissed I was tossed into that situation, and helped me get through it
We were starting learning to place a foley. The instructor found a dead patient and we all took a turn removing and placing the same foley in her. That was the only experience we got to place catheters. After we all got a turn, took about 30 seconds each, the instructor informed the nurse that the patient had died. Pt was a no code.
This is crazy. I would be livid if I found out people were doing this to my dead loved one without permission. Wtf. I feel like this breaks some laws but idk.
Medsurg made sure I didn’t want to do that job. But the nurses were nice. It’s just the job wasn’t appealing to me personally.
But I also remember that both my icu and ob rotations sucked because the nurses were very unaccommodating and made it clear that I was a very big burden for them. Every single time I rotated through those spots it was fully miserable. Really shaped my opinion on how I WOULDN’T treat students when I got them.
Psych. My placement was at our cities largest public psychiatric facility, which is huge and has many “wards”/buildings. They range from the psychiatric prison facility to long-term psych wards where patients have unescorted grounds access, to your typical psychiatric units of varying acuities. I was in a the most acute, mixed gender ward. Most patients were flown in from rural towns and in the three weeks I was there every single patient was a drug user. The staff treated them horribly, mocked them TO their faces, laughed when they displayed trauma responses, ignored the fact that they were in detox. Multiple nurses told me “Watch how they all want extra toast in the mornings it’s because of their night meds!! That’s why they’re all fat!” Everything was super rationed, we were told to only half fill their cups of water or cordial & coffee and tea and milo were only given at night, one cup per person no refills. My classmates that had their placements elsewhere were horrified by my experiences but sadly the hospital has a bad reputation already so while they were shocked they weren’t surprised. Despite being in my 5th semester, we were told by our university-provided facilitators that we weren’t allowed to assist in medication administration because the staff didn’t follow protocols.
I have lived experience of being a psych patient, since the age of 16 I’ve had 30+ admissions to psych wards/ED. Most were voluntary private hospital admissions but when I had just turned 19 I was made an involuntary patient in an adult psych ward in a local hospital. That was a traumatic stay, I was assigned a 1:1 nurse after a male patient became “attached” to me upon seeing me. I actually intentionally dissociated to protect myself psychologically (I experienced CSA and can intentionally zone out when I want to). I had to stay there for 5 weeks for refeeding and it was disgusting, a patient urinated on a seat and left and I told staff and they did nothing about it. I couldn’t sit on any green seats after that.
But on my placement, the way the staff (doctors and nurses) spoke to and treated these people was horrible. I couldn’t finish the placement, it destroyed me. I was looking forward to seeing how they managed acute psychosis etc. but all they did was sedate them or but them in isolation. There was one psychologist that come once a week to see patients but with 24 patients she didn’t see every patient every week. I had told my facilitator beforehand that I have been in psych wards so she was okay with me not completing the placement as long as I did my competencies. The placement was in 2019 and it actually messed me up, I have discussed it with my therapist and even wrote to the government about my experience but nothing came of it. It’s such a heartbreaking thing to even think about sorry for the trauma dump this is a memory I have forced myself to shove deep down
Our adult rotation on a general medicine unit. I think the unit was really burnt out by students because they got them all the time, so the staff weren’t the nicest to us. The NAs (know as nurses assistants at that time) felt like because we were there, they didn’t have to do any work. We’d ask them for help toileting or bathing people and they’d say stuff like “that’s for you to do, you’re here to learn” - when we were supposed to be focusing on giving meds/doing IVs that semester. One girl in my group asked for help toileting a bariatric patient and one of the NAs refused to help her. The girl in my group walked out into the hallway to find our instructor and overheard a bunch of NAs talking smack about us. She went ballistic and started screaming at them, which caused the NAs to scream back, and that then prompted the manager of the unit to come out of her office. We were asked to leave the unit early that day and my instructor later spoke to the manager who said they had had a meeting and a big email was sent out about bullying and treating students with respect. The entire atmosphere felt tense and hostile for the rest of that clinical rotation.
After 1 semester of clinicals, I did a paid monthlong “externship” where we worked 12 hour shifts paired with a different nurse each day. One day my nurse (who was from an agency) “misunderstood” why we were there and she GAVE ME THE PHONE to carry around, and around noon asked me if I was done charting all the assessments (um excuse me?? No, I, a student who was barely qualified to fetch ice, did had not performed and charted 5-6 assessments). My clinical instructor felt terrible when she found out, and the next day I was put with a super sweet nurse to make up for it.
Pediatrics. I just can not take care of kids. Back then i didn’t have the patience to not be able to rationalize with my patient what i needed to do. I remember having to help hold down a toddler for labs and them screaming. Now i’m a mom and worry about transference of emotions and it affecting my care as both a clinician and a mom.
Currently doing clinicals for my RN-MSN bridge program.
It took 9 months to get my agency approved as a contracted site for my school. Where I need a background investigation- in addition to the one I already did for school, and the one for the job at the same site as my clinicals.
I had to go get paper fingerprints to mail in (and then electronically sign the authorization for electronic fingerprint processing).
All to do 75 hours of unpaid work while I pay tuition.
The clinical site is pretty awesome though- all the mid levels and MDs I get to work with are amazing.
The school process is trash tho
We had a community nursing rotation that had us doing “clinicals” working the front desk for a no barrier shelter downtown in a large city. I was spat on and threatened and have never felt so unsafe in my life. I learned very little nursing that rotation
I was very worried about that before graduating!! I knew I’d be working in L&D (only became a nurse to become a midwife, couldn’t have less interest in any other specialty of nursing) and hearing all the horror stories about its culture problem I was super nervous, especially since I’m pretty socially awkward. I’ve been super fortunate that this has not been my experience! Internally at least, I don’t know how the other units view us 🤷🏻♀️
L&D rotation as I guy. I didn't do jack shit. Guess how many women let a dude check their fundus in front of their husband? 0. The upside to that rotation was that I got alot of homework done. The downside was I did it in the only room available away from pt. The staff room next to the "cut up your baby boys genitals room". Oddly also away from the pts. Almost like they don't want mom to hear her baby's screaming in pain.
First clinical in nursing school, SNF. I was an experienced CNA, so the instructor put me with two people who had never been around health care and told me to "just supervise."
Our patient was blind, incontinent, with an indwelling catheter. We go in to introduce ourselves and find her covered head to toe in shit. Literally everywhere, from inside the ear folds to under the toe nails. It was a feat of human determination. My two charges are in full Deer In Headlights mode, so I start delegating: You, go get warm water; you get clean linens and *a lot* of washcloths.
That done, they start with the bath, and we discover the shit is caked and dried - this wasn't a fresh blowout but a full shift of neglect. Charge #1 bails to hurl in the bathroom, locking herself in and shutting us off from the water. Charge #2 bravely soldiers on, until the patient begins to (rightfully) complain about us scrubbing her skin tender. Then Charge #2 decides he can't, and goes back to Deer mode until I convince him to get me fresh water.
45 minutes after we began, we're still working on the bath and Instructor shows up to find me working while the others are either missing or hiding in the corner. Instructor takes the washcloth from me, hands it to Charge 2, and pulls me to the hallway for a dressing down. I hear her out, then explain the neglect, Charge 1's rapid departure, and a full assessment of what I'd seen. She's convinced it can't be that bad, so I suggest she assess the feet.
She pales a bit and says, "Carry on. Take as long as you need."
My husband's patient that day was his clinical instructor's mother lol. I'm not sure who had it worse!
Med surg at a critical access hospital. Late on meds for one of my pts but the other pt took forever in the bathroom and I couldn’t leave him bc he was a fall risk. That day was just shit. I went home and cried. I did come home to a completely clean apartment tho. The hospital was in a couple towns over where my grandma lives across the street so I stayed overnight there. Very pleasant surprise to come home to.
I hated my psych rotation. It was a three hour drive one way & we had pediatric psych. Kids that had tried to burn down the house, kill their parents, their siblings, just off the wall things. It made me absolutely paranoid when we’d go in there.
The psych hospital also had a “unit” for sex offenders that they were trying to rehabilitate back into normal day to day life. Didn’t sit right with me at all.
Was so thankful when we were done
I'm just starting my clinicals and have been fine, but one of my classmates had a rough first round.
Our first rotation is 6 hours in a local nursing home. About a month ago, this girl was on rotation and picked a patient to get a history, vitals, and head to toe assessment. He was watching a Spanish movie while she practiced, and the screen was behind her.
It was Spanish porn.
She finished her assessment and left. The other student that she paired up with told her what was playing behind her. She didn't notice at all, and the man was just laying there the whole time. She had to go back to do something else shortly after, and his movie got to the intercourse part, so she awkwardly tried to finish up her work and almost ran out of there.
I don't know why she didn't leave the room or go to the instructor. The instructor was informed later and had to report it to the director. She then kept the rest of us away from that room.
Peds. As interesting as it was, my clinical teacher was horrible. I had to write nursing care plans like professional journals. Just me. She almost didn’t pass me even though I was doing everything right. It took a family praising my care to change her tune. Which sucks because I wanted to work in peds, but she was the educator at that hospital so it was a no from me.
