With the current challenges facing healthcare and the world, we want to shine a light on the students and new nurses who are coming into the field during this unprecedented time.
We hope to raise awareness of their situations and help to amplify what needs to be done to ensure that nurses feel comfortable and supported in the healthcare field.
Situations cannot change with truth. We hope their stories will resonate with you and can create change within the field of nursing.
In the fourth video of our series, we ask the students if they could change one thing about their clinical experiences or their onboarding experience as a new graduate, what would that be and why?
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Caroline
I guess the stigma that like if you’re doing nothing like you’re doing something wrong is already like being fostered within like nursing students. I do think that there should be time for you to just sit down, maybe like just kind of think through like how the days been going like in your head or, I don’t know, just take a break.
I think that that’s something that even in my clinical experience is like already becoming like a thing that instructors just really don’t want you to be looking disengaged. I think there’s obviously like degrees of this. Like, you shouldn’t be on your phone texting away, like, obviously, but then sitting down and just doing something to do it I think isn’t necessarily bad, is something that needs to be, I guess, more encouraged with nursing.
I do think since we have so much pre work and post work, it would be like a nice if we were able to work on that like while we’re there. But none of my instructors let us do that.
Victoria
I wish my clinicals were in person For the most part, I’ve had a couple in person, but a lot of them have been virtual and it wasn’t always expected that they were going to be virtual. Those things kind of change with COVID cases. There’s nothing like that hands-on experience being with patients in person versus virtual But again, back to the whole main idea of that.
Our reality is COVID right now and that we do have to shift our learning and really be in touch with our virtual clinicals and virtual learning because we need to still get that information and know that information and do the best we can so we can be prepared to work in a clinical setting.
Fernanda
During the pandemic, I really encountered a lot of challenges to my last clinical class. So I, you know, I had a very hard time finding a clinical setting for me to do my clinical at because nobody was taking students anymore. You know, because of the pandemic, and rightly so. We had to do a lot of zoom clinicals, you know. The one thing that would have been helpful definitely would have more of an in-person clinical that would have been helpful.
Some people learn different ways, you know, some need to have hands-on. Others, you know, more technical. So the in-person I think, definitely would have helped with that.
Olivia
I think, you know, based on the clinical experiences that I’ve had the last two years, definitely one thing I would change is just how the nurses respond to the students coming in. You know, some nurses would be awesome. Maybe like here are the meds we’re going to pass today. You’re going to do all of them or I’m going to be in this room doing this.
It’s not a patient you’re assigned to, but it’s an awesome experience that you should be a part of. So that was great because, you know, they really took full advantage of having the students there but there were some days where it would be an eight-hour clinical and I maybe past one med because the nurse just took care of everything and didn’t want anyone doing anything.
And so that was just the biggest challenge is making sure we were included. And I mean, over the two years of my clinical experience, I mean, I think we definitely all started to get a little more pushy because we wanted that experience. But I just feel like, you know, of course, we have to not sit in the corner, but at the same time, like we shouldn’t have to like fight to be able to hang an I.V. fluid.
It’s just like we should be, you know, asked for those kinds of things. So that’s definitely something I would change is just making sure the nurses are more receptive to having students with them. And making sure they’re making it the most inclusive learning experience that they can.
