The First Clinical Placement

Clinical placement is the part of studying nursing that I think excites most new students, where you feel like you will learn the most valuable lessons and where you will really be able to decide that nursing is definitely, 100%, what you want for your career. At my university, you don’t go on your first clinical placement until late in the second semester of your first year of study, and it is for 2 weeks. By that point you’re itching to get out there and get your hands dirty (not literally….ewww).

However, as that first day of placement draws nearer, the nerves set in and you really do wonder if you can make it. Will I cope? Will the nurses like me? Will I vomit the first time I smell something disgusting? What if someone dies in front of me? How will I remember everything I’ve learnt so far? …and on and on go the ‘what ifs’ and questions in your mind. These won’t end until you’re there and in action on the ward.

On the first day, you feel a range of ‘first clinical placement’ symptoms, like excitement, a feeling of being sick with nerves, doubts, fears, panic and maybe even a few little heart palpitations.
You get through the various introductions and pieces of information required, as a kind of orientation, then your facilitator takes you to your allocated ward, along with your placement partner, who like you is knocking at the knees with fear of what is around that corner. You’re left in the ward with the nurses, patients, call lights, doctors, visitors, smells, bodily noises, and so on, and it is sensory overload.

To your surprise, your feelings of nausea begin to subside, despite the offensive odours you’re exposed to.
Your fear of not knowing anything gets kicked to the curb by an understanding nurse who takes you under her/his wing.
You will learn very quickly that the ‘best practice’ you’ve learnt at university is very different out in the real world. It is not non-existent, rather it is sometimes modified to suit various situations in the real world. In saying this, it is important to always know that right way to do something, and to do it that way, especially when it comes to patient safety.
Your fear of what patients might think of you as a student nurse disappear completely the first time you hear one of them say to you “you’ll make a great nurse”.
Your fear of vomiting due to the various odours you encounter probably won’t disappear completely until you’ve smelled a bit of everything in all sorts of situations…let me tell you that a bit of Vicks Vapour Rub smudged under your nose does wonders when there are moments of weakness related to smells and body functions. Myself and my placement partner helped Vicks with their annual sales!
Nurses, patients and visitors will ask questions to try to get to know you; the nurses to know what you’re capable of, the patients to be assured they’re in good hands, and the visitors so they know their relative/friend will be ok when they leave again after their visit.
You will learn quite quickly where you fit in on the ward, and you will fall in love with being there and maybe not even want to leave…you may shed a few tears as you leave the ward for the last time at the end of your placement.

Unfortunately, you will also encounter various people who make parts of your placement less enjoyable due to their personality, behaviour, or coping mechanisms. Just remember you will encounter people like this and worse throughout your career, and you can’t avoid that. Make sure you know what the policies are in your workplace for bullying and harassment so that if a situation does arise that warrants further action you know what you’re able to do to protect yourself and others.
Also remember that you chose nursing because, among many reasons, you are a valuable and capable person, who cares about people, who is empathetic, and who loves to make a positive difference in people’s lives. If someone treats you as any less than that, it is their issue, and yes you will have to deal with that, but don’t let it bring you down.

Overall, your first clinical placement should be an exciting and enjoyable experience. You will learn a lot more than you realise at the time, and you will either come away with the idea that nursing is for you made absolutely concrete in your mind, or you will know that it is time to reassess your career path (which if this is you, then it is ok! Not everyone is meant to be a nurse, but if you are then you’ll know it in your heart). You’ll hopefully meet people that you will never forget, and have experiences that will also be etched into your memory.

For me, the first clinical placement has absolutely made me feel that nursing is where I am meant to be and is a major part of my future. I thoroughly enjoyed my placement, even after feeling on the first day as though it was going to be terrible! As I left on the last night, walking down the darkened corridor, which was decorated with Christmas lights and decorations, I felt at ease with my career choice, I said a few silent thank you’s to the nurses and staff that made my placement great, and some silent goodbyes to sleeping patients who had become favourites (even if you’re not meant to have favourites some people really touch your heart), and I shed a few tears knowing I wouldn’t be spending time on that lovely ward again, however my career was only just beginning.

Does being ‘busy’ ever end?

Does being ‘busy’ ever end?

I have felt this way for the last few months, and every time I do – I feel bad. Not only am I not the busiest person around, but I don’t have kids or other people I am responsible for and need my time and attention…so really, in the grand scheme of things, I’m not busy. I think ‘overwhelmed’ is a better way to describe how I’ve really been feeling since September, which was when I last posted on this blog.