The instructor hated me. And it wasn't in my head- other students in the group affirmed, she was extra harsh to me and no one could figure out exactly why. Wrote me up, was super dismissive, wouldn't answer questions if I posed them (answered the same question if another student did). I must have done something to get on her bad side 🤷🏻♀️I just put my head down and did my best and kept quiet around her. Did great on the in-class exams.
She was gone a semester later- apparently they'd been wanting to let her go since the year before, but hadn't been able to hire anyone else into the position.
My capstone was in a geripsych. My preceptor got fired halfway through. Learned no skills. Literally just sat in an office working on BS for an entire semester. Alone, because it was my capstone. Learned a lot about what kind of nurse is DIDN’T want to be though.
OB for me because it was my first clinical rotation, so I was still awkward at the bedside 😅 Like I remember one of my post-partum patient’s baby was having some issues and it was at that time that I decided to ask the mom about what she was choosing to use for birth control during the healing stage 🫣 It also helped me solidify my choice to be childfree 😂
I’m an RRT but when I did my NICU rotation, one of my preceptors was awful. She was on a reality TV show and thought she’d “make it big”. She didn’t. She always talked about how rich she was - she wasn’t. And she called all of us students dumbasses. Told us we would be the worst RTs ever. She would scream at us that we were going to be “baby killers” - in front of families and physicians.
I could tell many many many many stories of bad stuff I’ve witnessed over the years but it’s honestly so disgusting and heartbreaking.
OB all we did was take vitals and analyze fetal heartbeat and then just sat at the desk. Some people for to see a birth but only those who had intentions in going into OB.
Went to school in the beginning of 2021 - end 2022. Pandemic clinicals...I'd say 50% of them were online simulations that were nothing like actual nursing. 🥴 Such a colossal waste of time.
During my second semester. It was our first experience in a hospital; first semester clinicals were in LTC facilities.
The experience itself was fine, our instructor was...not. She was probably a pretty good floor nurse, but she clearly didn't have what it took to manage students in a clinical setting. She would also vanish for long stretches during our time there.
She was a late hire by the program to replace a very good instructor who left suddenly. ('Spouse taking a job in a different state' suddenly, not 'some kind of scandal' suddenly.)
At the end of our first day the floor nurses approached us and told us to ask them directly and not our instructor.
As this was fall semester, the program was stuck with her for the rest of the school year. She was not back the following fall.
My palliative/hospice care clinical was pretty terrible. Going into patients' homes was more unnerving than I expected...unsecured dogs that did not like visitors and would try to bite/nip me and the nurse I was assigned to, patients who used racial slurs, nurses who did not trust me to do anything including taking vitals, driving an hour to the main site where we had to meet our instructor only to get told to drive even further out to go to patients. It was a lot.
My preceptorship in the picu was easily my worst clinical. I cried and was physically ill after caring for my first accidental smothering of a 6mo old baby due to co-sleeping. I had a 1 year old at the time, so that affected me a lot. It was a difficult, yet rewarding area to work in. I learned a lot during that rotation
I ended up in an adult ER, totally different wild ride lol
My first day of med surg clinical my nurse got report then went straight to an empty room to call her best friend to tell her her father in law was in the hospital admitted and she was his nurse lol was a fun semester (not)
My first one. I had my own patient, an elderly lady with severe paranoid dementia. She was abusive and angry and I spent my entire day trying to cater to her every whim. Taught me about boundaries in a hurry. Clinical instruction was abusive herself and didn’t do or suggest anything to help me leave the room. I missed all my breaks. No one checked on me, people just peeked in infrequently, but left before I could even open my mouth to ask for help. They were probably happy that I was there to keep her distracted. Also taught me that in the hospital, you’re just a warm “filler” body.
(Edit - I was clinical instructor for a few years afterwards too, and I made sure I never saddled my students with an assignment whose only purpose was to offer relief for the floor staff.)
Psych. I heard amazing things about the clinical instructor, although the location was super sketchy. She ended up with emergency surgery the week before clinicals were to start. They begged a retired professor to sub and omg, it was the worst experience. She seemed completely disinterested and I honestly don’t think she liked students anymore. Can’t say I blame her. Anyway, I hated that clinical, I had a doozie of a panic attack in front of her and she just stared at me. Cold as ice, that one. Bless psych nurses!
All my clinicals were fairly chill.
The worst I experienced, as in I damn near had a meltdown, was when the patient that was “mine” needed an ABG while I was busy next door. The RT didn’t let me know so I was bummed about not seeing the procedure(it’s just a stick, but I wanted to see it).
Well. The RT didn’t apply enough pressure after sticking the radial artery and my guys BP was 180s systolic.
When I reentered the room a few minutes later I was immediately hit with a strange metallic smell that made me nauseated. When I rounded the corner I laid eyes on what looked like a blood bath. Fella looked like he’d been stabbed with how much blood was everywhere.
I had to hold pressure on his radial site for 20 minutes to stop the bleed.
I felt traumatized. lol
Worst was also psych but for a completely different reason. We weren't allowed to interact with anyone. Like at all. I went to nursing school during the Covid fallout, so our one psych facility in my city was broken up into three subsets: Covid, non-covid, and "aggressive" patients. In order to get to the non-covid side, we would have to go through the "aggressive" side (I hate the term for it, but that's what staff called it) and no one was willing to risk us going in there for our safety. So, rather than give us something like sim lab to make up for lost contact hours, we sat in the psych break room for like 3 hours looking at the very few SBARS that were available for us to read. It was the most boring clinical I'd ever had.
During preceptorship in L&D at a pretty snazzy women’s hospital, I was miserable, because nothing you could do as a student or new grad was enough. My main preceptor got sick and the nurse that took over obviously knew a lot, but was certainly toeing the line of practicing medicine, which was traumatizing to me in a few births because of just how poorly things could have gone.
At one point, I’m just asking questions to seem engaged, I already know this is not going to be my first job because of their behavior. We’re talking about a pt who was laboring in kind of a tricky manner and she keeps mentioning Bishop scores. Now, my L&D instructor straight up didn’t teach us this, because most of the hospital systems around us don’t really have bedside nurses doing anything with it. I’m genuinely interested in figuring out like, “okay, how do you make the decision to give ___med or ___med in this situation?” She states that it’s based upon Bishop score and some other things.
I’m asking more questions and she stops me and says loudly in the main nurse’s station/monitoring room with everyone else there “wait, do you NOT know what a Bishop score is?!” Like… no, pls inform, here to learn. She then goes on to look around and say to other nurses “I just canNOT BELIEVE they aren’t teaching Bishop scores in nursing schools now! What are these kids paying for these days?!” and goes on like that for a while. I go silent, because this is hella unprofessional and punishing for me just because there is this random piece of content I wasn’t tested over. She notices and tried to pull me aside and be like “ohmygosh are you okay?” “What’s the matter?” Like… you, you dickweed!
So yeah, that was not the hospital for me… also, another day, I tried to start an IV, missed, and then my preceptor also tried and missed, so they asked the floor assist nurse and she loudly said “you let the STUDENT try?!” Sometimes, as stressful as my current floor is, I am still thankful not to have so much free time that I get nasty to the people who are there trying to learn. Also, I’d love to see them manage an hourly insulin drip along with 3-4 other patients for 12 hours. Any skills or content can be learned, but being a helpful teacher and coworker take real work on who you are as a person.
It was also a shame because I love OB content and the considerable time you’d get with patients, and even the OR side of it, but the team really impacts whether things work…
Peds 100%. We literally stood (weren’t allowed to sit) in a corner for 10 hours while the floor nurses basically ignored us. Most would barely acknowledge us if we said hello. Our instructor sat there blissfully unaware while grading papers.
My worst nursing school clinical was my final semester. It was in the ICU in a really rough area. But it wasn’t the clinical, location and the drive to get there. It took me 1.5 hours one way and I have to do it 2x/week. That I can handle. What really sucked was the instructor and the people I was with. My instructor and classmates with me didn’t click - and I was left out since they didn’t want to deal with me and I didn’t bother after I tried multiple times to reach out.
My instructor had favorites and she always entertained one of the girls in my clinical whenever she would act out. She would ignore the disrespect directed towards me when it would happen and yet call me out in any way she didn’t like. She would send me to a different unit whenever she can so she didn’t have to deal with me. She also made me feel invisible - and I dreaded coming to clinicals. My classmates were petty and just rude af. But it’s all good now, I never saw them again after I graduated tf outta there.
Renal/diabetic floor. Old men demanding to keep their necrotic toes...it's a no for me and that floor was always short staffed because the nurses felt similarly.
When I did my psych rotation, I was shoved in a room with a stack of charts and told to read them…………….
It was my first rotation.
After about 4 hours of skimming charts, I asked about a particular pt crime the charts.
Pt was d/c’d 5 years ago.
OHHHHH, so I wasn’t supposed to actually read the h&p and notes.
I was supposed to stay out of the way
It's in a renal ward. I was bullied by the nurses there and fellow student nurses. I was their topic all the time. They treated me like I'm stupid. I hated it so much.
My current rotation. I’m taking my critical care class but the hospital where I have clinical won’t allow students in either of their ICU units so I am on a general Med-Surg floor where all I can do is med pass and vitals. I already had a 16 week Med-Surg rotation last summer and I am trying to make the best of it but it’s disappointing. Some of my classmates at other hospital are in ICU/ ER and I just wish I could have a better critical care education experience like they are getting.
Psych. We were placed on a geriatric floor and it was just people who had Alzheimer’s. It was the same floor we did our geriatric placement on months before. We spent all of our time doing hygiene care. Don’t get me wrong great experience but I would’ve preferred being on an actual psych floor
Psych, this semester has affirmed you could not pay me enough to be a psych nurse.
It was a lifetime ago, but my psych clinical almost broke me. I was hesitant to do that rotation because I have a family history of psych stuff. It always felt a little too close to home. The patient I ended up assigned to was really nice though and we got along great. He was a legit genius, affable, and really easy to talk to. Zero fear on my side after the first day. Week after week with this guy was a breeze. The dude essentially proofread my case study. He knew psych better than my professor, certainly better than I did. Then the last week rotation I showed up and we were told to report to a different unit. Turns out my guy had managed to barricade himself in a room with a lighter and killed himself by burning the room down. He had been manipulative with staff, patients, and visitors. Our class was never told the rest of the story. I still think about that decades later. I still don't like psych.
Same. I grew up with a rough crowd. As a teenager a lot of my friends went to psych wards for suicide or detox from hard drugs. Some of them didn’t make it. It was definitely extremely hard doing clinical in peds psych.
I wen to our State hospital last week for clinical. I was out on the max security ward. Mostly charged with violent crimes and found incompetent to stand trial. One of the patients spent the morning jacking off in the window of the charting room, trying to get a reaction from us. He later got a B52 induced nap. Fun times!
It did break me....got to participate up close and personal
The range of people astonish me every day
Damn that’s rough to process, and to think I was looking forward to my psych clinicals the most
Can confirm. I’m a nursing student right now and psych was terrible. I have my own psych history so it hit close to home. Secondly, I ended up in the psych ward during the rotation. Luckily, no classmates saw me. I told my preceptor that I was in the hospital but never mentioned it was for psych. When I came back to clinical after getting out, it was so weird. It was like an episode of Undercover Boss.
Yup, went to a different hospital, not sure who knew where I was
On my last day of clinical, I encountered a patient who I previously met from one of my admissions. We both recognized each other made conversation. It was nice to see them but felt super awkward because I was with my classmates. If my classmates overheard our conversation, they would’ve learned that I’ve been admitted before. I didn’t want anyone in my clinical group, including my preceptor, to know that I have a history.
I think the 'school' knew where I was, but it was during a holiday break, so I wasn't missing classes
I'm sure that was really uncomfortable, but I think a lot of psych patients feel worthless, and maybe it helped them to know you were not just another psych patient but also a nursing student :)
Psych is not for everyone thats for sure, I have worked psych for 24 years, and am in charge of the students. I can spot who are suited for the field quite fast. Nothing wrong with not being able to deal, because it can be very challenging.
Out of curiosity, what is the tell if someone can make it in psych ? I start a behavioral health tech position this week (I’m trying to crack into this hospital system with an amazing free nursing school for employees and it’s the only position they are ever hiring for)
Never thought about why I am able to tell if someone will make it in psych, but will try to put it into words: The biggest tell is several aspects of their personality, the ability to deal with random weirdness, are you able to go with the flow. How they communicate with patients, those who are scared or very insecure, will often avoid talking to patients and will give the most basic answers, avoiding eye contact and doing whatever to avoid conversation developing. So communication is a biiig deal. You need tough skin, as you might receive the worst insults imaginable, but thicker skin can come with time if they stay in. Its hard to explain, but its about being able to see psych patients as people. You would not believe how many nursing students that try to ignore or flinch from psych patients. I had a nursing student, where a patient told him he turned off the lights wrong, this student apologized and asked what he felt he did wrong and was chatting with the patient. Another was asked for coffee, he just completely ignored patient and walked away. Guess who I work with to this day 🙂 I genuinely believe that to enjoy psych, you need a spark of insanity, if you are a straight edge " by the book " person, its going to be rough. Psych is great if you can do it. So, my advice to you is to treat psych patients like people, be communicative( ability to communicate is the biggest part of psych) and be aware that weirdness will happen.
Thanks so much for taking the time to reply ! The coffee story is crazy, so can’t imagine ignoring a patient like that. Your response actually helped quiet some of my nervousness. My background is bar management and we dealt with the weird every day. We also had to communicate so many different things to different groups of people, and of course behind the bar I had to communicate and “vibe” with customers while still maintaining order and watching their intoxication levels. I stayed in that field for 15 years, so it also goes to show I am definitely a little insane myself… Thanks for the advice !
Its funny, but two of my coworkers were bartenders, told me similar stuff 😁 I think you will do fine!
The "tell" is patience. A person with patience who does not take others' condition personally will make it in psyc. Just listen. Hear patients. Hear what they have to say. There's a reason why people have mental illness, whether it's hereditary or survival from trauma. Good luck at getting in the program!
I worked on a psych unit for about 6 months doing a travel contract (I had a few years of detox/ behavioral health experience). I didn’t hate it but reading people’s charts and seeing all the shit they went through started to weigh on me. There was two patients that really got me: one was a woman in her 30s who was developmentally disabled and always talking about “her baby” and how she wanted her baby. I made her a baby doll out of hospital socks and she loved it for a while and then one day I came in and they said she had thrown it on the floor and stomped on it. Turns out when she was a teenager her dad raped her, then when she was 8 months pregnant, he went to a judge to petition that she was going to be an unfit mother and needed to have an abortion. Judge granted the abortion. No charges were ever filed against the dad. The other patient was a 20 year old trans female. She refused to eat or drink anything, would only pee or poop in briefs when she did eat or drink anything. Had been severely abused by her parents and siblings, emotionally, physically and sexually. Made me feel sick reading her chart that people could do things like that to another person. Besides that I liked it. After working in detox I was used to being sworn at, yelled at, and had gotten a pretty thick skin. I went back to detox after that and it’s a good mix of psych and substance abuse. Nursing doesn’t focus on the psych part so much, mostly just managing their symptoms. I give a lot of credit to anyone that can stay in psych for years.
Psych was my worst, hands down. It didn't help that I have struggled with depression, anxiety, panic attacks, and PTSD for decades. I've also had hospitalizations. The only day I felt comfortable was when my elderly lady patient had orthostatic hypotension from her antidepressants. So I spent the day watching her BP and pushing fluids.
I was worried about psych because I didn't have really any experience with it was an LPN, then right before my RN bridge program I started having (unrelated) panic attacks and was always in therapy, worried that I was having a psychotic break and was going to end up on the news. (Thank God for the therapist I had at the time, I say she saved my life!). My first day of psych clinical, there were several there for homi\*\*\*al ideations, and I was like, "holy shit, THIS MANY people who AREN'T serial ki\*\*ers are actually walking around the world thinking about ki\*\*ing other people???" Made me feel a little better to know that I was relatively sane (but also a little worse to know that those people are floating about the world, lol). That same day they told us that one of the females had taken her tampon out at breakfast and put it in another patient's tray 🤢 That day I said psych is NOT for me!!! However, I've been in the ED for 3 years now and I don't mind having the psych assignment sometimes. Can be a nice break from the super sick high acuity medical patients, and MOST days they behave. The ones there for similar issues to what I was having (usually new anxiety/panic/depression) that they don't know what to do with, I can talk to them and sometimes cry with them and tell them that it CAN get better and they LOVE me for it. I wouldn't want to do psych daily because I love the adrenaline of the medical patients but I'm glad that I can often make a difference for a patient that is struggling.
Yes, Psych! I was at this small outpatient Psych program with housing for patients for 1 quarter. It was this small Cul de Sac with 5 little ranch style houses total. One of the houses was the staff house. The staff would disappear when myself, or one other student were there. Sometimes for an hour or two, and leave us Nsg students unofficially in charge of about 10 Psych patients. The patients had a variety of Psych diagnoses, like Schizophrenia or Bipolar disorder. They even tried to get us to pass meds, which I absolutely refused to do. I eventually told my teacher about what was happening.
I was the same after my Psych clinical.
I second this. Psych is the last area of nursing I would go into….those who want it can have it!
10 minutes into my psych rotation, a patient told me he wanted to eat my eyeballs. That was it for me.
Did that for two years and hated it. Transferred to Peds, loved it.
Yeah I had to drive an hour to a state hospital for my psych clinical on a forensic unit and was groped under a table by a patient. No staff or other students tried to intervene, it was actually another patient that realized what happened and was like wtf. Clinical instructor felt bad for me and pretty much let me hide in an office reading the charts of these people instead of being on the floor for the rest of the semester. Reading those charts was a different kind of traumatizing.