Without going into the details, since my last post, I have…. gone through most of a uni semester feeling like I was barely treading water, sold a house (in only one day thankfully), moved house during the uni semester, started a new casual job (not nursing related), completed uni exams….and as of yesterday have just started my first (ever) clinical placement.

A post specifically about clinical placement in the near future, but as a ‘teaser’…clinical placement is a real eye-opener if you have never worked in a hospital environment before. If you’re a student nurse, I probably don’t need to tell you that it will be challenging and nerve-wracking also, but I think if you’re nervous then it means you care about doing a great job on your placement.

That’s it for today…time for me to get ready for day two, out of ten days of placement.

May need a bigger bridge than I thought…

So I may need to build a bigger bridge than I thought….it’s been practically 3 months since my last post!

In my defence, uni has been very busy, as has my life outside uni, so I am going to cut myself some slack on this occasion. However, I am about to spend a bit of time planning some sort of blogging schedule. So if anyone has any topic ideas they’d like to see please comment on this post!!

I really want to use this space for reflection, as well as sharing my experiences. This could be helpful to other student nurses. After all, reflection is a part of the competency standards I am assessed on as a student and when qualified as a Registered Nurse.

So, you will hear from me again soon! Until then, something to make you giggle 🙂

Bridging the gap…

Ok, so I am guilty of being a terrible blogger!

I had very good intentions to blog at least once a week however this first semester has taken a bit to adapt to.
So I’ve had very limited time to do anything much besides what has been necessary.

Rather than trying to cover everything that has happened in 14 weeks of uni, to bridge the gap I’ve focused on some of the things I’ve learned instead. These are a little further down – and it does mean that this particular post is quite long, so feel free to read the bits you want as you like 🙂 I will make future posts shorter and sweeter!

But I just want to say, I am loving doing a nursing course and I really feel as though this is the career path I should be taking. It just feels right!

As you go along with your studies I think it’s a good idea to reflect on what you’re learning and to see where you can improve. There is always room for improvement.
With that in mind, some things that I have realised during my first semester of nursing are:
(most of these things are general and not specific to nursing)

• Pay attention to detail – this may seem obvious, but you don’t often think about all the details, especially in assessments, that do need special attention.
• Read questions carefully – whether these are exam questions, essay questions or even just questions as part of your weekly class work. I can’t stress this enough because it is often only the way a question is worded and our tendency to read over things too quickly that means we misread and misinterpret questions, especially when it matters (like in an exam).
• When referencing, check and check again that you’ve followed the rules of the referencing style your school uses – we use the APA style, and although I do know the basics for this, and have a guide from our uni, I made a lot of stupid little mistakes with my referencing. Mostly because I didn’t pay attention to detail, I didn’t check and double-check the formatting of my reference lists, and in general I rushed my assessments this semester, so did not pay as much attention to detail as I should have.
• Plan ahead, be organised and do not procrastinate – I love to be organised and I love organising, so you would think that the semester would be easier for someone like me? Wrong! When you throw procrastination into the mix it doesn’t matter how much you’ve planned or organised, it stuffs everything up! You will pay for procrastination later when you actually get around to doing the work you’re procrastinating on now – so just suck it up and do it now!
• Start working on assessments from day one – I don’t mean for you to go and write every assessment in the first week when you haven’t even learnt the content needed to write them! Start by planning how much time each assessment will take to complete, and then schedule this into your weekly study timetable so that you can work on the assessment in smaller, more manageable parts. Include time for researching, writing drafts, editing and working with others (if this is required). And whatever you do, don’t leave starting assessment until the last day or two before it is due. So much unnecessary stress is involved and you also won’t give yourself the best chance to get the fantastic marks you could have been capable of with adequate time and commitment given to the task.
• Be open to different ways of learning – I’ve had to try different ways of studying and learning throughout the semester to see what works for my situation and me. Everyone has different study habits and different home-life situations, so no two people will find the same method or timing of study suitable. Find the time of day you are most productive with your study and plan your study sessions around those times. Get rid of unnecessary distractions and if possible turn off social media etc while you’re doing your study sessions. This may only be for a couple of hours at a time and I’m sure those status updates can wait 🙂
• Try to do a little bit each day – I have found that the weeks when I did a little bit of work each day, even if this was just doing some of my readings, or working on an assessment, I was able to stay on task and felt I was understanding the content more. It also meant that I didn’t fall behind with my work and then be stressed out about having to catch up, especially when it came to studying for exams.
• Write comprehensive yet concise notes – when you’re taking your reading notes, or taking notes during lectures, make sure they’re concise and to the point but comprehensive enough that they cover all the content you need to be learning. Especially for those subjects that have exams at the end of the semester. It makes it so much easier to go back and study when your notes are complete to start with because you don’t have to go back and re-do the work to study for your exam.
• Read ALL of the information given to you and don’t over-analyse things – I saw so many people this semester over-analyse assessment tasks, or the information given to them, or even just some of the content being taught. This got them stressed out and panicked about their assessments. It got to the point where some people were so worried they weren’t doing the right thing for their assessments that way too much of our class time was spent with the tutors explaining the assessments and answering heaps of questions and then for the rest of us who actually read the information we were given we missed out on valuable learning time.