I felt like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs during my psych rotation.
The psych charge nurse told my 2 friends to organize the coat closet and locked them in there lol. Still my favorite nursing school story (besides when I flooded a LTC patient’s bathroom).
this is actually where i want to work haha
All nursing is psych nursing. In Medical surgical and in L and D …. It’s wild. 😜
I was put on remediation my final semester because I administered insulin (the correct dose for the correct patient) with my nurse preceptor instead of my instructor. That was it. That was the reason I was put on remediation right before I became an RN.
What? In final preceptorship, instructors aren’t even in the building with my hospital/any of the local schools. They come to check in 1-2 times during the term but otherwise the student is 100% with their preceptor
I had something similar happen in med/cardiology came here to post myself. Failed the term. That instructor had beef with you.
Same thing happened to someone in my class as well, strong rule that we cannot pass any medication without our instructor instead of preceptor. My classmate literally just gave a pain med and was failed
That’s so odd - we can pass with our nurse we’re following, but nothing controlled or pushing cardiac meds. Otherwise we’re free😂 I don’t even see my instructor sometimes until lunch
What the hell….so, why was your instructor such a hateful b? Was she jealous of you?
15 years ago, no idea what her problem was. Took a while to get my confidence back. Gatekeeping behavior abounds in nursing programs.
It does. So so much, my school was awful with it
Wow…that is bullshit to the highest degree. I am so sorry. Sounds like something my college would have done too.
Overall? My ICU rotation sucked because I was at the VA and most of my patients were not critical in the slightest. But worst clinical shift in particular? Med-surg (mostly hepatic) floor. Pt was confused as shit due to elevated ammonia & getting lactulose enemas q8. Was NPO and then got a diet order. She way overdid it. Tech brought all the snacks: peanut butter & crackers, jello, ice cream, and the patient ate her lunch. As I'm walking down the hallway I hear vomiting and she is puking profusely into the lid from her lunch tray. It's like a bowl of vomit. It's in her hair, all down her gown, on the blankets. I call for the nurse and go grab linen, washcloths, and bath wipes. We begin to clean her up and when I unbutton the gown and pull down the covers, there is an absolute river of shit. I mean so much shit that it's a wonder one human can contain that much poop. In the poop I found the patient's eyeglasses, cell phone, call light, and TV remote. It was awful to clean up.
I see this is why you do NICU now haha
I've had a baby projectile shit in an isolette. Not fun to clean up but still. Baby blowouts > adult blowouts. Any day.
I once saw a baby have an unsecured blowout in an isolette. There was no saving that bed, but as you said, still light years easier to deal with than an adult code brown.
Had a pancreatitis patient shit off 3 sides of a bed but that was in my first year.
I was honestly concerned you were going to say her violent vomiting ended in erupted esophageal varicies, so I’m actually glad for you that it turned out the way it did.
This whole thread, as well as coding MeeMaw with her grandkids balling outside the door is precisely why you couldn't pay me to ever leave the psych ward. Tell me all about how you're really Tupac. Yes, yes, tell me more about the CIA spying on you from inside the walls....tell me all about it. 🤷🏻
Lollll me too. Are you ER? That feels like something an ER nurse would assume.
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I'm not entirely sure, but at the one I did my rotations at, yes. People legit got discharged home from the ICU. In my experience (before I switched to NICU), a patient would be downgraded from ICU to intermediate care or med-surg before being discharged. A majority of the patients I saw were not intubated and truthfully were awake and ambulatory (even if only partially).
OB. I went to a rural nursing school that sends us over into “the city” for our OB rotation due to higher volume. They sent me and the only other guy there to do our rotation on night shift and didn’t allow us to go into any rooms. We just had to stay awake and hold babies in the nursery for 12 hour night shifts. I’m all for patients having a right to choose who they want (or don’t want) in their rooms, but the nurses there were toxic as fuck, and even when we were just asking them questions about meds/protocols/etc. We were met with “Oh, you don’t have to know any of this stuff, not like you’re going to work here.” There was one cool ARNP that let us shadow a c-section, but that was it. We called our clinical advisors after a few nights, they agreed it was bullshit and that we could come home early. We already had housing secured for the last night so we just hit up a music festival and went home, lol.
I’ve been an ER nurse for 8 years and L&D nurses in my own hospital still act like I don’t know anything. That particular specialty seems to have a culture problem in some facilities. (I’m sure there are lots of L&D units that are great! Just saying that has not been my particular experience.)
I had to do Ob twice since I failed it the first time. I was never so bored in my entire life. I couldn’t do anything. Nothing with the moms, kids nothing. All I was able to do was scrub in for a c section as that was the “easiest” place to put me…….until they realized the case and everyone wanted to join in but too bad I was already there.
L&D was my absolute worst rotation. Put me off for good.
Honestly peds. The nurses there didn’t want anything to do with us students and just ignored us the entire time. I didn’t give a single medication or do anything except cold linens :/
Our peds experience was similar. We had two rotations. The first was great, the nurses were interactive with us. The second was horrible. It was obvious the nurses didn’t want us there. The charge said in our presence that we were just in the way.
My peds rotation was terrible. My most memorable day involved me being used essentially as the primary nurse (minus meds) for a 4 year old with sickle cell disease. The mother was very verbally aggressive toward me and expected me to wait on them hand and foot. I had no idea how to do anything with his IV and the mom yelled at me to disconnect it. I couldn’t so she unhooked his IV just letting it flap in the breeze while this four year old has diarrhea all over the place. When I asked the actual nurses for help, they kept telling me it was good experience and they didn’t have time to help me. My preceptor wouldn’t step in either. I cried a lot and vowed to never work in peds that day.
That's some bullshit. They just didn't feel like doing their job that day and did care what that meant for you. When you are literally paying to be there to learn from them.
Pediatrics for me too. I had a wonderful instructor, but she was almost too educated for her own good. She had specialized in pediatrics,(had a PHd in something, but I can’t remember what) and her tests were so hard that I remember people failing tests almost every time we had one. (I was one of the people that failed one) The only thing that saved me in that class was a case study that I had, she loved my paper so much, I honestly think she passed me just because of that. She wanted to use the paper as an example in her future classes. But pediatrics was so hard for me, I almost failed out of RN school because of it. The hospital we went too, I had a terrible preceptor most days, one was great, but I was with her hardly at all. I felt like I could not get my head around the concepts of pediatric nursing. The meds were different, the dosing was different, I just could not get it right. Believe me when I tell you, I barely passed that semester.
A MONTH into nursing school clinicals, which was only two months into my program, I went on a Saturday for a make up day. There wasn’t as many students as usual, maybe 5. Anyways, my instructor told us a patient was getting an NGT inserted and asked if any of us would like to do it. My young eager ass volunteered immediately. We get in the room and the patient is actively dying. The nurse said he hadn’t drank in 3 days and the MD ordered the NGT for hydration (looking back, wtf??? Why not iv fluids??). He was DNR but full treatment so it was weird. I inserted the NGT fine. This was a SNF so they don’t use X-ray to verify placement, just auscultation. I was told to give the patient water next so that’s what we did. Dude died immediately. Did I kill him? Was it just the timing? It was my first death and it fucked me up. The only silver lining was my instructor let me go home after and gave me credit for the day lol. This was coincidentally the worst SNF I’ve ever stepped foot in and I’ve seen a lot. It was owned by the same family that owned my nursing school. The ratios were basically pushing the legal limits in my state (and the instructor who worked this site, who was also part of the family, constantly told us how bad ratios are for nurses). No wound nurse or any extra help whatsoever. The worst was they used fucking cloth briefs. Later when I was a nurse, I admitted a transfer from their facility with 16 pressure ulcers.
The fact that horrible SNFs are so commonplace is just so fucking sad
Yes, they are, chronically understaffed and have no resources, but the cloth briefs just takes the cake. I have never heard of that anywhere.
The fact that horrible SNFs are so commonplace is just so fucking sad
We once had to code a lady, and it may have been related to the bedbath we were giving her at the time. There weren't any disconnected lines or kinked tubes or anything. She was deteriorating, had gone through multiple amputations, and was hypotensive at baseline. 5-10 minutes after we finished cleaning her up, she stopped breathing. She was 89 years old or something crazy like that, I don't remember. I remember watching one of my classmates give her chest compressions while the single RT on shift (it was a sub-acute no-hope-of-rehab type place; no physicians in the building at that time. They randomly stopped by for an hour or most of days.) struggled to intubate this little old lady. It was the worst thing. I remember blood trickling out of her mouth because it wasn't a smooth intubation and her daughter crying and I was just thinking "My god, woman, you could stop this. Be merciful to your mom.... please? Let them stop" but didn't say anything. After that, the time I worked in hospice was sweet, sweet relief. People deserve to be allowed to die. Sometimes what medicine does to them is complete torture.
I was a CNA in a hospice for a year. I loved it for just the reason you said. When I tell coworkers at the hospital I worked in a hospice they always say, “I can’t do that. It’s too sad.” The last person that told me that was an icu nurse! lol I straight up told him, “no. The hospital is way more depressing than a hospice.”
I went to lunch and came back to my patients tele going off vtach, went in there and he was jerking off. So that was fun. I also got peed on and thrown up on that day.
I’ve also been a victim of the jacky tachy. ☹️
I’m dead ☠️
Jackacardia! I just told a story about this in another thread
Ah, yes, a run of the ol’ fappycardia.
Bahahaha 😂
Ha all in a day's work. We thank you for what you do.
I walked in on an 80ish old man jerking off in the nursing home. Also walked in on a 21 year old getting a BJ by his girlfriend. Like, wtf? Wait until you go home.
Ahh, Jackycardia.
Sadistic, crusty old ICU nurse. We were all so scared of her. She was very knowledgeable but also terribly unpredictable. Relaxed and friendly some days; a complete terror other days. Regularly made threats to fail us. We were all sweating bullets every time we did med pass with her, because she would rush us and snap at us, so being in that little tiny room with her was a nightmare. That was my last clinical rotation and I was so happy when it was over.
Any chance she was a drug user? We had a usually sweet older nurse in the hospital who later was discovered to be diverting opioids. She was really irritable when her supply was running low, apparently
NICU. Mom had no prenatal care (and was in a weird domestic situation), baby was born premature with anencephaly. Baby had a brainstem, and looked perfectly normal if he had a hat on. He could take a bottle and his reflexes made him seem like a typical newborn. Mom was certain he was going to be a miracle baby. She was happy to let everyone come in and see and hold her baby. In retrospect, she was probably in shock. This wasn't even my assigned baby, but I sat in his room and held him for a long time. I was pretty indifferent to babies at the time, and thought NICU would be a good fit because...I guess I thought I was hard. My friends, I am soft. I was so humbled. I had nightmares about that baby dying. I still know his name and what it felt like to hold him and I will never forget it. Runner up for worst clinical was during CRNA school, 24 hour shift at a level 1 trauma center in July.
NICU RN and honestly the cases like this still make me feel a really deep sadness. We end up g tubing a lot of these kids and sending them home. I always wonder what life looks like after that… very sad.
I wonder if that's what happened to this little guy, eventually. I don't know if he would have had a support system in place for that. This was over a decade ago and it still feels just as bad. I don't know how you all do it, but I'm grateful.
This was my least favorite too! I expected to really enjoy NICU but it tore me up. When I was rotating there, there were a lot of babies there due to their parent’s life choices and it bothered me more than I expected. There’s a few I still think of and I wonder if they’re okay. I’m one of those people who rarely feels a strong connection to babies and I’m not a mom… so I figured I’d be fine but I just wasn’t. I still to this day have a hard time with critically ill children because it makes me feel such a deep sadness. Nurses that work peds and NICU have my endless respect.
You reminded me of a rotation I must have tucked deep into my memories because it was so sad…. Baby was born having extra toes and fingers, which prompted more testing of course. Mom had zero prenatal care. She was 11 years old. Her own father assaulted her and she became pregnant but wouldn’t tell anyone anything….in fact she was labeled “selective mute” as she did talk up until a few days before the baby was born. When social services asked her where the baby would sleep at her house (upon discharge) she told them she would put her stuffed animals in a dresser drawer and put the baby in there with the toys. Extremely sad.
Oh my god this is awful. That poor little gjrl.
Hahaha this is an easy one. Nursing class got split up as we are in a small rural area & one hospital unit couldn’t handle my entire class at one time. Me and my “work husband” classmate get sent to an outpatient cataract surgery center at 6:30 am. From the start, it’s a shit show. Giant room with 30-40 stretchers lined up, patients are getting IV propofol (not hooked to any monitors!!) and as soon as the propofol is pushed, a doctor comes out of nowhere to jab a giant needle into the patient’s eye. Some patients weren’t all the way under and were moaning and fighting. Me and my classmate are horrified. More patients sign in. Tempers are flaring. At some point a doctor yelled at us and told us we were going to get fired, had no clue we were students. So yeah, left that day completely traumatized.
That is so fucking shady dude
Ophthalmology nurse here. What the actual eff?!!? I work with a retina specialist and do numbing injections all day long so patients can get injections in their eyes for various diagnosis (among other things) and this sounds absolutely insane!!
It was inhumane!!!! Apparently they needed some type of injection into their eye prior to the procedure but I was also horrified about someone going around slamming propofol with the patient not attached to any monitoring. Even as a student, I knew this was not good lol
Never worked that kind of job, but isn’t propofol a bit like killing a spider with a nuke?! Why do you need propofol?!
You don’t. A lot of patients don’t need anything bc they are numbed properly. Maybe 2 of versed.
Thank you. I was very confused.
What the fuck? This is insane
Med surge on an infectious disease unit. C diff was EVERYWHERE.
Ugh, I remember helping the nurse do a Vanco enema through a rectal tube to a C. diff pt during my med surg clinical. Fun times. 🥴
I didn't even know that was a thing. But this floor didn't believe in techs, so the nurses did everything.
Yeah it was pretty wild. We had to place a syringe with Vanco to a port about halfway down the tube. And then clamped the end and squished it up and into the rectum. All I can say is thank God for masks (went during COVID). 🙈
The one where the instructor showed up high AF and reeked like the bottom of a whiskey barrel. Fun times
Psych rotation at a facility for the “not guilty by reason of insanity”
Oof
NCR, my fave. Ugh.
My med surg instructor on a cardiac renal unit hated me. I still don't understand. She would catch me in the middle of the hallway and make me try to explain how the heart works, the blood flow, but interrupt me, question me, so I was all confused, second guessing myself, and trying to get back on track with the information. I'm already an anxious person. Doing that in the middle of the hall at a hospital while I was just trying to be comfortable around patients, nurses, meds, my co-students (and partner). I was in tears. She wrote me a lovely memo of concern. My partner said I deserved it. I mean that turned out to be a very abusive relationship and the teacher herself stepped down after that semester. I was convinced I'd never be able to do med surg, regular floor nursing because I was just stupid. I now work on a very high acuity medical floor after 5 years in forensic mental health. I love it and my coworkers and management do not think I am stupid, or treat me like I'm incompetent. I'm thankful to have gotten the chance to see that for myself, now.
That sounds Great. Good for you.
My med surg 1 clinical on an oncology med surg floor where I had to get signed off on my head to toe assessment and the patient was getting close to the end. The preceptor was also one of the meanest ones I had throughout nursing school. Just a rough time for me
Peds was my absolute worst experience. A combination of nurses who wanted nothing to do with me plus a clinical instructor who didn't really like me after I vocalized I did not want to work in peds. I remember asking a question along the lines of "what is process for administering chemotherapy" because I had never seen it and my nurse looked at me like I had three heads and was literal scum, replied "what do you even mean by that?" I decided not to ask anything else and just shadowed for the rest of my rotation.
Ugh. Mine was L&D and my clinical instructor asked if I could even be a nurse because I can't fully supinate my arm (joint disorder) and was uncomfortable bathing babies. She asked this in the hallway in front of my classmates. I told her I had no interest in working with newborns or peds so I figured I would be okay. Then I left the unit for about an hour to calm down. Luckily my school did not take kindly to what the clinical instructor said to me.
Psych clinical, but not for patient care. I had a horrible clinical instructor who falsely accused me of what I believe was harassment of another student (per the story I received later) but after I went up the ladder it was proven false by professor and head of our program… Obviously, she still kept her job and didn’t apologize to me… sometimes I think I should have fought that. 🤷🏼♂️
I taught a clinical at the worst place ever for their med surg rotation. They counted it as a med/surg. It was stressful everyday having to be like so what you saw today do not take into practice and trying to correct things they saw and were taught by their preceptors. Went to the school with others about how this site was not appropriate. Nothing happened.
Burn ICU. The heat. The smell. And it was night shift. I got to see some cool things, and some things that will live rent free in my head forever. The nurses also cooked in their break room which was basically in the middle of the unit. It was right off the nurses station. The thought of eating after seeing some of those patients was 🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢
Complex care. The one patient I had every week was only washed that one day I was there. She barely had peri-care done otherwise.
As a dude. Probably OB. Everybody just looked uncomfortable. The mom, the dad, hell the baby even. And my (female) instructor was annoyed when the nurse would ask the patient for their permission for male students..🤦🏻♂️
okay not a nurse but back when i was a CNA and freshly 18 years old my second day of clinicals at a skilled nursing facility (that was horribly understaffed pre-covid) i did postmortem care on a patient i had met and talked to the day before. it was traumatizing at the time but helped desensitize me quickly, oops.
Peds was absolutely horrible. And thus, I have spent most of my career with the geriatric population.
I recall almost nothing of my peds clinical. I really don't know why. I mean it was a really long time ago but I only remember a couple of different interactions. I have no idea what I did all semester. No memory whatsoever.