This last one really was just a chance for me to vent. At uni one of the things I find most annoying is people who don’t bother to read the learning guides, unit outlines or communication put up on our e-learning site. The unit coordinators and the tutors don’t give us this communication for fun, it is there to guide us and uni is all about self-directed learning.
So, by people being lazy and expecting to be spoon-fed every piece of information I think it has the potential to reduce their learning capacity throughout the course. They aren’t stretching themselves, they aren’t striving to achieve anything further than what they absolutely have to and they aren’t setting the bar higher than they have before.
I love learning and taking as many opportunities that are afforded to me, so making sure I get every bit of information possible is important to me. I suppose that’s why I find it so annoying when other people just can’t be bothered.

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Back into the swing of things

The first 2 weeks of my course have been and gone so quickly, and as you can imagine they were very busy (hence this only being the first post since starting the course).

I’m getting back into the swing of UNI life with classes, studying, working, feeling sleep deprived, studying, and procrastinating, then more studying….well, you get the picture 🙂 I know things are only going to get busier, more stressful and more complicated but it’s all a good experience, so the pain is worth it.

I’ve found the most difficult things I’ve had to get used to again are time management and avoiding procrastination (and I’m sure I’m not alone here). It seems there are always more interesting or pressing things to be done other than studying. Then after procrastinating for however long, doing other things that could wait for another time, or that don’t even need to be done at all, I realise I have very little time to complete what actually needs to be done. Which creates more stress, and pressure, making me feel overwhelmed and slightly helpless about the mountain of tasks to be completed. The danger with all of this is that, if you’re not careful, it becomes a vicious cycle throughout the semester leaving you feeling like you’re ‘behind the eight ball’ and that it’s impossible to catch up. You pull a regular all-nighter to finish an assessment or to cram for an exam, you’re never completing all your readings and tasks for classes each week and you find that, generally, your assessment marks are nothing to boast about.

Well, although I feel like I’m at the beginning of this vicious cycle I am reining things in before they get out of control. I refuse to fall into that cycle. I’ve got higher expectations of myself at university this time around and failing because of being disorganised and not managing my time properly is not an option.

Understanding content

I had never thought a nursing degree would be easy, and in many ways university in general isn’t easy either. There is always plenty of reading to be done – often whole chapters, if not multiple chapters of your textbooks, need to be read each week. Add to that any activities your tutors want you to complete before coming to class, and of course assessments and revision for any exams you may have. For a couple of my subjects, but mainly for the subject that covers Anatomy & Physiology (A&P), I have had to re-think the way I study and even the way I learn.

I often find that if I don’t understand how/why something works, or the reasoning behind it, I struggle to grasp the concept completely and don’t really learn properly. However, with A&P I am finding that I just have to learn by memorising most things and I won’t always understand everything as easily as I can understand other things. There’s nothing wrong with this, it’s just another way that I am finding I need to shift how I learn to get the most out of the subject. With A&P it’s all fact-based learning, there isn’t really anything much that changes and it’s not up for interpretation like some other subject’s content. So taking this into account it really should be easier for me to learn. We’ll see how I go…

Clinical Practice Unit (CPU)

In order to practice the practical skills for nursing, the universe has Clinical Practice Units (CPUs). These are like mini hospital wards with mannequins, which have varying degrees of functionality, in the beds as patients. They are odd-looking mannequins with googly eyes and mouths wide open. They have weird ‘bits’, including being able to see their insides and some even have amputations. The classes we have in the CPUs are predominantly practical classes so that we can learn and build our practical nursing skills. So far we’ve started off slowly with learning correct hand-washing and bed-making techniques, but as we progress the simulations will become more complex and time-consuming, which is good. The practical component of my course, not surprisingly, is already my favourite part of the week.

Now, I really need to tackle some readings and some prep for a couple of assessments next week, and seeing as I’m not going to procrastinate any more 😉 I better get going. Feel free to ask questions or suggest a topic you’d like to hear about.

I’ll leave you with this cute ‘Stages Of Procrastination’ from chibird.tumblr.com

(http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lhigp34nOa1qc4uvwo1_500.png)

I’m already nearing the crisis stage hahaha