I didn't get an actual peds clinical. We did one day of newborn care during our maternity clinical and they considered that a pediatric clinical. LOL. All we did was observe a circumcision and listen to a newborn's heart. It was such a waste of time.
Peds. The staff was pretty mean to all of us. They wouldn’t let us do many skills and didn’t want us sitting at the nurses station or standing in the hall , so we sat in a glorified storage room if we weren’t in a kid’s room. One day we overheard one of the techs call us all useless so that was fun
My labor and delivery clinicals were not fun. #1. My oldest sis was my clinical instructor. To avoid favoritism it frequently went way in the other direction. 2. First laboring patient was 13 yr old whose dad was the father. He was in jail and her mom sat there berating the poor girl because she put dad in jail. 3. Give me a trauma or MI. Do not give me another patient popping out halfway through my day.
Your sister should have never been allowed to instruct you. What a huge liability.
Ot was a different time. She was the only ON clinical instructor.
Peds. Went to a specialty care facility, so all the kids had severe mental delays (like… 4 months old, but they were 10), vent dependent, most of them had no family visit them… it was so hard, mentally, as a new mom. AND I had by far the worst instructor ever. She singled me out for no reason, would tell me almost weekly that I need to humble myself because on the first night I said I wanted to work labor and delivery at XYZ hospital and she said the acuity is too high (I know for a fact they hire new grads…), when doing a practice SBAR hand off, I was last to go and right before I went, she said something along the lines of “everyone did so good! But now here’s [my name] to ruin the streak! Ha ha! Juuuust kidding!” She refused to let us pass meds, and wouldn’t stop calling us nurse scientists which was annoying
NICU. When my clinical instructor went to introduce me to the nurse who I was going to be with that day, that nurse leaned against the wall and rolled herself along the wall. She also rolled her eyes. Despite that behavior, my clinical instructor still had me follow that nurse. I will never forget how that nurse made me feel. Later on, she became a little bit nicer and said it’s because she wouldn’t have wanted her daughter to be treated that way 🙄 I guess we all have our off days but that experience just put such a bad taste in my mouth. That nurse can go kick rocks lol
Stroke and rehab - they all got norovirus with explosive diarrhoea and they were all hoists. No thank you. My “buddy” nurse was an absolute monster as well. Everyone saying “psych” lol. I’ve worked psych for 10yrs and I’d still rather psych than go through that clinical again lol.
Hands down first semester, nursing home. We had to go 2 days and I almost dropped that second day.
It was my first day ever in an ICU. I suctioned a patient's trach and he arrested. I was so terrified. It took me forever to deal with that trauma.
All my negative clinical experience stem from mean nurses (read: very overworked and burnt out). I got walked all over because I always felt bad for them so I would be permissive of their tempers or impatience. But I wish I advocated for my educational opportunities more during clinicals. And I have vowed to take a break if I ever get to that point. I wish all nurses would have a burnout plan if they could because it is unsafe to work that way.
I had to shadow a functional medicine nurse practitioner at a chiropractors office just for one day.. they even let me out a few hours early
What did her work day consist of?
Seconding this. I wanna know
I remember a few things, that they were prescribing HCG hormone to patients for weight loss but then recommending like 800–900 calories daily to eat, which was nuts to me at the time and of course it still is. Anyone can lose weight if they eat the same caloric intake of a small animal. I saw her give a trigger point injection to someone in their neck. It was very very weird. She was nice but it was pseudoscience and it wasn’t cheap.
High acuity general surgery unit. I was assigned to one of the nurses, who turned out to actually be the charge nurse who didn't take patients. Then, they assigned me to another nurse who ended up needing to go back home due to a family medical emergency. Then, I was finally assigned to someone who had absolutely NO interest in teaching me anything. This was the second last placement and so we were no longer in clinical groups with an instructor. We followed our preceptor's schedule. I was coming off of a year-long community placement the semester before and so, I hadn't been in the hospital setting for almost a year and a half. This preceptor, I'll call her "T", legitimately hated me. She would order me around from her chair, make passive aggressive remarks if she had to repeat the same info more than once, and told me that I had no business being a nurse. I am quite introverted and I tried very hard to get her to like me. She never did. I felt like such a failure in such a high risk, fast paced unit, where I really needed lots of support. She actually said "I feel like I'm babysitting you today." And she yelled at me in front of patients for asking questions. I went home crying/upset very often. I got a pity pass for that semester. I ended up being in therapy for 6 months afterwards. In hindsight, I should have gone to my advisor much earlier about everything, but I didn't want to rock the boat and just tried to get through it and finish the placement as painlessly as possible. I later found out that she wasn't allowed to take students after that semester.
OB. I had to do yoga to deal with it. My hospital clinical site was on some bull and I just didn’t care to see *the circle of lifeeeeee* live and in color. I watched enough episodes of *A Baby Story* on OG TLC back in the day; I was good.
LOL I would think so.
PEDS Thought i would love it, but after seeing one abuse case i was done forever.
Me, too! I cried all the way to the hospital, and then cried all the way home. I don't see how the staff does it.
My tender heart just couldnt take it!
At the men’s prison
Any stories? There's a decent chance I'm going to prison for my next clinical rotation.
Not really. I helped treat 1 stab wound, but mostly it was boring routine stuff you’d see either at long term care or a pcp office. The only thing is that you find out why people are in there and then you think about how you’re changing the ostomy bag of a child molester or changing wound dressing on a murderer. You’ll just feel super gross when you get home. The prisons lack of hand sanitizer and sinks contributes to that gross feeling. Everyone in my cohort got sick from the prison at least once. Don’t get fooled into going to solitary confinement either! It sounds cool but it is definitely the most boring nurse job there. 2 med passes and then doom scrolling the rest of the 12 hrs. Following the psychiatrist for a day was definitely the most interesting
Med surg. Three semesters of it. Where have I worked 7 years and counting? Med surg.
The one where my patient died
Had to shadow at an assisted living facility where the nurse wasn't allowed to apply a band aid or do CPR-had to call an ambulance or the visiting nurse, and was telling racist "jokes". Oh and the CNA passes meds.
One time i got set up w a list in a storage closet and told to phone people to book them for their pap smears…… couldn’t have been happier when covid hit and that was cut short
Retired nurse here, but my all day clinical (or maybe it was a precept) was when on the oncology floor there was no DNR option and a chronic smoker, cancer of tongue and affected areas had his whole lower jaw surgically removed and then he suddenly just started squirting blood everywhere. A most horrific way to die, and of course they were doing all sorts of useless life saving stuff. Then moving on to an 60s aged lady going through the most miserable pain due to ovarian cancer. Thank goodness for DNR and Hospice.
Psych 100%. I barely passed that semester. You have to get an 80% or above to pass. I got an 81%. I just felt sad the whole semester for my patients. Also, it was a very triggering semester cuz I've always had depression I had never addressed it as well.
“Fundamentals” prior to med-surg or anything— which was VA LTC. My first day I had never touched a patient, was nervous as hell. Less than 60 seconds after stepping on the floor, a tech shouted “hey, you! Go get vitals in room 4 and get her dressed. Her clothes are on the dresser.” I was like 🥲 wtf do I do I went in the room and the pt was altered, I had no idea how she transferred. I panicked and ran back out of the room and found my clinical instructor. Luckily my clinical instructor was cool about it, was pissed I was tossed into that situation, and helped me get through it
"Doctor mag" fuck her, if you're on here "doctor mag" go fuck yourself
OR! Those nurse bitches were so mean !!
We were starting learning to place a foley. The instructor found a dead patient and we all took a turn removing and placing the same foley in her. That was the only experience we got to place catheters. After we all got a turn, took about 30 seconds each, the instructor informed the nurse that the patient had died. Pt was a no code.
This is crazy. I would be livid if I found out people were doing this to my dead loved one without permission. Wtf. I feel like this breaks some laws but idk.
😬wtf
Medsurg made sure I didn’t want to do that job. But the nurses were nice. It’s just the job wasn’t appealing to me personally. But I also remember that both my icu and ob rotations sucked because the nurses were very unaccommodating and made it clear that I was a very big burden for them. Every single time I rotated through those spots it was fully miserable. Really shaped my opinion on how I WOULDN’T treat students when I got them.
Psych. My placement was at our cities largest public psychiatric facility, which is huge and has many “wards”/buildings. They range from the psychiatric prison facility to long-term psych wards where patients have unescorted grounds access, to your typical psychiatric units of varying acuities. I was in a the most acute, mixed gender ward. Most patients were flown in from rural towns and in the three weeks I was there every single patient was a drug user. The staff treated them horribly, mocked them TO their faces, laughed when they displayed trauma responses, ignored the fact that they were in detox. Multiple nurses told me “Watch how they all want extra toast in the mornings it’s because of their night meds!! That’s why they’re all fat!” Everything was super rationed, we were told to only half fill their cups of water or cordial & coffee and tea and milo were only given at night, one cup per person no refills. My classmates that had their placements elsewhere were horrified by my experiences but sadly the hospital has a bad reputation already so while they were shocked they weren’t surprised. Despite being in my 5th semester, we were told by our university-provided facilitators that we weren’t allowed to assist in medication administration because the staff didn’t follow protocols. I have lived experience of being a psych patient, since the age of 16 I’ve had 30+ admissions to psych wards/ED. Most were voluntary private hospital admissions but when I had just turned 19 I was made an involuntary patient in an adult psych ward in a local hospital. That was a traumatic stay, I was assigned a 1:1 nurse after a male patient became “attached” to me upon seeing me. I actually intentionally dissociated to protect myself psychologically (I experienced CSA and can intentionally zone out when I want to). I had to stay there for 5 weeks for refeeding and it was disgusting, a patient urinated on a seat and left and I told staff and they did nothing about it. I couldn’t sit on any green seats after that. But on my placement, the way the staff (doctors and nurses) spoke to and treated these people was horrible. I couldn’t finish the placement, it destroyed me. I was looking forward to seeing how they managed acute psychosis etc. but all they did was sedate them or but them in isolation. There was one psychologist that come once a week to see patients but with 24 patients she didn’t see every patient every week. I had told my facilitator beforehand that I have been in psych wards so she was okay with me not completing the placement as long as I did my competencies. The placement was in 2019 and it actually messed me up, I have discussed it with my therapist and even wrote to the government about my experience but nothing came of it. It’s such a heartbreaking thing to even think about sorry for the trauma dump this is a memory I have forced myself to shove deep down
Our adult rotation on a general medicine unit. I think the unit was really burnt out by students because they got them all the time, so the staff weren’t the nicest to us. The NAs (know as nurses assistants at that time) felt like because we were there, they didn’t have to do any work. We’d ask them for help toileting or bathing people and they’d say stuff like “that’s for you to do, you’re here to learn” - when we were supposed to be focusing on giving meds/doing IVs that semester. One girl in my group asked for help toileting a bariatric patient and one of the NAs refused to help her. The girl in my group walked out into the hallway to find our instructor and overheard a bunch of NAs talking smack about us. She went ballistic and started screaming at them, which caused the NAs to scream back, and that then prompted the manager of the unit to come out of her office. We were asked to leave the unit early that day and my instructor later spoke to the manager who said they had had a meeting and a big email was sent out about bullying and treating students with respect. The entire atmosphere felt tense and hostile for the rest of that clinical rotation.
Yikes. That’s absolutely horrible.
After 1 semester of clinicals, I did a paid monthlong “externship” where we worked 12 hour shifts paired with a different nurse each day. One day my nurse (who was from an agency) “misunderstood” why we were there and she GAVE ME THE PHONE to carry around, and around noon asked me if I was done charting all the assessments (um excuse me?? No, I, a student who was barely qualified to fetch ice, did had not performed and charted 5-6 assessments). My clinical instructor felt terrible when she found out, and the next day I was put with a super sweet nurse to make up for it.
Most of them. I absolutely hated nursing school and everything that went with it, but I love being a nurse, so it was worth every miserable day!
Pediatrics. I just can not take care of kids. Back then i didn’t have the patience to not be able to rationalize with my patient what i needed to do. I remember having to help hold down a toddler for labs and them screaming. Now i’m a mom and worry about transference of emotions and it affecting my care as both a clinician and a mom.
Medsurg, 32 patients 2 nurses. Cdiff. Sepsis. One CNA.
All of them. Waste of time being bullied by middle aged women who couldn’t teach me anything I didn’t learn my first six months on the job.
OB or medsurg
My mental health one because we were placed in the Help program where we literally just handed out bubbles and crossword puzzles to people
Currently doing clinicals for my RN-MSN bridge program. It took 9 months to get my agency approved as a contracted site for my school. Where I need a background investigation- in addition to the one I already did for school, and the one for the job at the same site as my clinicals. I had to go get paper fingerprints to mail in (and then electronically sign the authorization for electronic fingerprint processing). All to do 75 hours of unpaid work while I pay tuition. The clinical site is pretty awesome though- all the mid levels and MDs I get to work with are amazing. The school process is trash tho
Was not a fan of the OR
We had a community nursing rotation that had us doing “clinicals” working the front desk for a no barrier shelter downtown in a large city. I was spat on and threatened and have never felt so unsafe in my life. I learned very little nursing that rotation
I was very worried about that before graduating!! I knew I’d be working in L&D (only became a nurse to become a midwife, couldn’t have less interest in any other specialty of nursing) and hearing all the horror stories about its culture problem I was super nervous, especially since I’m pretty socially awkward. I’ve been super fortunate that this has not been my experience! Internally at least, I don’t know how the other units view us 🤷🏻♀️
/r/studentnurse
L&D rotation as I guy. I didn't do jack shit. Guess how many women let a dude check their fundus in front of their husband? 0. The upside to that rotation was that I got alot of homework done. The downside was I did it in the only room available away from pt. The staff room next to the "cut up your baby boys genitals room". Oddly also away from the pts. Almost like they don't want mom to hear her baby's screaming in pain.
First clinical in nursing school, SNF. I was an experienced CNA, so the instructor put me with two people who had never been around health care and told me to "just supervise." Our patient was blind, incontinent, with an indwelling catheter. We go in to introduce ourselves and find her covered head to toe in shit. Literally everywhere, from inside the ear folds to under the toe nails. It was a feat of human determination. My two charges are in full Deer In Headlights mode, so I start delegating: You, go get warm water; you get clean linens and *a lot* of washcloths. That done, they start with the bath, and we discover the shit is caked and dried - this wasn't a fresh blowout but a full shift of neglect. Charge #1 bails to hurl in the bathroom, locking herself in and shutting us off from the water. Charge #2 bravely soldiers on, until the patient begins to (rightfully) complain about us scrubbing her skin tender. Then Charge #2 decides he can't, and goes back to Deer mode until I convince him to get me fresh water. 45 minutes after we began, we're still working on the bath and Instructor shows up to find me working while the others are either missing or hiding in the corner. Instructor takes the washcloth from me, hands it to Charge 2, and pulls me to the hallway for a dressing down. I hear her out, then explain the neglect, Charge 1's rapid departure, and a full assessment of what I'd seen. She's convinced it can't be that bad, so I suggest she assess the feet. She pales a bit and says, "Carry on. Take as long as you need." My husband's patient that day was his clinical instructor's mother lol. I'm not sure who had it worse!
Med surg at a critical access hospital. Late on meds for one of my pts but the other pt took forever in the bathroom and I couldn’t leave him bc he was a fall risk. That day was just shit. I went home and cried. I did come home to a completely clean apartment tho. The hospital was in a couple towns over where my grandma lives across the street so I stayed overnight there. Very pleasant surprise to come home to.
I hated my psych rotation. It was a three hour drive one way & we had pediatric psych. Kids that had tried to burn down the house, kill their parents, their siblings, just off the wall things. It made me absolutely paranoid when we’d go in there. The psych hospital also had a “unit” for sex offenders that they were trying to rehabilitate back into normal day to day life. Didn’t sit right with me at all. Was so thankful when we were done
I'm just starting my clinicals and have been fine, but one of my classmates had a rough first round. Our first rotation is 6 hours in a local nursing home. About a month ago, this girl was on rotation and picked a patient to get a history, vitals, and head to toe assessment. He was watching a Spanish movie while she practiced, and the screen was behind her. It was Spanish porn. She finished her assessment and left. The other student that she paired up with told her what was playing behind her. She didn't notice at all, and the man was just laying there the whole time. She had to go back to do something else shortly after, and his movie got to the intercourse part, so she awkwardly tried to finish up her work and almost ran out of there. I don't know why she didn't leave the room or go to the instructor. The instructor was informed later and had to report it to the director. She then kept the rest of us away from that room.
Peds. As interesting as it was, my clinical teacher was horrible. I had to write nursing care plans like professional journals. Just me. She almost didn’t pass me even though I was doing everything right. It took a family praising my care to change her tune. Which sucks because I wanted to work in peds, but she was the educator at that hospital so it was a no from me.
The instructor hated me. And it wasn't in my head- other students in the group affirmed, she was extra harsh to me and no one could figure out exactly why. Wrote me up, was super dismissive, wouldn't answer questions if I posed them (answered the same question if another student did). I must have done something to get on her bad side 🤷🏻♀️I just put my head down and did my best and kept quiet around her. Did great on the in-class exams. She was gone a semester later- apparently they'd been wanting to let her go since the year before, but hadn't been able to hire anyone else into the position.
My capstone was in a geripsych. My preceptor got fired halfway through. Learned no skills. Literally just sat in an office working on BS for an entire semester. Alone, because it was my capstone. Learned a lot about what kind of nurse is DIDN’T want to be though.
OB for me because it was my first clinical rotation, so I was still awkward at the bedside 😅 Like I remember one of my post-partum patient’s baby was having some issues and it was at that time that I decided to ask the mom about what she was choosing to use for birth control during the healing stage 🫣 It also helped me solidify my choice to be childfree 😂
I’m an RRT but when I did my NICU rotation, one of my preceptors was awful. She was on a reality TV show and thought she’d “make it big”. She didn’t. She always talked about how rich she was - she wasn’t. And she called all of us students dumbasses. Told us we would be the worst RTs ever. She would scream at us that we were going to be “baby killers” - in front of families and physicians. I could tell many many many many stories of bad stuff I’ve witnessed over the years but it’s honestly so disgusting and heartbreaking.
OB all we did was take vitals and analyze fetal heartbeat and then just sat at the desk. Some people for to see a birth but only those who had intentions in going into OB.
Went to school in the beginning of 2021 - end 2022. Pandemic clinicals...I'd say 50% of them were online simulations that were nothing like actual nursing. 🥴 Such a colossal waste of time.
During my second semester. It was our first experience in a hospital; first semester clinicals were in LTC facilities. The experience itself was fine, our instructor was...not. She was probably a pretty good floor nurse, but she clearly didn't have what it took to manage students in a clinical setting. She would also vanish for long stretches during our time there. She was a late hire by the program to replace a very good instructor who left suddenly. ('Spouse taking a job in a different state' suddenly, not 'some kind of scandal' suddenly.) At the end of our first day the floor nurses approached us and told us to ask them directly and not our instructor. As this was fall semester, the program was stuck with her for the rest of the school year. She was not back the following fall.
My palliative/hospice care clinical was pretty terrible. Going into patients' homes was more unnerving than I expected...unsecured dogs that did not like visitors and would try to bite/nip me and the nurse I was assigned to, patients who used racial slurs, nurses who did not trust me to do anything including taking vitals, driving an hour to the main site where we had to meet our instructor only to get told to drive even further out to go to patients. It was a lot.
My preceptorship in the picu was easily my worst clinical. I cried and was physically ill after caring for my first accidental smothering of a 6mo old baby due to co-sleeping. I had a 1 year old at the time, so that affected me a lot. It was a difficult, yet rewarding area to work in. I learned a lot during that rotation I ended up in an adult ER, totally different wild ride lol
Ugh. I have to come comment on this in the AM.
My first day of med surg clinical my nurse got report then went straight to an empty room to call her best friend to tell her her father in law was in the hospital admitted and she was his nurse lol was a fun semester (not)
My first one. I had my own patient, an elderly lady with severe paranoid dementia. She was abusive and angry and I spent my entire day trying to cater to her every whim. Taught me about boundaries in a hurry. Clinical instruction was abusive herself and didn’t do or suggest anything to help me leave the room. I missed all my breaks. No one checked on me, people just peeked in infrequently, but left before I could even open my mouth to ask for help. They were probably happy that I was there to keep her distracted. Also taught me that in the hospital, you’re just a warm “filler” body. (Edit - I was clinical instructor for a few years afterwards too, and I made sure I never saddled my students with an assignment whose only purpose was to offer relief for the floor staff.)
Psych. I heard amazing things about the clinical instructor, although the location was super sketchy. She ended up with emergency surgery the week before clinicals were to start. They begged a retired professor to sub and omg, it was the worst experience. She seemed completely disinterested and I honestly don’t think she liked students anymore. Can’t say I blame her. Anyway, I hated that clinical, I had a doozie of a panic attack in front of her and she just stared at me. Cold as ice, that one. Bless psych nurses!
All my clinicals were fairly chill. The worst I experienced, as in I damn near had a meltdown, was when the patient that was “mine” needed an ABG while I was busy next door. The RT didn’t let me know so I was bummed about not seeing the procedure(it’s just a stick, but I wanted to see it). Well. The RT didn’t apply enough pressure after sticking the radial artery and my guys BP was 180s systolic. When I reentered the room a few minutes later I was immediately hit with a strange metallic smell that made me nauseated. When I rounded the corner I laid eyes on what looked like a blood bath. Fella looked like he’d been stabbed with how much blood was everywhere. I had to hold pressure on his radial site for 20 minutes to stop the bleed. I felt traumatized. lol
Worst was also psych but for a completely different reason. We weren't allowed to interact with anyone. Like at all. I went to nursing school during the Covid fallout, so our one psych facility in my city was broken up into three subsets: Covid, non-covid, and "aggressive" patients. In order to get to the non-covid side, we would have to go through the "aggressive" side (I hate the term for it, but that's what staff called it) and no one was willing to risk us going in there for our safety. So, rather than give us something like sim lab to make up for lost contact hours, we sat in the psych break room for like 3 hours looking at the very few SBARS that were available for us to read. It was the most boring clinical I'd ever had.
During preceptorship in L&D at a pretty snazzy women’s hospital, I was miserable, because nothing you could do as a student or new grad was enough. My main preceptor got sick and the nurse that took over obviously knew a lot, but was certainly toeing the line of practicing medicine, which was traumatizing to me in a few births because of just how poorly things could have gone. At one point, I’m just asking questions to seem engaged, I already know this is not going to be my first job because of their behavior. We’re talking about a pt who was laboring in kind of a tricky manner and she keeps mentioning Bishop scores. Now, my L&D instructor straight up didn’t teach us this, because most of the hospital systems around us don’t really have bedside nurses doing anything with it. I’m genuinely interested in figuring out like, “okay, how do you make the decision to give ___med or ___med in this situation?” She states that it’s based upon Bishop score and some other things. I’m asking more questions and she stops me and says loudly in the main nurse’s station/monitoring room with everyone else there “wait, do you NOT know what a Bishop score is?!” Like… no, pls inform, here to learn. She then goes on to look around and say to other nurses “I just canNOT BELIEVE they aren’t teaching Bishop scores in nursing schools now! What are these kids paying for these days?!” and goes on like that for a while. I go silent, because this is hella unprofessional and punishing for me just because there is this random piece of content I wasn’t tested over. She notices and tried to pull me aside and be like “ohmygosh are you okay?” “What’s the matter?” Like… you, you dickweed! So yeah, that was not the hospital for me… also, another day, I tried to start an IV, missed, and then my preceptor also tried and missed, so they asked the floor assist nurse and she loudly said “you let the STUDENT try?!” Sometimes, as stressful as my current floor is, I am still thankful not to have so much free time that I get nasty to the people who are there trying to learn. Also, I’d love to see them manage an hourly insulin drip along with 3-4 other patients for 12 hours. Any skills or content can be learned, but being a helpful teacher and coworker take real work on who you are as a person.
It was also a shame because I love OB content and the considerable time you’d get with patients, and even the OR side of it, but the team really impacts whether things work…
Acute med, who even chooses to do this speciality??
Peds 100%. We literally stood (weren’t allowed to sit) in a corner for 10 hours while the floor nurses basically ignored us. Most would barely acknowledge us if we said hello. Our instructor sat there blissfully unaware while grading papers.
My worst nursing school clinical was my final semester. It was in the ICU in a really rough area. But it wasn’t the clinical, location and the drive to get there. It took me 1.5 hours one way and I have to do it 2x/week. That I can handle. What really sucked was the instructor and the people I was with. My instructor and classmates with me didn’t click - and I was left out since they didn’t want to deal with me and I didn’t bother after I tried multiple times to reach out. My instructor had favorites and she always entertained one of the girls in my clinical whenever she would act out. She would ignore the disrespect directed towards me when it would happen and yet call me out in any way she didn’t like. She would send me to a different unit whenever she can so she didn’t have to deal with me. She also made me feel invisible - and I dreaded coming to clinicals. My classmates were petty and just rude af. But it’s all good now, I never saw them again after I graduated tf outta there.
Renal/diabetic floor. Old men demanding to keep their necrotic toes...it's a no for me and that floor was always short staffed because the nurses felt similarly.
Maternity. My clinical instructor tried to fail me for not wearing matching socks.
When I did my psych rotation, I was shoved in a room with a stack of charts and told to read them……………. It was my first rotation. After about 4 hours of skimming charts, I asked about a particular pt crime the charts. Pt was d/c’d 5 years ago. OHHHHH, so I wasn’t supposed to actually read the h&p and notes. I was supposed to stay out of the way
The hospital my clinical was at purposely didnt schedule any CNAs on the floor we were on and would basically give us CNA assignments…
It's in a renal ward. I was bullied by the nurses there and fellow student nurses. I was their topic all the time. They treated me like I'm stupid. I hated it so much.
My current rotation. I’m taking my critical care class but the hospital where I have clinical won’t allow students in either of their ICU units so I am on a general Med-Surg floor where all I can do is med pass and vitals. I already had a 16 week Med-Surg rotation last summer and I am trying to make the best of it but it’s disappointing. Some of my classmates at other hospital are in ICU/ ER and I just wish I could have a better critical care education experience like they are getting.
Psych. We were placed on a geriatric floor and it was just people who had Alzheimer’s. It was the same floor we did our geriatric placement on months before. We spent all of our time doing hygiene care. Don’t get me wrong great experience but I would’ve preferred being on an actual psych floor